A/N: So, hi. It's been a long time since I've written fic for any fandom, let alone The Newsroom, which I've never written for. Yet for some reason I entered a fic exchange on tumblr and they said I could post my piece elsewhere, so here it is. Note: I wrote it in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Like, complete procrastination-so I apologize for the less refined sections.
Disclaimer: I am not Aaron Sorkin. I am not HBO.
Hate is a Strong Word
He hates her.
She's just taken the last stool at the bar and there's an hour wait and he's tired and Goddamnit he just wants a glass of scotch. Scratch that, he wants the whole bottle.
And there she is, swirling her glass of Shiraz as though she has all the time in the world.
Her stylish pinstriped suit jacket hangs lightly over the high back of the seat in question and her uncomfortable looking high heels are piled on the wooden floorboards beneath her.
It infuriates him, so he does what any self-serving man in his position would after the kind of day he's had.
"I will buy your drink," he grits out, "if you let me have this seat."
He didn't say he would be gentlemanly.
"Excuse me?" she says, twisting around in her stool. She sounds English. He hadn't expected that.
"Your drink," he clarifies, laying a large hand on the sticky counter top. "I will buy it. If you let me have this seat."
The corner of her lips moves up a fraction of an inch and her thin eyebrows knit together. She looks as though she's going to tell him off, but instead she shakes her brunette head disbelievingly. "Are you mad?" she asks plainly. "What kind of man walks into a hole-in-the-wall like this and tries to take a seat from a lady?"
Will doesn't have time for this conversation.
"Look, I'm not always this rude–" he starts to say. He tugs at the tie he didn't quite manage to get into a Windsor knot that morning and makes a noise of frustration.
Her snort of incredulity cuts him off. She takes another careful sip of her wine and awaits his next comment.
"I'm not," he defends. How is this woman getting under his skin? "Look, my mother really did raise me better than–"
But it turns out that he doesn't need to finish his sentence. The bronze-skinned couple to their right has just stood up to leave. Will quickly takes up residence before anyone else can hurry over.
"Never mind," he says, tugging the tie off all together and signaling for the bartender. He orders two scotches to start; he'll need several more before the night is up.
As the man hurries to fill his order, Will stops to survey the dingy hovel of a bar.
"Jesus Christ," he mutters under his breath. It's filled to the brim with chatting individuals, completely unaware of the catastrophe that's about to hit the nation. "I just needed a place to watch the ten-o'-clock."
"Yeah?" the familiar British voice asks from his left. She's quieter now, much more sympathetic.
"Yeah," replies Will, after a beat, struggling for a neutral tone.
The woman puts down her glass and lets her brown eyes survey him for a moment. Will feels unusually scrutinized. But not necessarily in a bad way.
"Me, too," she says finally.
He hates her.
They've only been seeing each other for a few weeks when an odd problem occurs to Will.
MacKenzie (actually, it's just Mac now) has a dual degree in political science and mass communications from the University of Cambridge. She's an American citizen who loves her country despite its flaws ("Thank you very much!" she laughs over coffee). She's up to date on what's going on in the world. She reads all the major newspapers, watches all of the networks worth watching, and she debates with an intensity he hasn't seen since…well, he doesn't really know when.
It takes him a while to pinpoint the problem, but before they sit down to dinner uptown one evening the thought strikes him like an acorn from a very obvious tree.
She's too perfect.
He has got to stop this.
Just as he's about to open his mouth to say God-knows-what, she mentions something that breaks his train of thought completely.
"Wait," he says, leaning across the white clothed table. "Are you telling me you're afraid of jellyfish, Miss McHale?"
She's as flawed as him.
He hates her.
He hates the way she walks around in those fitted skirts and ridiculous shoes that make her legs go on for miles. He hates her sheer business blouses and that damn pinstriped jacket she wears on cooler New York City days.
He hates that hair clip she always has on her to keep her locks from falling into her lovely face. He hates that she smiles at everyone, no matter how life is treating her on a given day.
Or maybe, more precisely, he hates the way that others get to share in all these things.
For Will, though, it's all about the times when he gets to peel away the skirt and discard the shoes. It's about the days where she's pressed against his cool sheets and the buttons on her blouse are coming undone one by one to reveal that striking expanse of skin.
It's about her hair tumbling over his dark pillows and her smile she's smiling just for him and her lips making that smile reach his own.
It's about the way she makes him feel.
And oh, does she make him feel.
He hates her.
She's dripping in the apartment doorway and wearing the same clothes she he saw her in yesterday. Her brown bangs cling to her forehead and her wet ensemble sticks to every inch of her skin. The droplets sliding down her cheeks mix with the ones that splashed down on her outside.
She's explained everything through the tears. Four months of lies, of secrets, of unfaithful decisions.
The brown eyes that once drew him in so deeply are now red-rimmed with regret. For the first time since he met MacKenzie, Will looks away in disgust.
"I'm sorry," she just keeps saying over and over. "It didn't mean anything. I love you."
But these words are empty to him. He should have known better than to fall for this woman. This brilliant, fiery deathtrap of a woman.
Betrayal and Will McAvoy go together like bourbon and sleeping pills. Both are deadly combinations.
Both are made for each other.
Will closes the door.
He hates her.
He watches the smile slide off her pale face as she stumbles to stop. She's in the newsroom.
His newsroom.
He should have been prepared for this. Charlie warned him. His agent warned him. And yet the sight of her standing there – not an illusion holding a sign, but a genuine MacKenzie McHale – brings back the pain as a freshly and as vividly as if she left yesterday.
"Hi, Will," she ventures. She stands stock-still. Those big brown eyes blink up at him. "It's good to see you."
Rather than respond, he fumes silently.
This isn't fair. She doesn't get to march back into his life with her "Hi, Will"s and act like everything's just dandy. She doesn't get to come play EP to his Anchor and reminisce about the old days. She doesn't get to smile at him with those beautiful lips of hers.
She tries desperately to fill the silence by introducing someone outside his line of sight. He doesn't care. He doesn't blink.
"Let's go in my office."
"Sure."
She doesn't get a say in his life. Not anymore. He's in charge. He's going to show her.
But first, he needs a cigarette.
He hates her.
"You forgot for a minute that you'd made a pledge to be mad at me for the rest of your life."
Every time he moves the gearshift into neutral, she goes and says something that revs his anger back into drive.
In an uncharacteristic instant, he carefully closes the glass door to her office and in a livid whisper, voices it. Will unleashes his bitter feelings on the woman who can never understand how severely she broke his heart.
He will never know how she snuck around for all those months, while continuing to converse with him every day. He will never know how she managed to crawl into bed with another man night after night, while kissing him on the cheek every morning.
He will never know whether she actually loved him at all.
"Sometimes," he says, breathing through his nose and striving to maintain what little's left of his control, "you're not as cute as you think you are."
He hates her.
He's out of breath because his heart's trying to sink down from his throat and his relief at finding her is overwhelming.
He pulls her aside in the studio and stumbles through the story about the kid who rips paper (or at least he thinks he does). If he's being honest, he's not sure whether anything he's saying is coming out coherently.
The expression on Mac's face tells him probably not.
Nevertheless, Will plows on and suddenly, the Tiffany box is coming out of his pocket and sliding between his sweaty palms. In a frantic move, he pinches the diamond between his shaking fingers and out slips a jumbled proposal.
"I– I said 'Will you marry me?' and before that, I said, 'I'm in love with you.'"
She lets him babble for several minutes and as the panic in his chest builds like the number of drone strikes Sloan has been reporting, Mac says yes.
And suddenly, Will can feel again.
He hates her.
He's on his third scotch when she comes striding into the crowded bar.
"You're late," he says – and she smiles, as though she has all the time in the world.
She's wearing that beaten up, old pinstriped suit jacket that she insists brings her good luck. (He insists it takes her sense of style back to early 2005.)
He's been sitting there for over an hour, but he says nothing about this as he tugs at the stool to his right-hand side.
"I'll buy you a drink if you take a seat."
"Excuse me?" she says, amused, as she shrugs out of her jacket and takes the proffered stool.
This is old hat for them; a tradition of sorts. It's a reminder that while some things change, others stay very much the same.
She tugs at the tie she helped him Windsor this morning to drop a kiss on his smiling lips. The diamond on her left hand sparkles brightly in the light from the overhanging television.
She still orders a glass of Shiraz. She still kicks off her high-heeled shoes. They still await the ten-o'-clock news.
"I forgot how much I hate this place," says Will, relaxing and resting his arm on the back of her high-backed stool.
"Me, too," says Mac, grinning ear-to-ear.
He hates her.
But that doesn't mean he's ever stopped loving her.
A/N: Reviews make the world go 'round.