Author's Notes: Well, I guess I'll just throw another angsty story out there, because we all seem to be in that frame of mind right now, and maybe, just maybe, I've given you the tiniest bit of fluff at the end of this one. By the way, I can't take credit for the final words Will utters to Mac. It's a line from some long forgotten poem that's been rattling around in my head for days now. I had to use it…it's just too apropos for our favorite pair. Thanks too, G, for graciously allowing me to use a line of yours. Much appreciated.
When the news broke, and let's face it, he always knew it would, he waited for the inevitable blow up…but it never came. He waited for Mackenzie to throw Page Six in his face and say, see, she's a tabloid reporter! How did you think this was going to end Will? Did you really think a relationship with that woman would stay under the radar?! But she simply stared at the photo of Nina Howard's hand clasped tightly in his as they exited a restaurant…and then she turned around and left the room. Not a word. Not a syllable. And that was almost worse than the yelling and screaming that he had been expecting.
Their fights had always been either violent and loud or silent and heartbreaking. He had so been hoping for violent and loud. Violent and loud usually ended in make-up sex. Silent and heartbreaking tended to end in Mackenzie going to Afghanistan. Where would she go this time, he wondered?
He wanted to say that he knew it would be alright in the end. He wanted to say that Nina Howard was just his last stab at getting back at her, at hurting her, before they would move forward. He wanted to say that he wasn't being a total jack-ass when he fucked a gossip columnist, but that would be a lie. And what was the point in any of this if he was going to keep lying to her and to himself?
"I'm sorry?" he said, uncertainty marring his tone, as he entered her office carefully.
"Was that a question or a response Will?" she asked tiredly, leaning back in her chair and looking down her nose at him, over her reading glasses. He suddenly felt like a child in school, being scolded by the librarian. Albeit the amazingly hot librarian, wearing a silk blouse, and a pencil skirt, and heels that had to have cost at least one month of a librarian's salary.
"It was whatever you want it to be" he told her.
"Don't patronize me" she responded harshly. He nodded.
"Don't make me feel any more guilty than I already do. I didn't cheat on you Mac. I feel like I did, but I didn't, so stop with the holier than thou attitude please." He felt like he should remind her that, no matter how low he had sunk by sleeping with Nina fucking Howard, he hadn't been cheating. It was sex between two single, consenting adults, and as such, was nothing to be ashamed of. Yeah, just keep telling yourself that buddy. If wishes were horses you'd have a fucking stampede of them running through your head right now.
"I never said you cheated on me Will. I just never thought you'd stoop to revenge sex with a tabloid trollop. What the hell happened to your mission to civilize?" she asked sarcastically, and if they weren't facing each other down across her desk, with the staff long gone and a bottle of whiskey open between them, he might have found her use of the term 'tabloid trollop' funny. Maybe. But not now, in the dead of night, with their relationship teetering on the brink of disaster.
"I took it to the bedroom?" he suggested, but the moment it was out of his mouth, he knew it was the wrong thing to say. Because, no matter how good they'd become over this past year and a half, no matter how much he liked to reassure Habib that she was his friend and most trusted partner, she was more than that. She was Mac. She was the woman he still loved, and she still loved him, and you didn't joke about shit like that with the woman you loved. It wasn't right.
She stood up and crossed the room and stared out the windows at Manhattan spread out below them. It should comfort her, she thought, the idea that she and Will were so small in the grand scheme of things. And maybe none of this mattered. Maybe Nina and Brian and Don Quixote and the mission to civilize didn't mean a God-damn thing in the face of the six billion other people that inhabited this planet.
"Why are you apologizing now? Why do you care anymore Will? You don't owe me an explanation. You don't owe me shit. Let's just call the last eighteen months a failed experiment and move on. Fire me. I dare you" she said in a frightening monotone.
"I can't do that" he said seriously, coming up behind her and placing his hands up on the windows, on either side of her body, caging her in.
"Why not?" she asked wearily.
"Because everyone has a weakness, Mackenzie, but I have two. Everything you say and everything you do" he whispered into her ear.
Her breath caught in her throat at that, and all she could do was nod her head in agreement. They would always be each other's weakness.
Nina Howard and Brian Brenner never stood a chance.