Summary: He can pinpoint the exact moment that Don got the illusion that he's a bad guy and started trying to change his life into being a good guy. /Don centric
Author's Notes: I became very intrigued by Sloan's speech about Don thinking he's a bad guy. Obviously, if we get more into Don's life in season 2, this will be rebuttled, but for now, this is what I think. It's not the greatest story I've written, so bare with me.
.-.
"I don't know who told you that you're a bad guy, but somebody did. Somebody along the way. Somebody or something convinced you of it because you think you're a bad guy and you're just not. I'm socially inept but even I know that. So, because you're a bad guy, you try to do things you think a good guy would do…like committing to someone you like but maybe don't love. Sweet, smart, wholesome Midwestern Girl."
-Sloan Sabbith
.-.
He feels sick.
No really, he genuinely feels sick as Maggie's boxes pile in his room. Maggie's gone back to her apartment with Lisa and Jim to grab the remaining boxes, leaving Don to start unpacking them. But honestly? He's looking at these boxes and his stomach is doing flip flops and he can't even stand up properly. He's never committed like this before in his life. Moving in is a huge deal for Don. Maggie may be an open book who is trustworthy and ready for anything, but he isn't like that. It's a miracle that he's finally taken this step in the first place. This should be a crowning moment for him. He's taken that step in the right direction to show Maggie that he can commit to her and it could be really great for their relationship, which is rocky.
But there's still a huge part of him ready to run for the hills at any given moment. Moving in with a girlfriend is major and Don doesn't know if he's ready. But it's too late to change his mind now. He has to close his eyes as he takes a deep breath. Maggie's happy to move in with him. Her heart is practically glowing, as if signaling a plane to land and Lisa has been supportive in helping her move in. Even Jim has been helping this weekend with the packing and heavy lifting. Jim.
Thinking of Mackenzie's senior executive has Don gripping the couch tightly, his knuckles going white. Jim, the good guy, the one that can do no wrong. The one Maggie can't live without.
Don dismisses this last thought from his head as he forces himself to stand up. He opens his eyes and grabs the first box he sees, opening it. He's momentarily taken aback to find a picture album lying on the top. He's curious to say the least. He only hesitates for a moment before taking it out, flipping to the first page of the book. He sees a baby Maggie being held by her parents. They all look so happy. The perfect little family. He flips to the next page and the next, seeing a young Maggie and her siblings. Every picture she is has everyone smiling. He can picture Maggie at a young age just like she is now. Innocent, young and happy, with no wrong in her life. He can see her playing in a perfect yard with her family, laughing and smiling as her parents beam upon their precious daughter. Maggie truly is a great girl and she seems to have a great life. He stops at the end of the album, seeing an eighteen year old Maggie graduating from high school, her parents beaming beside her as she holds up her diploma. Her eyes sparkle along with her parents.
Don finds it a bit harder to breathe. He unbuttons the top of his shirt but the pain in his chest doesn't seem to relieve. He closes the book and puts it back before stumbling into the bathroom to splash water on his face. He can feel his airway getting less constricted as he steps into the bathroom. He glances up at the mirror, seeing a pale, red eyed man staring back at him. He hasn't realized that he started crying. Weird, he thinks as he runs the cold water, letting it flow through his fingers before he splashes it onto his face. He starts to feel a little bit better but the queasy feeling in his stomach doesn't go away. He leans against the wall in the bathroom, closing his eyes, but all he can see is a smiling eighteen year old Maggie and he starts feeling weird again.
This is the moment when he suddenly realizes that he wants Sloan here to comfort him, to tell him that it's ok and he can go through with all of this. He just needs somebody to tell him that they care about him and that he's doing the right thing. Something that he's always tried to thrive for.
"Commitments suck," he says aloud to himself and it's true. He's never learned to commit to anything. He quit Newsnight for his own show, only to now be working on both shows, it took him four months to get the courage to meet Maggie's parents and he doesn't even keep an agenda or organizer because he knows that he'll never write anything down in it. It's not that he doesn't want to commit; it's just that he doesn't know how. He's never known how.
He thinks back to what Sloan said to him a couple of weeks ago, when she basically broke him internally. Telling him that he's not a bad guy is something that Don's always wanted to hear. He's wanted somebody to understand him and tell him that he's a good guy. It's something he never got from his own parents.
He flashes back to a younger Maggie with her parents. A happy family. Even when Maggie talks about her parents, it's usually something positive. They come visit her every so often and they call every week. Don wishes that he could have that.
His dad's not a good guy. He's never been physically abusive or anything like that, but his heart hasn't been the purest of hearts. He hadn't been there for Don when he needed his father the most. He's an asshole. He always had been and he always will be in Don's eyes. No father that could willingly cheat, lie and steal in front of his own child could be redeemed
He thinks back to the first time he saw his dad cheat on his mom. He's only five years old and seeing his father's ugly naked ass has him practically traumatized for life. He remembers this blonde bimbo strutting out of the bedroom with his father wrapping a robe tightly around his body.
"Don't tell Mommy," is all he can say to Don. He had hoped that he was wrong. Years later, he hoped that he just made up the memory but he knows that he hadn't.
Don had years of evidence on his dad to show his mom so she could divorce his sorry ass. But he was still a kid; he didn't know any better. His dad would even bribe him with candy (and eventually money) to keep these affairs a secret.
"Donald, I don't want to hurt your mother. She's the best thing I have," his father told him when Don was just twelve.
"Then why do you cheat on her?" he asked cautiously. His father paused for a moment before clasping a hand on his shoulder.
"It's complicated, Donald. You're still too young to understand love. But without your mother, I would have nothing. These women I'm with only stay with me for a short time before going to find the next best thing because they have nobody else that loves them. But your mother? She's stayed with me through the thick and thin. Hurting her now would only be worse for both of us. Without each other in our lives, we would both have nothing. We're the best that we can get."
Those words still haunt Don to this day and for a while, he never understood them. He now knows. His father really would be alone without his mother. His repulsive personality and his cheating problem made it hard for his father to find love, which is why he married his childhood sweetheart. Don knows his father can't stop cheating, just like his mom can't stop gambling. And that's her reason for staying with his father.
Don only found out about his mom knowing about the affairs all along a few years ago, on his twenty fourth birthday.
"Why are you staying with dad, then? He's been cheating on you for twenty years, possibly even longer," he asked angrily. His mom sighed as she ran a hand through Don's hair comfortingly.
"Because, sweetheart, I am just as messed up as him. Without your father, I am nothing. We need each other or else we'd be totally alone," she answered gently.
His mother always struggled with gambling. She always tried to get help but she always relapsed, and usually quite quickly. Seeing his mom write a cheque for ten thousand dollars using his dad's chequebook had been painful to watch and now Don gets it. His dad's super rich with his business, so he can keep providing for his mom's addiction. In the meantime, she can pretend that he's not cheating on her and he'll still live a lie to save his business reputation. It's a win-win for both of them. Except for Don.
He can pinpoint the exact moment that Don got the illusion that he's a bad guy and started trying to change his life into being a good guy. It's a party shortly after graduating high school. It's a silly comment, but it does send him reeling for a while. It's just a sentence, but it stings him inside.
"You are just like your father." His aunt Carol doesn't know the real Donald Keefer Sr, but Don does. Even though he knows his aunt doesn't know about his true nature, he can't help but grab that tiny seed and plant it in his mind, leaving it there to grow. He never wanted to be like his father. Being a cheater who doesn't actually care about anyone but himself and his precious reputation? It's something that he's striving to get away from. But what if he's more like his father than he realized? What if he was like both of his parents, just living in the dark?
Don forces himself to stand up from the bathroom floor and looks at himself in the mirror. His image swims in front of him until he's looking into cold, hazel eyes and a twisted smile. He is everything that Don has not wanted to be and a man that he loathes. It doesn't even make sense, seeing as his father is about 400 miles away, but he can still see his father in himself and it's sickening.
"I am not my father," Don mutters angrily as he grips the edges of the sink. He can't be the monster that he's grown up to despise, yet he feels like there is a part of his parents in him. And at eighteen years old, that thought had clouded his entire entity and he began believing that he is his dad and his mom. He grew up around them, after all. And he has their genes so it had been quite clear that he took after their worst qualities too. And he couldn't let that happen.
He's worked hard to avoid being like his parents. He's worked hard at being the good guy that he wants to be. But what does a good guy do?
Work hard at his job? He does that already. He has his own show and he works at Newsnight 2.0 so he's always busy and that also allows him to work with his girlfriend. That is the best of both worlds, although he tries to separate his personal life from his professional.
Keep his girlfriend happy? Well, he tries. But Maggie is his first serious girlfriend. He avoided long term relationships in college because he wasn't ready, he wanted to focus on achieving a career and he just didn't know how a relationship worked. Sure, he's had girlfriends, but not lasting more than three months. Don knows that he's fucking up with Maggie and has been since the start of their relationship. Not committing had been a huge part of their break ups and it's taking Don this long to finally commit. So he hopes that this will strengthen their failing relationship.
Finally, doing good deeds for other and being a friend for people? Well, he's not sure if he's achieved the first one. He is, after all, the one who started yelling at the flight attendant over impatience and a will to deliver the news but he wants to believe that he's been a friend to people like Sloan.
Sloan. She's the one thing he knows is right in his life. She's been a terrific friend to him, but he's been a crappy one to her. He remembers meeting her years ago, way before he started working with Will. She had been so kind to him and he had been an asshole to her. Luckily, over the years, that has changed, but he hates looking back on their first meeting. He had been a very pretentious asshole. But look where they are now, best friends and colleagues. He feels comfortable around her and he's probably the only one to understand her social ineptness.
Don sighs as he walks out of the bathroom, feeling a little bit better. The nausea is still there, but the pain in his chest is gone. He sits on the couch, glancing at the clock. An hour and fifteen minutes. That's how long Maggie, Jim and Lisa have been gone, which means that they should be back any minute.
He's scared. He's man enough to admit that he's fucking terrified of moving in with Maggie. It's not because he doesn't care for her, but because he's afraid of it not working out. He doesn't want to be alone. Hearing those words from his father and mother, about them being alone without each other, has stuck with Don all these years. But it's true; if he didn't have Maggie, would he be alone? Most likely. He's never been good at relationships but Maggie is. She's stuck by him, even when he's been a pretentious asshole. She's the best that he can get, just like his parents.
Don closes his eyes, seeing his parents' image swarm in his mind. He's a Keefer; he's bound to be a screw up like them. He's bound to have a problem, a fatal flaw. It's better to just accept it now than continue pretending. He's not sure if Sloan's words have any truth. Maybe she said them just to make him feel better or maybe they are true. All he knows is that he has to fix his life somehow and this is the only way he knows how. This is the life he wants…no, this is the life he needs. The life he's lucky to have. And he cannot screw it up even more than it already is.
With that in mind, he opens his eyes when he hears the door open and sees his girlfriend saunter through, laughing and smiling. He swears he sees her smile falter just for a moment but he puts a smile on his own face. Time to face his future, he thinks as he finally stands up.
Ok, not my best oneshot but I did try to get into the mind of Don Keefer, despite the little we know about him. I promise my next oneshot will be much better.