The moment Sloan knows she's done for is the moment she spies Mackenzie across the newsroom, counting on her fingers and trying to keep her head up despite Will's incessant mocking. She gets the right answer eventually (thank God) and she's so damn proud of herself that Sloan can't help but smile. She grins into her coffee cup and thinks for a moment how adorable Mackenzie McHale can be sometimes. And then her stomach ties itself up into knots and she has to set her coffee down because her hands have started to shake.

Mackenzie belongs to Will. Sloan knows it; everyone knows it. They've known it since the day Mackenzie sent the damn email. She was so desperate for people not to think badly of Will, so eager to rush to his defense, and even when he screamed at her, she just looked at him with those big brown eyes and tried to make him see that she only did it because she cared about him. He exploded in a typical profanity-laden rage and Mackenzie ducked her head and took it the way she always did because there's a part of Mackenzie that will forever be paying penance for the things she's done.

Sloan Sabbith knows all of this. She has known this since before anyone else because she heard Mac refer to Will as my boyfriend, present tense. She has known this since before anyone else because Mackenzie grabbed her by the hand and dragged her back into the office, all earnest eyes and passionate speeches about how Will was the opposite of an ass. Will, who literally screamed and stomped his feet when he didn't get his way. Will, who swore at a college sophomore. There was something bizarrely naïve about Mackenzie's impassioned defense of him, and if she were being honest, Sloan had to add that to the list of things she found impossibly endearing about Mackenzie McHale. She was so convinced of the goodness of people, and the rightness of whatever cause she was championing at the moment, and sometimes all Sloan wanted was to be swept away by her feverish optimism.

And for all that, Mackenzie belongs to Will and no matter how badly Sloan wishes, there's absolutely nothing she can do about it. And maybe Mackenzie is adorable and passionate and articulate and maybe her ass looks fucking amazing in those pencil skirts but there's absolutely nothing Sloan can do about it. Hands off, Sabbith, she tells herself sternly, and she manages to believe it for a few hours until Mackenzie calls her office line and asks her to stay behind after the show for a little bit. She says she has something important she needs Sloan's help with, and Sloan agrees without hesitation. She can't seem to say no, and she can't seem to keep herself out of trouble.


"I have been listening very closely," Mackenzie says in that ridiculously charming accent.

"And?" Sloan prompts her.

"And I do not understand a word you're saying."

"Kenzie!" Sloan feels her own incredulousness bubble up and out of her before she can reign it in and has she just given Mackenzie a nickname? It certainly sounds that way. She's given Mac a nickname, and she kind of likes it, and Mackenzie doesn't seem to mind as she barrels forward.

"Can we save the scolding, Thomas Friedman?" she says and Sloan has to bite back a laugh. Mackenzie is incredibly competent but every now and then she and Sloan have a conversation like this and Sloan becomes uncomfortably aware of just how much of Newsnight Mac must be pulling out of her ass on the fly. It's amazing.

"How about I give you three things you can write on your hand?" Sloan quips.

"No, I want to know this!" Mackenzie insists, and she's so so God damn earnest, so intent on doing the right thing and being better and doing better and making the people around her better and she wants Sloan to teach her about the economy and for a moment Sloan has a bizarre image of the other woman sitting behind the kind of desk she used in high school while Sloan stands in front of a chalkboard and she has to shake her head to make it go away. No high school student should ever wear heels that high or skirts that tight. Ever.

Sloan agrees to help, after a fashion, and slides out of the office. She chances a glance over her shoulder at Mackenzie as she walks away, and through the open door Sloan can see the expression on her face; Mac looks lost, staring at her phone, and Sloan wonders if it's Wade. She knows there's something bad happening there but she hasn't heard what it is yet and she's waiting for Mackenzie to tell her.

She finds out the next morning, of course; everyone finds out when dayside tries to stick a knife in and Mackenzie's reputation takes a beating. Sloan wants to find a way to tell her how sorry she is, how much those guys suck, how much Wade sucks, but she can't. She's not sure they're close enough for that yet. She's not sure they ever will be.


"Can you balance your checkbook?"

"Yes."

"Kenzie."

"No."

Mackenzie just seems so sad tonight, and all Sloan wants to do is help her. She wants to help her make sense of the economy and she wants to make Wade and Will and everything just go away long enough for Mackenzie to smile the way she hasn't in a very long time. She can only do one of those things tonight, however, so she trots out the new nickname and starts to talk very slowly about the Great Depression and investment and commercial banks. Mac's not listening, though. Her red-rimmed eyes are on her phone and Sloan is beginning to suspect she's more than a little tipsy. God damn these cheap cocktails.

"I can't seem to stop hurting Will," Mackenzie says, and Sloan wishes it didn't feel like a punch in the gut. Mackenzie is miserable, trying so hard to be good enough for Will, and Sloan can't seem to find the words to tell her that she should never have to try to be good enough for someone. Either he loves you or he doesn't, she wants to shout, and either way he should grow some balls and tell you so.

She doesn't say it, though. She's playing the supportive friend tonight, and probably every night for the rest of forever, so she decides she's going to do that to the best of her ability.

Which, as it turns out, is rather pitiful.

"That probably just makes you feel worse," she says, and the look that Mackenzie turns on her is heartbroken. Her eyes are definitely watery now, and Sloan's beginning to realize she's not as good a friend as she thought she was.

And then Mac starts to rant and her voice cracks and she covers her mouth to try to keep herself from crying and Sloan has to physically restrain herself from wrapping her arms around her in this bar. Mackenzie is so hurt, so sad, so completely and utterly devastated, and Sloan can't help the anger that rises in her throat, anger at Will and Wade and the as-of-yet-unnamed ex-boyfriend, all these people who hurt her so irreversibly and never appreciated what they had. Never let her kindness, her passion, her sunny fucking optimism flourish. Mackenzie's face is getting redder and she's finding it harder and harder to stay on topic and Sloan has decided that whatever happens, she's not letting Mackenzie go home by herself.

They're just going to share a cab, she tells herself. That's it. She's worried that Kenzie is too unstable in those fucking heels and it's late and she couldn't live with herself if something happened to her friend. She becomes more convinced that this is the right idea when, after they've paid for their drinks, Kenzie tries to stand up and teeters dangerously on one heel until Sloan swoops in and slides an arm around her waist.

She steers Mackenzie out into the street and helps into her the cab.

"What's your address, Kenzie?" she asks, but Mackenzie is looking down at her phone with watery eyes again. Sloan sighs and tells the cabbie to go to her apartment. She has a spare bed and Mac doesn't have to be in the office until eleven tomorrow morning. She can crash at Sloan's. It'll be fine.

Sloan reaches across the seat and physically takes the phone away from Mackenzie, tucking into her own purse. Mackenzie makes a disgruntled little noise and Sloan turns in the seat to face her.

"Kenzie, look at me," she says, and oh god but right now Mackenzie has the worst case of drunk-eyes Sloan has ever seen. She's not going to remember this at all.

"You hurt Will. Will hurt you. Wade hurt you. Maybe you should stop wasting your energy on trying to please them, and start focusing your attentions on what you need. What do you want?"

"I want for Will not to hate me," Mackenzie whines and Sloan shakes her head.

"I think you want for your relationship with Will to go back to where you were before. Now either you can fix it, and it will, or you can't fix it and you should stop wasting all this time trying to duct tape the Grand Canyon back together."

Mackenzie nods and turns to stare silently out the window, and Sloan sheepishly digs the phone out of her purse and drops it back into Kenzie's lap. She knows she shouldn't have taken it in the first place, but she just wants to throttle Mackenzie sometimes. Why can't she stop hurting herself over and over? Why can't Sloan help her?

The cab pulls up in front of her apartment and Sloan pays the driver before helping Mackenzie out and onto the street. She literally has to hold the other woman up as they make their way to the elevators; Mac is done for the night. Sloan eases her into the guest bed, slides off her shoes and covers her with a blanket; she's snoring lightly by the time Sloan shuts off the light. Mac is going to hate herself in the morning, but at least this way Sloan won't be worried about her.


It's nearly nine and Sloan hasn't heard a peep out of Mackenzie yet, so she takes a deep breath, pours a glass of water and fetches a bottle of ibuprofen before she slips into the guest bedroom and perches on the side of the bed where Mackenzie is still fast asleep. She looks so peaceful now, the worry and sorrow that had filled the night before all faded in the pale light streaming in through the heavy curtains covering the windows.

"Mac," she says softly, but the attempt garners no response. She clears her throat and tries again.

"Kenzie," she says again. Still nothing.

"Kenzie!"

Mac makes an adorable little groaning noise and furrows her brow in confusion, drawing the blankets up closer to her face.

"Kenzie, it's almost nine o'clock and you have to be at work in two hours and you haven't showered and you're wearing yesterday's clothes and you smell like a wino," Sloan tells her as nicely as she possibly can. Mac groans again and rubs her hands over her face.

"Leave me here to die," she whines and Sloan laughs, assured now that Mackenzie is in fact coherent and capable of pulling herself out of this.

"You can shower here if you want," Sloan offers, and that's how Mackenzie wound up wearing one of Sloan's shirts over yesterday's skirt to the office.


Sloan would never admit this to Mackenzie, but she sneaks into the Paley Center event to see how her student performs. She isn't surprised that it actually looks like Mackenzie knows what she's doing; Mac knows how to put on a show, and she knows exactly how to give the appearance of competence without having the expertise to back it up. What does surprise Sloan, however, is how many times Mackenzie drops her name. Sloan Sabbith keeps falling her lips and Sloan really, really likes the way that sounds. She also really, really likes the fact that Mackenzie is wearing her shirt again, the shirt she borrowed and never returned. It looks good on her, and Sloan likes how weirdly proud it makes her. She'll never tell Mackenzie any of this, but she'll never ask for that shirt back, either.


In the immediate aftermath of Fukushima and Sloan's subsequent suspension, Mackenzie decides it's her turn to take care of her friend. Sloan has been there for her since the beginning, since the very first moment she tried to bond over cheating boyfriends the day Mac told her she'd let her do pole-dancing on the air if it got people to watch. Mac mean that, too; Sloan is gorgeous, impressively, intimidatingly gorgeous, and she's got a PhD from Duke, and if the only way Mac can get her audience to pay attention to the economy is if a pretty girl tells them to, well then, damn it, Mac is going to put the prettiest girl she can find on the air. Lucky for her, she doesn't have to look far.

And Sloan has turned out to be so much more than Mackenzie ever expected; Sloan is kind and encouraging and every time this god damn hurt Will has left on Mackenzie's heart gets opened back up, Sloan is there to help her lick her wounds.

Mackenzie has heard the whispers, of course. That the boyfriend who cheated on Sloan wasn't so much a boy as he was a female professor of Women's Studies at Columbia. She's seen something in her eyes, every now and then when Sloan looks at her, and Mackenzie knows that look very well, even if it's been a very long time since she's seen it directed at her by another woman. Sloan would never, ever do anything about it though, Mackenzie knows, and there's something kind of sweet (if very, very stupid) about that. Sloan knows all about Mac and Will and Mac and Wade and Mac and Bryan, and Sloan knows that Mac is straight and she knows that they're friends and she's content to be a friend. Mac can see the resignation on her face. She knows that Sloan's mind is already made up.

She also knows that Sloan isn't working with all of the facts. Like the fact that Bryan is a fiction, an invented name to cover the real reason Will can never forgive Mackenzie; she didn't sleep with her ex-boyfriend, she fucked another woman for four straight months before Will walked in on them together. She's been trying to make up for that for three years, and honestly, it was waking up to Sloan's soft voice that morning all those months ago that first got Mac thinking that made she'd spent enough time trying to make up for it. Maybe she and Will weren't ever going to get back together, and maybe she hadn't committed some unforgivable sin. She had loved Will once, but the longer he tortures her over this, refusing to listen to her side of things, the more convinced she becomes that she doesn't want him to forgive her. She doesn't want to go back to the way things were. What she really wants is to take Sloan Sabbith out for a drink.

So she does.


Sloan's face is stormy and she's in no mood to talk, drinking her beer in an aggressive silence. Mac has taken her to a bar far away from Hang Chew's, far away from their friends who keep whispering behind their hands about what Sloan did on the air. Mac knows it was stupid, and she knows that Sloan knows it, too. She doesn't feel the need to rub it in.

It would appear that Sloan has other ideas, however; she's actively trying to get drunk and it's halfway through beer number four that she looks at Mac with dark eyes and says, "I know what you're thinking."

Right that minute Mac had been thinking about how good Sloan looks in the black Gucci dress she's stolen from wardrobe, so she's pretty sure that no, as a matter of fact, Sloan has no idea what she's thinking. She hums instead of answering, waiting for whatever Sloan has to say. She's been here before, she knows the routine.

"I fucked up," Sloan says, and it's a testament to just how low her alcohol tolerance is that she's already slurring her words. Mac motions for the check when Sloan's not looking.

"I made a fucking rookie mistake and I should never be allowed on the air and Daisuke is never going to speak to me ever again. We were friends, Mac, and I betrayed him. On national television."

"You were trying to do the right thing. You were trying to get the word out about a potentially devastating situation and you were getting screwed over by the interpreter and you were under a lot of pressure and you made a mistake. Get up off the mat, Sabbith. Brush off the dust and let's get back to work."

Mac throws a few bills down on the table and stands, extending her hand to Sloan in an extravagant gesture. Sloan stares at her like she's grown a second head, but she accepts the hand, allowing Mac to steer her out of the bar and into the street.

Mackenzie's next decision is an easy one. She tells the cab driver her apartment instead of Sloan's, and when Sloan begins to cry quietly in the seat next to hers, she wraps her arms tightly around her. Sloan buries her face in Mackenzie's neck and weeps, and Mac lets her, hands drawing soothing circles on her back. Mac won't tell her that it's ok, because it's not, but it will be. She has faith.

By the time they get to her apartment Sloan has stopped crying, but Mackenzie is still holding on to her. She pays the driver and they ease out of the car, and it's her turn to hold Sloan up as they make their way towards her apartment. "I'm sorry," Sloan says quietly, but Mac just shakes her head.

"I don't wanna hear it. You just focus on getting up these stairs, all right?"

Sloan bites her bottom lip between her teeth and keeps her gaze pinned on her feet, putting one foot precisely in front of the other, and Mac tries to keep herself from laughing at the ridiculousness of it until they're safely up the stairs and she's unlocking her apartment.

"I don't have a guest room," she explains sheepishly, and she watches Sloan process this, her face turning red and then ashen and then red again.

"I can sleep on the couch," Sloan manages finally, but Mac just laughs and shakes her head.

"No, you can't, I promise. It's hideously uncomfortable. Come on, I'll give you something to change into."

Sloan hangs her head and follows Mackenzie back to her bedroom, and there are a thousand different things Mac wants to say to her right now but she can't find the words. She wants to tell Sloan the truth about what happened before, she wants to tell Sloan that everything is going to be all right, and she wants to tell Sloan that every time Sloan looks at her like she wants to kiss her, Mac wants to kiss her right back.

She doesn't, though. She hands Sloan a t-shirt and a pair of stretchy pants and points her towards the bathroom. She changes her own clothes while Sloan is gone, something not too low cut to decrease the risk of accidental stripping in her sleep, and she offers Sloan a genuine smile when the other woman reemerges. She has to cajole Sloan into her bed but eventually she relents, and Mac tries to hide her triumphant grin as she turns off the light and slides in beside her.


Sloan notices two things almost simultaneously when she wakes up in Mac's bed the next morning. The first is that she has a splitting headache that makes the very notion of opening her eyes unbearable. The second is that there's a hand possessively clutching her right breast.

This presents a kind of dilemma for Sloan. One the one hand, she wants to ease Mac's hand away from her and spare her friend the potential embarrassment of waking up like this. One the other, she wants to stay like this for as long as possible and pretend like maybe, just maybe, Mac's doing it on purpose. Maybe she wants to.

It takes her entirely too long to make up her mind. Mackenzie is pressed up against every inch of her, curves fitting together the way Sloan always thought they might, and she knows she's in trouble. Dangerous thoughts are swirling through her throbbing mind, thoughts like how good this feels and how badly she wishes there weren't any barriers at all between Mackenzie's hand and her own skin. Thoughts like what kind of sounds Mackenzie might make if Sloan touched her this way. She's on thin ice and she knows it, but it still takes a herculean effort to gently slide herself away from Mackenzie's too-intimate embrace and reclaim the far corner of the bed.


Mackenzie holds her breath, waiting for Sloan to move. She's grateful she woke up first, unaware that during the night she had apparently attached herself to Sloan like a sloth on a log. She supposes she should probably move her hand and slide away slowly, but she doesn't. She likes the way this feels, holding Sloan so close, and for a moment she lets herself imagine what it might be like to do this on purpose. She wonders what Sloan would think about it, how she might respond.

And that's why she doesn't move. She can tell the instant Sloan wakes up; she feels Sloan tense as the placement of Mackenzie's hand presents her with the same problem Mackenzie herself is still wrestling with. Mac has decided she wants to see how Sloan responds, wants to let her choose how this will play out. And even though she understands it, she can't help but feel disappointed when Sloan slides away.