Title: Someday I'm Gonna Make Her Mine
Fandom: The Newsroom
Pairing: Will/MacKenzie
Rating: T
Summary: It turns out to be the hardest year of her life. These are the things that make it easier.
As it turns out, it is the longest and quickest seven months of her life. She's settling into a new, very difficult job, fundamentally different from the one she had just gotten used to. She's responsible for dayside and primetime and Washington and Will, and she's grown a human being inside of her body. She's been busy.
These are the things that make it easier.
This job is the greatest challenge she's ever had.
It's hard. Pruit hated her when he hired her, and he hated her even more when he realized he'd hired a pregnant woman. Still, in some ways the baby had bought her more time to convince him of her agenda, because he couldn't very well fire her.
There are so many things about Charlie's job that she never realized existed – affiliates meetings and board meetings and dealing with the spray tan factory that is ACN Morning. She's trying to help Jim manage her husband and help her husband manage Jim. She's learning about the actual connection between ratings and salaries. She's learning the difference between being Leona Lansing's prized possession and being Lucas Pruit's trophy.
And she loves it.
In retrospect, it had been easy to convince Will to do the news Don Quixote-style. He had been right there for the taking; he just needed a good push. Plus, he was in love with her – that much is clear now. Pruit is a whole other story. He has to be convinced. He has to be shown the value – creative, editorial, professorial, financial value – of Will, Sloan, Terry, and Elliot. He has to be shown the value of professional news.
MacKenzie figures it will be easier to teach this value to her infant daughter than to the shit-brained idiot who pays her (very generous, if she's honest) salary.
"Isn't that right, Charlotte? You understand that journalism exists to inform citizens of critical information needed in the voting booth, don't you?"
When the baby just stares up at her, Mac offers, "Well, Daddy and I will teach you. And you'll just take our word for it because that's what good daughters do."
Sweeping into the room, Will swears, "All daughters have to do to be good is come home at night and never smoke cigarettes. Never, ever smoke, Charlotte."
"You're home early," she says, powering off her tablet and making room for him on the couch. He gratefully slips onto the sofa and eases the baby out of her lap and into his own, before dropping a kiss onto his wife's lips.
"It's easier to sneak out when the only people I want to hang out with are at home." His happy smile is rewarded with one in return from the baby, who reaches a fist in his general direction and coos sweetly. "Hello, beautiful girl."
"How was your day?"
"It was good. I think the graphics guys are just about done hazing Jim. Your kid's starting to get the hang of it. How was yours?"
"I had three conference calls with Pruit's guys. I think I've moved them up from a 1 to a 3 on the grand scale of having any respect for me whatsoever."
Will high-fives her, only slightly ironically. She's moving the needle, slowly but surely, and he could not be more proud of her. In years past, he would have punished Jim for the simple reality of not being MacKenzie, but he's choosing to deal with this situation professionally instead.
"There's this guy on the board who invented one of the trendy social media networks – not Twitter, I can't remember the name of it – and I think he's starting to get it. I'm trying to make them feel important, like they're doing their civic duty by letting me do whatever I want."
"Worked on me, didn't it?"
"Very well. Look what I got out of it," she says, gesturing to the baby in his lap.
Yes, she's taking the mission to civilize to the people least likely to care. Yes, it matters that the mission is successful. Yes, she's doing this without Charlie, which is excruciating. But she finds herself looking forward to the battles ahead, in some ways. She rubs the back of Charlotte's tiny hand with one finger, watching her fall asleep in her dad's arms, and she feels ready to go back to work.
Leona sneaks meetings with her like they're going out of style.
ACN is keeping its name and offices for the time being; the only reason for a change would be Pruit's vanity, and although he has that in spades, the cost currently outweighs the benefit. The result is that Mrs. Lansing is still only a couple floors away, and she'll come sweeping into Mac's office whenever asked … especially if Charlotte McAvoy is present.
They'll sit in her office and Leona will give MacKenzie advice about managing the board, navigating Pruit, and sometimes, if there's wine involved, motherhood.
Today, the issue is wanting to switch up afternoon programming. Market Wrap-Up does just as well as Atlantis Hollywood; ACN is (blissfully, in Mac's opinion) not seen as a go-to source for entertainment news. And while she sees this reality as an excuse to cancel all red carpet coverage and find more Sloan Sabbiths to anchor shows on a variety of actually important topics, Pruit wants to become a go-to source for entertainment news.
"You have to choose your battles," Leona suggests. "What's wrong with showing pretty girls in pretty dresses to 175,000 people if it means you get to let Will off the hook?"
"Because I don't understand why it has to be a battle. Sloan's show gets the same ratings in the demo as its lead-in, which is three women and one man on a panel talking about Hollywood gossip. Why can't they talk about science or Congress or legal news?"
"Well, I know those guys, and you'd probably have to get a different four people."
"You know what I mean."
"Change happens incrementally. Charlie had been the president of ACN for fifteen years before he started pulling stunts like hiring you. He worked his way up to his Don Quixote shit. Are you in this for the long haul or not?"
"I am."
"So prioritize. Save your energy for the fights you want to win."
"Are you rich enough yet to buy back my network?"
"No. And even if I were, you wouldn't want me as a boss. You can handle Pruit, but trust me – you can't handle battling with me." Leona gives Mac a friendly wink, then asks, "Now let's go spring your baby out of daycare, shall we?"
She goes home every night to a home and a family and a life.
The 8:00 hour is her second-favorite time of day. Just before News Night starts, she picks up Charlotte from daycare and feeds her while they watch the show in her office. They're cuddled up on her couch, flipping through a little board book, watching Dad on television, and MacKenzie hopes she never has to give up this new tradition. It's usually a quiet hour, unless Will and Jim go completely off the rails, in which case she will show up in the control room with the baby on her hip, demanding a headset and pulling rank all over the place. (She tries not to do that, though. She trusts Jim implicitly, except for when she doesn't.)
Tonight, Charlotte is five months old. She's starting to look less like a generic mushy baby and more like Will. She smiles and laughs and babbles. She seems to know her own name, looking around when anyone calls for her – especially her father, who has already solidified himself as the fun parent. MacKenzie is who she wants for comfort, but no one can make her laugh like Will can.
(It doesn't escape Mac that, after years of depending on the approval of strangers, Will McAvoy's self-worth is now pretty wrapped up in the admiration of one small girl. And considering his approval rating with this demo is extremely high, Will has been pretty satisfied for the last few months.)
The show ends, and six minutes later Will is upstairs in jeans to collect them and head home.
"Good show," she tells him. "The ISIS reporting was very well put-together."
"That was Tamara's. You taught her well," he says, helping her up from the couch and kissing her. "I didn't see you at all today – were you busy?"
"Not too terribly. You just didn't start any fires today requiring my attention. You're learning," she teases.
"Well maybe I should start looking for trouble – I don't like not seeing you in the daylight hours."
"Please don't." He kisses her again, because really, nine hours is too long for them to spend apart.
"And you, Miss McAvoy," he says in greeting, "How are you doing today?" She smiles that sweet, gummy smile and reaches for him, so MacKenzie easily passes her off. "I missed you, too." He tucks her against his chest and breathes her in, bouncing just a little on his heels in a practiced, soothing way. "Are you ready to go?" he asks Mac.
"Yeah, just let me grab my bag."
"Are you ready to go home, little girl?"
Thirty minutes later, they're pulling into their driveway. The apartment had taken forever to renovate but no time to sell – and at a profit nonetheless. It wasn't a big enough margin to make up for sleeping on a mattress on a box spring on the floor for three months, but it was worth it to be able to bring their baby home here. Here is the house in Larchmont that Mac liked as-is, which was enough for Will to like it. He'd painted Charlotte's room lavender by himself one weekend, and that had been the extent of the work on the house.
MacKenzie has gotten very good at getting the baby out of her car seat, into the house, and tucked into her own bed without waking her.
You're like your father – you can sleep anywhere, she's told her baby, on more than one occasion.
She lowers Charlotte into her crib softly, then grabs the baby monitor and gets started on her first-favorite part of the day. Will is downstairs whipping up dinner for the two of them, two glasses of Malbec already poured and waiting. He is handsome and casual and just as in this as she is. They have a mortgage and a baby and a life, and it's something she wouldn't have let herself want not that long ago. Sometimes she worries she's about to wake up in 2010, miserable and alone, without Will and definitely without the apple-cheeked angel sleeping upstairs.
It's a weird feeling, having everything you ever wanted.
She slides up behind him and rests her hands on his hips, her cheek against his back. "What's for dinner?"
"Just pasta – I'm heating up the leftover sauce from last night. That OK?"
"Yes, of course. That sounds perfect."
He stirs the sauce for a minute more while she clings to him, swaying slightly. "What's on your mind?"
"I just never knew it was possible to be this tired and this happy at the same time. I keep thinking about how hard everything is, but then sometimes I think everything is just ridiculously easy."
"Yeah, once you've been shot at by the Taliban, Lucas Pruit doesn't seem so scary, I'd imagine."
He nudges her so he can grab bowls and serve the heated-up dinner, while she moves their wine glasses to the kitchen table.
"I don't mean that," she says. "I mean fighting with you. Coming home alone. Seeing you in magazines. You going to jail for fifty-two days ten minutes after our wedding. Everything else just seems so manageable when we've got this part right."
He sets her food in front of her and leans down to kiss her, quickly. "I promise, you'll never have to come home alone again."
"Then fuck the rest of it."
He sits down across from her and throws up his hands, jovially. "Just say the word – we can move upstate, you can teach high school debate, and I'll write books and take care of the kid." He's joking, but sometimes it doesn't seem like such a bad idea. "Unfortunately, I think we're onto something here."
"I think so, too."
"Plus I really don't want to move again, maybe ever."
"Me either."
"So maybe let's not fuck the rest of it. Let's just keep trying. I think we're really doing OK."
It's a sentiment Will wasn't sure he'd ever accomplish, really. For as much as he worried about being able to be a good father, he really is proud of the job he and MacKenzie are doing. Sure, Charlotte's still little, is still trying to get her little mouth to say Dada, but whatever his own father was lacking, Will knows he has in himself. And that makes everything so much easier. Maybe it's because of MacKenzie, who is shockingly calm with their daughter, a "natural," as so many people have called her. He follows her lead on the technical stuff – keeping Charlotte on a schedule, introducing solid foods, not accidentally killing her in the bathtub – and he really thinks they're going to be all right, the three of them.
"Yeah," she agrees. "Maybe we are."