A/N: When I die, on my gravestone, please write "I never expected it to get this long." Basically I saw a cute picture (unlike AO3. fanfiction doesn't let me link to said picture) and things rapidly got out of hand. And why yes, the title is pilfered from the Disney movie the same name, because I had no idea what to name this and it wasn't going to be Dog Days. Takes place four and a halfish years after A Time to Keep. (Tony Hart, for those you who don't stalk IMDB, is the morning anchor who aired Will and Mac's dirty laundry on the air who Charlie called to get a direct line into his ear.)
Thanks to Meg, per usual.
No matter how much he abjectly loathes Tony Hart, the morning show is doing a segment with shelter dogs and somehow that information got to Charlotte and he can't deny her anything. Which is how Will winds up carrying his four-year-old on set to ACN morning as they're wrapping up the eight o'clock hour, smirking when Charlotte waves to Maria Guerrera but steadfastly ignores Hart's attempts at a greeting.
"Daddy, puppies," Charlotte whispers in his ear, arms wrapped around his neck. Whispers a little too loudly, since she hasn't quite caught onto the concept of anything quieter than a very harsh stage whisper.
"I see them," he whispers back, waiting for the producer to clear the show.
He promised Mac before she left last night (to participate in a panel for a friend at the University of Georgia's J-School) that he wouldn't succumb to the progeny's particular brand of manipulation and buy her a dog. Had scoffed at Mac's complete lack of faith, to be honest. Charlotte's been fawning over puppies (and every dog is a puppy to her) for almost a year now, and they had discussed maybe, maybe this summer they'd finally get her a dog — a rescue of some kind, since the farm boy in Will is almost ideologically opposed to breeders and purebreds — but definitely not a puppy, since they don't have the time to go through housebreaking and chewing and the rest.
And definitely not today, he told Mac. Charlotte just wants to see the dogs. I'm not that much of a pushover.
Except it turns out he is exactly that much of a pushover.
It takes Will about twenty minutes to crack, and Charlotte doesn't even have to ask.
Hart attempts to win Charlotte's affection (or at least her attention) by trying to show her a wriggly puppy that Will thinks is mostly Golden Retriever, but her eye's already been caught by some pathetic looking mutt (and he means that in the nicest way possible) shrinking back from the squirming mass of dog that the humane society brought in to market their annual adoption drive. Will drifts along a few feet behind Charlotte, letting her talk animatedly to a morningside AP she apparently knows (his daughter knows a ridiculous amount of people, or rather, a ridiculous amount of people have thought it a good idea to be friendly with the face of ACN's kid) and is leading her across the set to the small pen they have set up for the dogs.
"What's that one's name?" she asks the AP, pointing a small chubby finger at the aforementioned mutt cowering in the back.
The AP bends down, putting herself on-level with Charlotte. "I don't think he has one. Whoever adopts him gets to choose. Do you wanna pet him?"
"It's a boy dog?"
Charlotte is very preoccupied with girl power. Which Will knows is a good thing, fiddling with a loose curl from her ponytail (he was in charge of her hair this morning by virtue of Mac being gone and… he knows Charlotte will be running to Aunt Maggie as soon as she sees her). It's a good thing Charlotte has a mother like Mac and women like Leona and Sloan and Maggie and Tess and Tamara and Kendra in her life.
Which is the long way of saying he hopes that Charlotte will become disinterested in the dog knowing that it's not a favored girl, thus saving him the possible future pain of prying her away from it.
The AP nods.
But all Charlotte does is shrug. "Boy doggies can wear bows too, I guess. Grampa Charlie wears lotsa bows, 'round his neck."
(He is so telling Charlie that one.
Besides, Will's pretty sure that Charlie's preference for bow ties was what sparked Charlotte's mild obsession with bows in the first place. The polka dots and frogs he has no explanation for, although there's a vague kind of Minnie Mouse aesthetic to how Mac dresses Charlotte these days.
Wait.)
"Mr. Skinner does wear a lot of bow ties," the AP demurs, smiling, before turning back to silently ask permission to let Charlotte into the pen. He waves her his consent with a casual flip of his hand.
Jim and Maggie have a dog, a German Shepherd they've had since it was eight weeks old. Named Thor, because Jim is secretly ten. So Charlotte knows how to approach dogs, but he's still wary of letting his four-year-old approach a strange one alone, so he lingers a few feet behind her.
The mutt (Black Lab, probably, and Will thinks Pointer and some other kind of hound) curls down and timidly inches towards Charlotte, smelling her out-stretched hand. Will half-expects Charlotte to try to roughhouse with the poor creature like she does with Thor (worst, period; name, period; ever, period) but instead, in a fair imitation of Mac, she bites her lip and stoops a little, gently running the flat of her palm over the side of the dog's neck.
"Hi puppy." Cupping her palm, she lets the dog sniff her hand again before easing down a little bit more and scratching behind his ears. "You're a nice doggie. It's loud in here. Are you scared?"
The mutt responds well to that, nosing Charlotte's palm, making her giggle.
"Nice doggie." The dog (still somewhat nervous) begins to flop down onto his side, which only delights Charlotte further. She drops to her knees, squealing. "Good puppy!"
"Be careful," he warns her. "You can't trust him like you do with Aunt Maggie and Uncle Jim's dog."
He's not going to willingly say the poor dog's name. He's, all things considered, a good dog. A bit dopey and prone to drooling, but Maggie brings him into the newsroom a couple of times a week and he's well behaved, leashed to one of their desks unless being taken for a walk or they let Charlotte play with him in his or Mac's office.
The AP's face brightens. "Thor? He's so friendly. And this little guy is too, he's just overwhelmed."
It would appear that the dog also gets around. Although Maggie does seem inordinately proud of the thing, dressing it — even though it's a German Shepherd — in weird canine fair isle sweaters and introducing it to everyone.
"He is little," Charlotte says, observationally. And then frowns. "Why is he little?"
Will refrains from commenting that most dogs would seem little compared to Thor, the hundred and twenty-five pound god of shedding and chewed telephone cords. This runty one is more skinny than small, long-limbed and slender and small of face, coming to about eye-level with Charlotte. But doesn't try to get in her face at all, instead poking his nose into her shoulder, the crook of her elbow.
The AP (he knows her, he should probably know her name, Mac probably does know her name) looks vaguely uncomfortable, and then shrugs. "I think they said he was a stray, and when they brought him in he was really, really sick."
"Poor puppy," Charlotte whimpers, bending to kiss the top of the dog's head.
Craning its head up, the dog licks under her chin back.
"Puppy!"
Which is when Tony Hart swaggers back over, and sends the AP on her way. "I don't think that one's a puppy anymore, Charlie. Just a bit scrawny."
"He was sick," Charlotte pouts, knitting her eyebrows together. "That's not very nice to say. You don't know what happened him. And he can be a puppy, if I want him to be."
Hart crouches down, shifting his face into an expression that is distinctly condescending. His tone better not be, because Will thinks he might just have someone from graphics screw up the next package if it is.
"Really? I don't think that's how it works."
(It is. Will's so going to fuck with his graphics.)
But Charlotte seems duly unimpressed, pulling a face that is distinctly one of Mac's, seventy percent hip and thirty percent unfazed, non-negotiable-yet-somehow-calm indignance. "Well, Daddy still calls me 'baby' and I'm a big girl."
Will is tempted to swing Charlotte up onto his hip and glare at him, but that would just make it look like he feels threatened. Which he doesn't. He just wants to punch Hart in the face for playing games with his kid.
Nobody fucks with Charlotte.
Something that Charlotte has also decided for herself.
She rolls her eyes, landing softly on both her knees and gently directing the dog to lie down. "When you take care of people you have terms of—terms of end—terms—names for them."
Not that Tony would know.
(Will used to make those sorts of comments to Charlotte, back when she couldn't do things like walk or speak or repeat things back to her mother.)
"So is this one going home with you, McAvoy?" Hart asks, smiling in a way that is notably slimy, backing off from his weird power play. (Apparently making the lead anchor's little kid feel like an idiot has the power to make insecure middle-aged men feel better about themselves. Except for when the little kid can hold her own.)
God, he wants to say yes, because Charlotte is clearly good with the dog and the dog is clearly good with Charlotte, and somehow his four-year-old is adept at reading this shaking little creature which is affecting him a little more than he'd like to admit. And also because she just made Tony Hart look like a jackass. And as a rule Will likes people who make Tony Hart look like a jackass, and he's already pretty crazy about Charlotte, paternal affection and everything.
Will more than half-expects Charlotte to turn around and look up at him pleadingly. But she doesn't.
"No, we're just looking at them," she explains in a tone of voice that clearly denotes that she is calm, cool, and that Tony is annoying her. "I can make friends."
Somehow the dog manages to curl himself (itself? himself) around Charlotte entirely, having deigned her as his protector. She bobbles a bit, almost knocking herself over (something which is also all Mac, no matter what she says about the pants incident) before scrubbing her hands over the dog's shiny black fur.
And… Mac was right.
It's too much.
Eh… fuck it.
Will shifts his gaze to the front of the pen, looking for one of the handlers from the humane society to see about the dog. And a leash. They definitely need a leash.
"He can come home with us," he tells her, finally stooping low enough to let the dog smell his hand.
"Really?" she shrieks. Almost shrieks. She manages to contain it a bit, and he's a little proud of her for that.
"You're gonna have to watch him the rest of the day."
She pauses thoughtfully. "I have school after naptime."
"Eh, you can play hooky," he says with a shrug. So what? She's four. She's gonna miss a few crafts and circle time. Will's pretty sure he can staff that out to interns. Actually he's pretty sure that he has staffed that out to interns before… and Don likes circle time, when he isn't the visage of urban masculinity with three month old Gabriel strapped to the Baby Bjorn on his chest.
Mac just used a sling-type carrier that kind of made her look like a warrior queen, or something. A good look for her, as far as Will was concerned. And he himself just carried Charlotte when she was Gabe's age. In his arms.
Because he had interns to be his arms, since his own were preoccupied with an infant.
(Mac likes to remind him that the interns aren't there to be their babysitters, to which he usually replies that when the interns walk into the newsroom for the first time, Charlotte usually knows more about broadcast journalism than they do. Besides, all twenty-year-olds could use a little humbling by trying to handle Charlotte in one of her meltdowns.
Boy did she inherit Mummy and Daddy's lungs.)
"Wait, really Daddy? I can have him?" Which is when she pulls out the eyes, after he's caved, so at least he can deny that it was the big hazel eyes to MacKenzie when she invariably strangles him for adopting their daughter a dog after promising her he wouldn't.
(The things he does for love.)
God, though, the eyes.
Will McAvoy thought he was a strong man, until his little girl learned how to make her mother's eyes even more potent. He's fairly certain it's the whole "little kids have wider set eyes in order to charm their parents into waking every two hours to feed them" thing, although he doubts the effect will go away once Charlotte gets older.
Because he's a sucker.
The dog leans forward to sniff his hand, lets him pat him on the head for a few seconds, and then goes back to trying hide behind Charlotte.
"Yes honey, you can have him."
And unlike most things he caves on letting Charlotte do, this one cannot be swept away with "don't tell Mum," since he's pretty sure Mac's going to notice that they acquired a dog, even if said dog seems pretty preoccupied with making itself as small as possible.
"Can I name him?" she asks, glomming onto the mutt, who looks surprisingly okay with it all. Then again, Charlotte's only ever really intimidating when she's throwing a tantrum (which she got from him, he'll concede) or yelling an intern for not knowing the difference between "breaking news" and "developing story," so the mutt probably knows he's not in her line of fire.
Will, distracted by the humane society employee who is apparently adept at smelling the very weak blood (of fathers who can't resist their daughters) in the water and has come over with paperwork and to ask for a donation, answers her in the affirmative. He fills out the forms and shells out a few hundred dollars, ignoring whatever the humane society person tells him is the suggested donation, and is handed a collar and a leash in return.
One of the other handlers makes recommendations on dog food based on (the thing needs a name) the mutt's size and reputable dog walkers in the city.
Charlotte chatters excitedly the entire elevator ride up to their floor, curling her fingers around the hand he's using to hold the leash, and halfway up she decides the dog's name is Jupiter.
Two gods of thunder.
"Jupiter?" he asks.
The head of the Roman pantheon is panting nervously and trying not to fall over while being transported into yet another new space. Almighty, indeed.
She nods. "Like Pluto."
The planet. Because Pluto is also (well, used to be) a planet. And because Charlotte is fucking obsessed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, she decided to… which makes more sense, since he and Mac haven't exactly put educating the baby on the Greco-Roman pantheons. Arithmetic seemed like a higher priority. And, like her mother, Charlotte has to subtract on her fingers.
Will concedes that there are worse names.
Like Spot. Or Fido. Lucky. Shadow. Buddy.
Or Thor. At least Jupiter is dignified… the name, not necessarily this dog in particular. Although Will knows from experience that he'll probably relax in a few days after they establish a routine and some ground rules.
He can sympathize.
Thankfully, the handler mentioned he was housebroken and not prone to chewing or slobbering on things, which puts him three steps ahead than a certain German Shepherd he could mention.
Jim, who is filling in for Mac until her flight gets in this afternoon, stops dead when he sees them.
"Mac is going to kill you."
It turns out that Jim had been forewarned by Mac about the fact that they were going down to see the dogs on the ACN morning set, and had been subjected to Mac's suspicions that Will could not withstand the temptation to buy Charlotte her long wanted-for dog.
Which ends up with Jim and somehow Don, Sloan, and Gabriel all in his office with him and Charlotte and… Jupiter. With Jim berating him, and Charlotte showing Gabriel the dog with Don and Sloan watching on. And Don throwing in the occasional barb.
At some point Jim just sighs, hands on his hips, and looks at the dog.
(When called upon, Jim does a very good unwitting impression of Mac. Also, since Charlotte was born and Jim was called upon to sub as his EP for most of six months, Will has learned that Jim has quite the internal dialogue that he apparently squashed down for the better part of four years.)
"It needs food. And dishes. And a dog bed. And some toys." He sighs louder. "And he needs to go the vet."
Will perks up at that, looking up from the USDA reports he's been using to distract himself from Jim's tirade. "He's up to date on all his shots. And he's been neutered."
"It was the eyes, wasn't it?"
Will rolls his. "No, Jupiter's eyes didn't seal the deal." He leans over his desk, looking down at where Charlotte is running her fingers through her dog's fur, skimming her chubby fingers over the soft hair covering his ears. Which, she discovers to her delight, makes him melt against the carpet. "Charlie, you couldn't have chosen a name we could shorten?"
"Nope," she chirps, helping Gabe "pet the pretty doggie."Sloan laughs into her son's hair, and then suggests "Juju" as a nickname, which Don shoots down as cruel.
Jim, electing to ignore them, scoffs. "I'm not talking about the dog's eyes."
Will watches Charlotte tug her hair out of its ponytail and take the bow clip — red, with polka dots, one of the basketful on her dresser — out of blonde locks, and attach it to Jupiter's collar. "One day, Jim, you will have a daughter, and I will remind you of this moment."
Jim snorts. "You do realize you've turned into one of those hapless sitcom dads who folds like a house of cards?"
"With Mac is the heavy, yes." Well, not always the heavy. They just have different things that they're more lenient about. Will leans back in his desk chair, sweeping his finger across the small assembly. "That's how it's worked with you brats for the past eight years."
Charlotte's head snaps up. "Daddy, that's not nice."
Don cranes his head up, too. "Yeah, Will, that's not nice."
"Sorry sweetheart." Stopping to glare briefly at Don, he leans forward again so that Charlotte, kneeling so that Sloan can fix her hair, is in his line of sight.
Don and Sloan leave to drop Gabe off at the AWM daycare a few minutes after that, and Jim takes Charlotte by the hand to go staff out priorities stories so they can go to the Petco at 860 Broadway before first pitch meeting. Maggie sweeps in from editing in the middle of it all, looking mildly befuddled but then ("Charlie! Did Daddy get you a puppy?") puts it together, shooting Will a look that is a direct assessment of how suicidal he is.
Will firmly vetoes taking the poor dog along into the foray of a pet store in lower Manhattan ('he's been traumatized enough today, I grew up on a farm, I can handle the dog for an hour") and presses his black Amex in Charlotte's very responsible hands (because Jim and Maggie know that if Charlotte loses it he won't go ballistic on her), and the three of them return ninety minutes later with a very complete assemblage of canine paraphernalia.
By then it's nearly eleven, so he supervises Charlotte unpacking bags of toys (he lets her unwrap three to keep in the newsroom) and setting out a water dish (he handles the actually filling of the dish) and Charlotte decides that under his table is the perfect place for a dog bed. Crawling under the table, she tries to show Jupiter that the dark red stuffed fleece pillowish thing is his, patting it and coaxing him into it with a voice that can really only be described as Mac's own "frantic mothering" voice, which is generally reserved for matchmaking her employees and Charlotte's doctor appointments.
Attempting to make himself as small as possible, Jupiter slowly slides into the bed, wriggling happily when Charlotte coos over him.
Will tries briefly to get Charlotte to take her nap in her usual spot on the futon in Mac's office, but the four-year-old is wired and to be fair, he did bring her into bed with him when she tried to wake him up shortly before six, and coerced an extra ninety minutes of sleep out of her. So instead he ropes Jenna into taking Charlotte and the dog for a walk, asking her to stick the dog in his office when they get back and to get Charlotte to work in one of her workbooks until the rundown meeting is over.
Charlotte protests that she's still not tired by 12:30, so they wind up eating lunch on the floor in his office. He tries to explain to her that dogs really only get fed twice a day, but that doesn't stop her from trying to get Jupiter to some of her french fries.
It started with thunder and lightning about half an hour ago, and now the dog has himself pressed to the interior wall, huddled and shaking in his bed. But, Will figures, he was stray. So who the hell knows what the dog's been through. He sets down his sandwich and tells Charlotte to get out from under the table.
"Why?"
He sighs, trying to figure out to explain anxiety to a preschooler. "I think he just wants to be left alone."
She has a follow-up question of course, on her hands and knees near the edge of the table. "But he's scared. I don't like being alone when I'm scared. Why does Jupiter?"
Shit.
"Well, um, Jupiter lived on the streets, right?" He grimaces a tiny bit, trying to find a balance between not sheltering her but still finding an explanation suitable for her age — thankfully, with her extended network of adopted aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, Charlotte's never wanted for relatives, and has never asked him about his own.
She nods, pulling herself to her feet and brushing off the knees of her leggings.
"Uhuh." She crosses the space between the table and where he's sitting on the floor with his back against the closet door in a few short steps. Kicking her shoes off, she twirls around gracelessly, landing hard on his thigh before climbing up him, wedging herself against his chest.
"Ow," he says, laughing, wrapping an arm around her.
She rolls her eyes. "Daddy, I'm not heavy." She steals a potato chip out of his bag, munching on it thoughtfully. "Are you sure Jupiter doesn't want to cuddle? Cuddling makes me feel better."
Sucking in a measured breath, he brushes Charlotte's bangs back out of her face. "He was probably alone, when he was a stray. He had to take care of himself, so if you try to right now, he might not like it. Sometimes people — dogs — don't know what's good for them."
"Why not?" she asks, tilting her head to the side. She leans in a little too close, and her face goes fuzzy, and he has to move her back a bit so his eyes don't cross.
Will shrugs, giving the tight ball of dark fur, pink nose, and shining eyes an askance gaze. "He doesn't trust us yet. Give him a few months."
She seems satisfied with that, nodding and tucking her head under his chin. "And then he'll let me 'tect him during storms?"
"Then he will trust you to take care of him, yes." And until then, Will makes a note to pick up a thunder shirt so that the mutt doesn't vibrate out of his skin all through the rest of September.
"Are you sure?" she still asks, worried in the guileless sort of way that only children can be.
The dogs on the farm weren't afraid of anything, except his father. Not thunder, not lightning, rain, cattle, horses, fire. Just Dad and the sound of clinking bottles. On more than one occasion did Will spend the night out in the kennel with the dogs instead of going inside to face his father. Because hell, dogs know when to hide too. More than one of the farm dogs that Will can remember from when he was a boy met their demise at the end of Dad's pitchfork, and the bastard would be so drunk when he did it that he'd be screaming about wolves once he sobered up in the morning.
"Yes, Charlotte Harper, I'm sure," he reassures her, watching the dog pant anxiously.
Propping her chin on his shoulder, conversationally she asks, "How do you know?"
Some days he'd give a limb to have a kid who wasn't raised around journalists, if only for how it'd give him some peace of mind. There are some things that she doesn't need to know, but Will won't lie to her, either.
Things that his daughter knows about his childhood: he grew up on a farm, in Nebraska, he has a brother and two sisters, they grew corn, and had dairy cows, there were chickens too, yes, but they didn't keep pigs, but they had horses, yes he knows how to ride one but it's been a very long time since he's wanted to, and that he left when he was sixteen.
Nothing about his father.
Hell, she's only met his siblings a few times. The only one of them she really has any sort of relationship is his youngest sister, who comes down from Boston every or month or so.
He kisses the side of her head. "I had dogs, when I was a kid. Some of them we took in off the street. Some just wandered onto the farm."
"Oh. Okay."
Thankfully, she doesn't ask him anything else. He ventures the topic of a nap again, but she just bursts into peals of laughter, rolling off of him. Looking at his watch, Will decides she gets another thirty minutes before he forces her into one. Mac's flight lands at Newark at three, and there's no way he's staring Mac down on both the dog and a napless child.
Which is when Maggie pokes her head into his office, expression apologetic, and tells him she and Jim need him to come look at something that's just come down the wire.
"Sorry." And then frowning, she looks at the very much awake Charlotte. "Shouldn't you be sleeping, little lady?"
Charlotte shakes her head in the violent sort of way little kids have. "Not tired."
Maggie laughs, hugging a stack of folders to her middle. "Not tired? I am. I could use a nap. Can I take your nap instead?"
"Aunt Maggie!"
Because he doesn't trust Charlotte to leave the dog alone, or the dog, he takes her hand and leads her out into the bullpen to color at Jim's desk, where Thor is currently moored by the nylon super-leash they have to use to contain the pony-sized mongrel.
The story that Maggie got him for spirals a bit out of control after that, and he checks in with Charlotte coloring on the back of production notes and wire reports every twenty minutes or so, eventually cajoling her into working on the spelling workbook they've been getting through when all hope becomes lost on the story being anything but the night's A block.
And then a little after 3:05 he goes to check on her at the intern's desk they've floated her and Thor to, except she's nowhere to be found. So he figures she's gone to check on the dog, even though he's taken her every time she's asked, and the mutt's been in the same position since lunch, cowering in the corner and jumping every time lightning crackles overhead. Sighing, he prepares to scold her while trudging over to his office, until he sees Maggie and Sloan giggling at his door.
"What?"
Maggie grabs his arm and centers him in front of the glass. "Look."
He doesn't see anything in his darkened office.
"What?"
Sloan grabs his chin and repositions his gaze lower.
Charlotte is under the table, in the dog bed, curled up with her arms around Jupiter like he was one of her stuffed animals on her bed at home. Asleep. And so is Jupiter, it seems, stretched out on his side with one of his front legs thrown over at Charlotte's waist, paw resting in the middle of her back.
"Looks like we have a new tactic for getting her to go down for her nap," Maggie says with a laugh, looking up at him.
Will sighs. "I told her to leave him alone."
"Looks like she's gonna take after Mac on that one," Sloan deadpans back.
Maggie shrugs. "They're fine. Leave 'em."
Jupiter, god of thunder and head of the Roman pantheon. Needed a preschooler wearing polka-dotted leggings and two different shades of purple (and a sock with a hole in it, he notices to his own chagrin) to calm the fuck down. Well, Will thinks, at least she's taking her nap. Late, but she'd have been unbearably cranky later on if she hadn't at all. And the dog looks okay with the situation, even though he's going to have to talk to Charlotte about how she needs to be careful otherwise she might freak the dog out and wind up getting hurt.
At some point of her conversation with Sloan, and Tess who's joined them, Maggie takes out her cell phone and creeps into the office to take a picture, leaving the door open behind her. Will moves, lingering there, until Maggie's Blackberry vibrates in her hand and she turns around and looks at Will with a look of mild terror.
"I was gone for less than a day — and what was it you promised me last night, you punk?" Mac, looking a little haggard from her long day and flight, but still exceptionally beautiful, strides into the bullpen with Jim at her side. "I told you he was going to cave. I said this was going to happen," she moans to Jim, before turning back on him. "Definitely not today, you said, I'm not that much of a pushover, you said!"
Sloan snorts. "You said you're not a pushover? With Charlie? In what world?"
Staring him down, Mac crosses her arms before once again walking towards him. "What kind of dog is it, anyway?"
Trying not to squirm, Will shrugs. "A mutt. Lab, hound. It's black, it's friendly, they get along well. He behaves."
"And where are they?" she asks, hands on her hips.
Stepping back from the doorway, he points into his office, and he can detect the exact moment Mac caves, a look of unmitigated and uncontrollable affection crossing her face as quickly as a thunderbolt.
"Oh… what's his name?" Mac asks, frowning in a way that's a smile that she's trying to tamp down.
"Jupiter."
Mac nods, biting her lip and folding her arms under her chest. "Like Pluto?"
"How did—"
Her face flashes into an expression of exasperated disbelief. "Will, how would she know the god? Besides, she watches that infernal show every morning. The theme song lives in my head."
And his, but she doesn't see him complaining. Besides, all she has to do is change the channel to Boomerang, or something. It's not like Charlotte doesn't like Scooby Doo.
Mac's face softens again, and unconsciously she leans towards him, pressing her fingers to her mouth. "Oh, but she's so cute with him."
"See! Hah — caved!" Triumphantly, he jabs his finger into her personal space.
Which she immediately grabs and twists, making him howl in pain, before rounding on him with her eyebrows lifted. "Well, we can't exactly take him back. We're not traumatizing our daughter just because you don't know how to tell her no!"
Will cuts off his indignant reply of I know how to tell her no when they hear a soft:
"Mummy?"
And realize how loud they were talking.
Blinking sleepily, Charlotte tries to sit up under the table but misjudges the height of the tabletop, knocking her head hard into the wood. Her face contorts into a childlike grimace of pain, eyes watering while she tries to pat down the spot on her skull that she hit, before falling back down to prop herself up on her back on her elbows.
Will and Mac both rush to her before she can prove that she can be just as loud as they are, Sloan, Maggie, and Tess vacating the immediate area.
(There are Rules for when Charlotte's in the newsroom, like Not Making a Fuss over when she hurts herself.)
Charlotte winds up clambering into Mac's lap on the floor, sniffling quietly with tears tracking down her rounded cheeks. "Did you see our new doggie, Mumma? I picked him out this morning, downstairs."
"I did," Mac says, rubbing circles into her back. "And Daddy told me you named him Jupiter?"
Charlotte nods, sticking her thumb in her mouth, holding her other hand out to Jupiter, who is edging towards Mac. He bumps her hand before licking her fingers.
"He's a good puppy, isn't he?" Mac asks.
"'Fraid of thunderstorms."
Mac meets his eyes over the top of Charlotte's head, and he knows they're both thinking of Charlotte streaming into their room in the middle of the night fleeing claps of thunder by diving between them, or oftentimes clawing them apart to get between them, in bed. Or launching herself into one of their laps, clinging to one of their legs.
"You're not too fond of them yourself, baby," Will says softly, laughing a little.
Charlotte huffs, hugging her arms around Mac's neck tighter. "I got Jupiter to take a nap with me, though. I petted his neck like you do to Daddy when he needs to calm down."
Desperately trying to hold back hysterical laughter, Mac buries her face in Charlotte's hair. When she regains her composure, she says, smirking at the pout that Will knows is plastered to his own face, "That was very clever."
Which is the point at which Charlotte decides she's fine, twisting in Mac's lap to face Jupiter, ruffling the fur on his front.
"Pushover," Mac mouths, tickling Charlotte's sides.
He rolls his eyes. "So what?"
Thanks for reading!