A/N: By popular/Meg's demand, a fluffier version of Under the Waves. You don't need to have read the fic to understand what's going on.
For those of you who haven't read it, all you need to know is: Will didn't have his revelation in 2.09, Mac goes to report on the Syrian rebels, Will writes her emails after belatedly having his revelation and seeking therapy, and Mac ignores them. This fic picks up from there.
For those of you who did read UtW, consider this a thank you. It diverges at the beginning of UtW, a couple of weeks before the Ghouta attack. The title and lyrics at the top are taken from Radical Face's Welcome Home, which you should all listen to. (Also known as the 'Will POV song for UtW.)
Sleep don't visit, so I choke on sun, and the days blur into one
And the backs of my eyes hum with things I've never done
Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline
Like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass
Was never much, but we've made the most
Welcome home
"Welcome Home," Radical Face
Her flight lands a little after 5:30 in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. She goes through customs as a British citizen, letting her father's name get her waved through, before buying an outrageously priced iced latte and getting on the AirTrain to Newark Station and buying a ticket to New York Penn.
She only has her carry-on and her purse. By the time she had purchased her ticket from Stuttgart to Newark International Airport she knew that she wouldn't have the time to check luggage. She has a change of clothes—a short-sleeved white blouse, tan pencil skirt, brown flats, clothes she had to wear to meetings with CENTCOM officers—but is more focused on getting into Manhattan than getting out of her airplane clothes.
Ten months.
She's been gone for ten months, without a word to him.
He kept writing anyway.
(So had she, hadn't she?)
Her NJ transit train pulls into the bowels of New York Penn at a little past 6:45, and MacKenzie slings her duffel bag over her shoulder, blinking back sleep as she steps into a steamy August morning, quickly making her way up the steps off the platform and up into the station to buy a second cup of coffee. She hasn't slept in over twenty-four hours, and she's still got miles and hours to go until she intends to rest.
I love you. And I forgive you, not that you need my forgiveness anymore. I am in need of yours. I think I forgave you a long time ago, but refused to let myself see, and instead tried to even the scales only to tip them in your favor. Please, dear MacKenzie.
And I was so stupid. I've never stopped loving you, Mac. That's what the voicemail said. And it's true. I never stopped. I'm never going to stop.
227 emails. Will sent her 227 emails. Some, the first ones, semi-desperate messages entreating her to come home as he came to realization after realization.
I evened the scales and hurt you and you left and I can't blame you for that. I don't know if you're ever coming home. Charlie says that you two spoke about you taking up the position as the head of the DC bureau when you're done being overseas. You'd be good at that. But if you do come back to New York… I have the ring. And it's yours, if you want it. If you can forgive me. If you love me.
The rest are replies to the emails she had sent him from Atlanta, Peshawar, the Green Zone, Islamabad, Landstuhl, and lastly, Chicago, after he saw her in the audience and everything started again. The replies, as far as she can tell, he started sending in June, only a few months ago. Systematically working through a few a night, at times.
I feel like an idiot because of course you came back because you thought I saw you. And if I'd read any of your emails I'd have fucking known that you were back in the country. And if I'd let myself remember the kind of person you are I'd have realized you never would have taken the the job unless you thought I wanted you there.
I'm glad you stayed anyway.
Sitting down in a Starbucks, Mac sips the foam off of a caramel macchiato (she wanted something hot, but it's already nearing 80 degrees and 90% humidity, so there is no way in hell she's going outside until she's finished) and checks her email.
It happened mostly by accident.
Last night—well, no. The math is probably something more like fifteen hours ago, so it was nighttime in Germany but afternoon here… Fifteen hours ago she needed to reset her password for one of her business bank accounts which meant she needed to go into her old work email and… there they were. All 227 of them, among, well, thousands of other emails from Christian Louboutin and Saks Fifth Avenue and other reminders of her old life. She had tried to ignore them, continue to ignore Will, but…
Ten months is a long time. And she was ready. Maybe she had been for a while, Mac thinks, ripping off a piece of a croissant and dipping it in her latte before bringing it to her mouth. Will deserves to be forgiven. She's known that all along, but on Election Night she had been so enraged, and humiliated, her view of Will and their relationship splintering apart at the seams and she knows, now, how far gone she had been psychologically anyway. While she was making these huge decisions.
Charlie had barely convinced her to stay with ACN, if only because he knew (they all knew, Sloan and Jim told her) about the arguments she and Will had had that night and that the only person who could have convinced her to stay was Will himself.
I didn't tell you that night, or when you came into my office on Friday because I couldn't, even then, give you the upperhand on what I was feeling. Because I have to have the upper hand in everything, so I'm not vulnerable, so I can't get hurt… and well, that's what had me letting you walk out of my life again. That's what had you staying with Brian for so long. It's not a strength, and I know that, because now I've lost you. And I have no right to ask you to come back. I can only hope that you do.
MacKenzie realizes, not for the first time today, that she has no idea what she's going to say to him. He's written her thousands of words. But, she supposes, tracing her finger around the rim of her cup, she has too. Nearly seven years down the line, and she and Will are finally evenly matched.
She looks down at her BlackBerry.
Make that 228 emails.
She opens up the last one, sent while she was on the plane. He's replied to the emails largely at random, answering large swaths before moving to another. Picking and choosing. Based upon probably his own mental state, she thinks, skimming this one, a reply to one of her emails she'd written her hospital bed in Landstuhl. From what she thinks was probably her lowest low.
Reading his reply, she worries that where he is right now, too.
I'm running out of emails to reply to. I don't know what I'm going to do when they're done. Maybe beg Sloan to send you messages. But... please be safe. Please be careful, MacKenzie. I'm half out of my mind because of half the shit that comes down the wire out of Syria.
You look good, in the footage we get. You look healthier.
I love you. I'm waiting. For whenever you come home.
Take your time. God knows I did.
She considers calling him. But she thinks he's probably not even awake yet, and even then, what would she say? Hi, I came back. I love you too. Mac supposes she could go to his apartment. But she doesn't know his doorman. And it's not like she doesn't want to see him. She does, rather desperately. Because she loves him and for the first time in years she has hope, and she has the thousands of words of proof that they can work this out between them, she can work out Genoa in her head, but she's been awake for a day and she feels grimy and worn-out and she needs to go. She needs to walk out of this station, get a taxi, and go to…
It hits her.
She doesn't know how to act in a world where Will loving her isn't a question. Where Will wanting to be with her isn't a question. Where Will trusting her isn't a question. It's been so long, and…
She needs to catch a cab to the AWM building.
Right now.
His apartment is too personal and her own apartment is rented out for another four months and Jim is probably dead asleep so she can't crash on his couch, so she'll go to the AWM building and wait in Will's office. Sloan wrote that he's in earlier and earlier these days so she'll catch him once he comes in, and then…
Okay she'll figure that part out once she gets there.
Downing the rest of her latte, she picks up her bag again and fuck it, it's not that far from Madison Square Garden, she can walk to the AWM building. Caffeine crashing through her veins, she makes the six block walk quickly, fumbling her ACN employee badge and getting through security, stepping into the elevator and hitting the familiar floor button.
It's early yet, and she's wondering if anyone fromthe News Night staff is in yet.
She has to take a steadying breath, clenching her fingers into the strap of her bag, before stepping back into her life, into the newsroom floor again.
Another breath, when it's empty and quiet, the only sounds being the whir of cold air passing through the overhead vents and the noise of one sole intern keeping track of the wires for the overnight book. Almost nothing has changed. Jim's name is on her old office, and she trails her fingers over JAMES HARPER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER before drifting to Will's office. It's better organized than when she left.
But ultimately the same as the night she left.
The first email came three weeks later. The first admission that he'd kept the ring. A terse a message, stripped to the salient details. He hadn't been ready to admit he'd forgiven her by that point, just wanted her to come back.
I kept the ring. I didn't return it. Because I'm in love with you. And I know why I told you that I returned it. I decided I'd rather hurt you as much as you hurt me and you deserved better than that. Even if I didn't love you, you deserved so much better than that. Please just come back. We can fix this. Let me try.
The ring is in this office.
Her ring, she knows, now. It's in the drawer he kept his hand on the night she left, too afraid to open it and pull the trigger. And that's fine. She loves Will, for all his flaws and faults as much as she loves him for everything else. She's fine with it.
Dropping her bag on the ground, she half considers putting on the clothes she packed. But it's almost 7:45 and she thinks he'll be in soon, and he's seen her in substantially less than calf-length leggings and a tank, an ACN zip-up sliding off her shoulders. Her hair is a mess, but she thinks he's always liked it that way. So instead she takes her BlackBerry out of the pocket of her hoodie and taps out a quick message to Jim, letting him know that she's back in the country, possibly to stay.
(Well, Mac knows she might need to fly back over to tie up some loose ends but their positions were coming up on a possible termination due to the escalation of violence in Syria. They had been in Stuttgart discussing logistics with the USMC about their continued presence, contingencies, and the US response. And now, well, Mac thinks they should come home. She had been so dead set on throwing herself into the most dangerous situation possible, but now…)
She sees him before he sees her.
Will's got his nose buried in a paper and is trying to gulp down a cup of coffee when he rounds the corner from the elevators into the bullpen. And… should she…
"Hi, Will."
(She really needs to get better at these sorts of things.)
"MacKenzie?" he asks, softly, like he might be hallucinating.
She laughs a bit. No, she's not holding up signs in the audience this time. She's decided to be a little more forthright. Sliding her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt, she shrugs, scuffing at the carpet with her shoe before looking up at him again. "I decided it was time to come home."
The look that slowly asserts itself across his features is one distinctly of both confusion and hope. He takes a tentative step into his office, setting the newspaper and coffee down onto his desk, dropping his briefcase onto the floor. For a moment it looks like he's considering saying something, but then reconsiders.
Slowly, Mac realizes he's speechless.
Well, that's new.
"W-why?" he asks, eventually, hopeful still not quite able to conjure a smile, hands clenching and unclenching at his side, swinging forward like he wants to touch her, but doesn't trust that she'd want him to do that.
Oh, Billy.
And before she can process what she's done (that seems to be the theme of the day), she's crossed the room to him, framed his face with her hands, and has her lips on his.
It takes him a few seconds to respond, at first jolting in surprise even though his eyes followed her into his personal space, and then slowly one of his arms wraps around her waist, his other hand sliding into her hair. She loses herself against him easily, even tired as she is. (But she's not really tired, not anymore. Wired and a bit strung-out, yes, but wholly awake.) Her hands trail down to curve the slope of his broad shoulders, fingers fanning out along his back, clenching in his shirt when he slides his tongue along her lower lip.
The sound of a news alert going off in the background eventually incites them to pull apart, the sound of labored breathing filling his office.
Leaning up onto her tiptoes, she presses her forehead against his, whispering intently, "I—I started reading your emails, about, um… seventeen hours ago. I guess I was ready to forgive you. And to come home. Because I love you too."
He seems intent on getting as much of her under his hands as possible, tracing her waist and hips and back, her neck, shoulders, arms, his face shifting into a slightly more stunned expression.
"I know—I know you were doubting that, which is—but I mean, you can't have thought I stuck around for so long for some other reason. I was waiting for you, you idiot." One of her hands lifts to trace his jawline with her thumb. "And you read my emails, so you know about—and seriously, you kept the ring?"
Will opens his mouth briefly, a consideration of saying something, but she keeps talking, missing the small smile beginning to pull at the corners of his mouth, the look of exhilarated wonder on his face.
"I'm sorry for running away, I should have stayed and—" Mac takes a breath, blinking, looking down again while sliding her hand into the hair at the nape of his neck. "Fought, I guess, and I know we both have a lot to apologize for and to talk through but I haven't slept in twenty-six hours so if we could table that for a little bit I think it'd be for the best, but… I love you. Always have. Probably always will, at this po—"
And then he's kissing her again, his hands sweeping under her sweatshirt and tightening in her tank top, fingers digging into her waist. She laughs into him when he lifts her against him, and she wraps her arms around his neck when he spins her, pressing frantically happy kisses at the corners of her mouth.
"So, um, I'm going to be back in town for a while," she murmurs once he sets her down.
He takes that as an invitation to start kissing her again, bunching the hem of her shirt in his hands so he can sweep one of his hands along her lower back. It's slower, this time, more calculated, like he's decided to drive all thought from her mind.
"How long is a while?" Will asks her eventually, sounding happier than she's heard him in years.
(Since Genoa. Since they got the fast nationals on the Genoa broadcast. But this is different, she knows. This isn't going to slip out from under them. It's going to take work, but she's not letting this go.)
"Forever. If you'd like," she answers. Then, biting her lip, decides that she's probably going to have to continue making the first move. And remembers every email about the goddamn ring, and how she never wants to leave again. "Will… I—if you asked me, I wouldn't say no."
The look on his face (confusion, hope, something a little like wonder) in response to that is entirely too endearing, making her smile widely.
"MacKenzie. Are you saying—"
"I'm saying it's been nine years and I know we have a lot of shit to work out, between us and individually," she pauses, trying to get the small tremor out of her voice, sliding her hands up to rest on his shoulders. "But I know you have the ring, and if you asked me right now, I wouldn't say no."
He looks like he almost doesn't dare to be this happy (and she'll be the first to admit, this is one ridiculously quick turnaround on a relationship, so she doesn't blame him), and then backs her up against his desk and lifts her up onto it, kissing her once more (softly, impossibly so) before fishing his keys out of his briefcase and walking around to the other side of his desk.
She can hear the top drawer his desk opening, objects rattling around, before he comes to stand between her legs.
Despite herself, she feels her heart begin to pound when he opens the Tiffany blue box, shaking out the black velvet one within. She knows what the ring looks like. Remembers it clearly, with a sort of desperate grief that later dissipated to a simmering resentment, and now shimmers with unrestrained hope.
Once he slides the ring out from the box, he takes her left hand.
Mac realizes, of course, that they're both smiling stupidly at each other, and the ring, and their hands.
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes."
Slowly, he slides the ring (honestly, it's a tad ridiculous, the diamond is almost as large as her thumbnail and it's going to take her awhile to get used to the weight of it on her finger, because it's heavy, but she loves it) onto her finger, down to her knuckle, eyes lingering on the sight of it finally, finally, where it's supposed to be.
Until she pulls him closer, wrapping her legs around his hips, and Will remembers that there's supposed to be kissing after successful marriage proposals, and sets to the task.
Well, they both do.
A little too enthusiastically, loosing their hands on each other, and his desk is the perfect height for her to lock their hips together, completely forgetting where they are (his office, it's past 8 AM, people are going to start filtering in to get to work, even if they've never required the staff to come in before 9:30), and it takes Mac longer than it should to remember that his hands probably shouldn't be under her shirt and she definitely shouldn't be considering his belt buckle as an obstacle in her path.
"What time is it?" she asks him, pushing back the cuff of her sweatshirt to look at her watch, frowning when she realizes that she's forgotten to change it back to Eastern Standard Time.
Oh God, she thinks. This really is happening.
She's actually done it.
They're fixing it.
He laughs when she grabs one of his wrists (he leans over enough to see that her watch is still set to Central Europe Time) to look at his watch.
"8:17," she declares triumphantly, before giving him his hand back.
He presses his lips to hers one last time, brushing his knuckles along her thighs. "I technically don't have to be in until eleven."
Gliding his hands up and down her legs, the curve of her hips, the dip at her waist, he realizes he can't stop touching her. He thinks Mac doesn't mind, smiling as she is, draping her arms over his shoulders and letting him do as he'd like. He can't quite get rid of the shaky feeling he's had since he saw her, though, and something like adrenaline pumping through his veins.
"Are you propositioning me, Billy?" she teases.
He snorts, squeezing his fingers into her hips, and she tightens her legs around him, giggling. He wants to be irascible, but smiles anyway. He can't be angry at her. Not now. And to be honest, he was done being angry at her months ago. Now he just loves her. So instead he grumbles through a tempered grin. "You can't possibly say that's moving too fast, since you asked me to ask you to marry—wait, I—"
"You lost the pronoun there, didn't you?"
"Ah, yes."
It comes to him that he could have just made fun of her for how similar 'proposition' is to 'proposal' and won the round. But again, he can't really be fucked to care, not when MacKenzie is here and doesn't hate him and is here in the same place where he's worried they ended it ten months ago, as if there was an 'it' to end.
She's here.
"It's early," he offers by way of explanation, because he'd been up until 4 AM and made himself get up at 7 anyway because it's Friday, so he knows he can just go home and crash, although, he thinks, rather hopefully, those plans may be changing.
"That it is," she comments, before her expression turns delightedly conspiratorial, and she leans into him to tease her mouth along his jaw, ending up with her lips next to his ear. "So, we should sneak out before anyone else gets here."
"To do what?" He decides to be obtuse, sliding his thumbs along her ribs until she squirms.
She snorts, batting his hands down. "I don't know, what do people usually do after getting engaged?"
He pretends to consider it. "I have a bed, a couple of blocks from here."
"Would that bed be in your apartment?" she asks, doe-eyed, and a little breathless, but more a facsimile of sensuality than the actual thing. MacKenzie's never been one for overt gestures of attraction, more likely just haul him into bed in her attempts to override her clumsiness in love.
"Yes."
(Well, it's always worked.)
He distantly realizes this unfamiliar feeling he's been unable to name since he first saw her in his office twenty-five minutes ago is euphoria.
"Put me in your bed, Will," she says, the doe-eyed look going away, replaced by what he thinks might be tired exhilaration. It begins to sink in, then, with the delirium fading while the happiness remains. This is real. She's not going to disappear. She's as tired and weary as he is, but just as pleased to see him. And then she smirks. "And we'll see what we can get done before the 11 o'clock rundown."
It takes a moment, but then he has her by the hand (she protests only to be able to grab her luggage, which, okay, fair) and is leading her, until she's moving as quickly as he is, to the elevators. They're both laughing, mostly at themselves, Will thinks, while they wait for one of the doors to open.
Which, of course, coincides with Maggie stepping out of the elevator and seeing Mac pressed into his side with her left hand resting on his chest, his arms around Mac's waist, and the two of them wrapped up in each other.
It takes Maggie approximately three seconds to gauge the situation, cheek muscles tensing while she tries to tamp down a smile.
"Hello." Maggie's eyes definitely flicker back and forth between their faces and the ring while she steps out of the elevator, pushing a lock of strawberry blonde hair behind an ear. "Good to see you, Mac," she says, giving up on not smirking. "When did you get back?"
"This morning," Mac answers congenially, still shaking with laughter.
Maggie gives him a look that is distinctly about how he's probably going to have a lot of personal information extracted from him in the near future. Meaning that her eyebrows are raised dramatically and she's nodding along with pursed lips, downplaying everything for the time being.
"I'll be back before the 11 o'clock rundown," he assures her, trying to not feel embarrassed. He's a grown man, okay? He can pretend that Maggie wasn't at his apartment last month to berate him for falling asleep on his terrace before a thunderstorm and catching a cold because he was drunk enough to sleep through it. And okay, her running into them is something he should have predicted since he knows that Maggie comes in early on Fridays to compensate for coming in late on Tuesdays for therapy. But anyway.
She looks far too delighted to have an upper hand on what is going to be very provocative newsroom gossip.
Will, of course, realizes he can do absolutely nothing about that.
Maggie grins shamelessly at the both of them, walking past with her hands in front of her in a gesture of harmlessness.
"Take uh… take your time," she says, backing away towards the bullpen, snickering. "Um… yeah."
Mac bursts into giggles, pressing her face into his shoulder the minute the elevator doors close on them.
He can't remember the last time he's seen her smile or laugh this much, so he lets his worries about Maggie go. He trusts Maggie, he knows that she's circumspect. And honestly if she blows the entirely thing immediately he won't care because it's good news, he wants everyone to know… but he also knows his former assistant well enough that she'll probably want to hold it over everyone's heads first, so he has time.
"At least it wasn't Sloan," Mac comments. "She wouldn't have let us escape."
"No."
Her fingers fan out over his chest, and she looks up at him; he's forgotten how big the size differential between the two of them is, especially when she's not in sky high Christian Louboutins.
"She's... going to freak out," she muses, tapping her fingers on his chest.
That's putting it lightly Sloan. He'll have to warn her that Sloan knows pretty much… everything already, up until this morning. Mac might know that, though, since she and Sloan email. Or not… since Mac didn't read his emails until last night.
He needs to re-evaluate his timeline.
Later.
Even still. "I'll make sure she does it at you."
"Is that a challenge?"
"Nope."
They manage to get out of the AWM building unnoticed, and ten months abroad hasn't lessened Mac's preternatural ability to attract a taxi in a ridiculously short amount of time, which he likes to think is less about her legs and more about her ability to shout.
The clock is ticking, he hasn't slept very well, and he is invested in not fucking up their first time in an embarrassingly long time.
'Embarrassing' mostly because he could have gotten this done ten months ago, years ago, if he hadn't been colossal idiot. But he looks down to Mac burrowing in under his arm decides to not dwell on that anymore, if she's not. So many of their problems are rooted in their inabilities to let go of the past.
He flinches when her hand positions itself on his thigh, and creeps higher. His retaliation comes in the form of brushing the bottom of her shirt up and letting his fingers skim under the waistband of her leggings, toying with the side of what he's figuring is a thong.
They're back to his place before 8:45.
If his doorman is confused by his sudden reappearance, with a woman nonetheless, he doesn't let it show.
Another set of elevator doors close on them and he has Mac backed up against the rail on the wall, putting himself between her and where he knows the security cameras are. Their laughter has died entirely, supplanted by seven years worth of wanting, and she gasps when he slides his hand under the front of her leggings, mouth parting when he slips his fingers under her panties as well. Her cheeks color the same way they do in his memories when he circles her clit, even if her skin is darker than he's ever seen it after ten months in the sun.
God, she's wet.
The sounds she makes, little self-contained pants that indicate a willingness to race ahead, are the same too. Her fingers digging into the small of his back are the same too, and he remembers that she prefers a gentle, precise touch in the beginning before hard, broad strokes at the end.
When one of her hands curls into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling his face towards hers, he steals her whimpers out of her mouth, staying firm and insistent until her hips rock towards him, until her knees lock to keep from giving out.
(He's not entirely certain why he's being this bold, except that it seems the morning for it, and because he wants to get her off once before getting her into his bed because he doesn't entirely trust himself to be able to hold back.)
She gets progressively louder and louder (and Will can tell she's trying to quiet herself, biting down on his bottom lip, squeezing her eyes shut) as they near his floor, and he's trying to time this just right.
She's writhing by the time the doors open onto his apartment, and she's light enough (she's lost weight, he thinks, from her time in warzone, is leaner and stronger than when she left, and Will finds that his brain is automatically cataloguing all the new and different things, filing away this form of MacKenzie so he can blunt his edges to fit her new ones in whatever ways she needs) that he can pick her up and support her with one hand and stagger the few feet to the table in the entryway and place her on top of it, getting her pants and underwear down to her knees and feeling his blood pressure soar when she moans unabashedly in the next moment when he's two fingers deep in her, rolling his thumb over the bundle of nerves at the apex of her folds.
(Her duffel bag hits the floor somewhere between the door and the table. Neither of them really care.)
She comes less than a minute later, moaning breathlessly into his mouth.
And then he's fumbling to get her shoes—some sort of practical canvas slip-on kind that he's never imagined she'd wear, but he's never known Mac as an embed, and her emails from that era rarely mentioned footwear, for the obvious reasons, just the blisters she'd get—off her feet, throwing them behind him and getting her naked below the waist while she's coming back to her senses.
Her legs come around his waist and he lifts her against him, carrying her to his bedroom.
"So, um, it's been a while," she says, almost conversationally, sliding her sweatshirt off her shoulders and letting it hit the floor. "Now I know you had your 'shooting fish in a barrel' phase—"
"Three years ago!" he protests, internally squirming at revisiting that part of his life. Not one of his prouder moments… or months, he thinks.
"I'm over it," she says, rolling her eyes and wrapping one arm around his neck, using her free hand to start unbuttoning his shirt. "And then she-who-shall-not-be-named—"
(He knows, now, that the senior staff had been in quiet rebellion during most of his relationship with Nina Howard, who, as Maggie has informed him, has an array of colorful nicknames as given to her by the staff.
Not one of his prouder moments, either.
And apparently the control room guys still refer to her as 'Mrs. MacBeth' out of deference to Mac.)
"Fourteen months ago—"
She cuts him off again.
"—again, over it, but point being it's been a while for me."
Whereas Mac… well, after Wade, he never heard anything again about a boyfriend. And nothing really about dates, except the occasional blind one Sloan would try to set her up on.
So does that mean…
(He's an idiot. That's what it means.)
"How long is 'a while?'"
Her cheeks color slightly as she plucks apart the halves of his shirt. "February 2011."
"Wait, there was no one after Wade?"
She waited for him.
"What I am trying to say in addition to the fact that there's no privacy while being embedded is that I'm a bit out of practice—"
It had taken a surprisingly short amount of time to get her off in the entryway. Not that he minds, of course, but if it's been a long time for her he should probably go slowly.
He stops at the edge of the bed. "So that's why it was so easy to—"
"Yeah, so stop looking so smug, Billy," she retorts, biting the newly exposed skin from under his collar.
He pretends to be offended, dropping her unceremoniously on top of his bed, tossing her a bit so she lands closer to the center. MacKenzie is, of course, entirely unfazed.
"Oh don't look at me like that," she says, snorting, sitting back up. "I know your fragile ego has never extended to the bedroom."
"It comes with the JD."
"The fragile ego or the sexual prowess?"
He watches appreciatively as she brings her tank top up over her head and tosses it aside before bringing her hands to the front clasp of her bra.
"Objection, counsel is badgering the witness."
"You're a witness?" she asks, tilting her head, threatening to undo the clasp. "Does that mean you don't want to touch, or—"
She bites her lip, letting her hands fall back to her side, when he kicks off his shoes and gets onto the bed, crawling on top of her. She's infuriating, but God he's missed her. His MacKenzie. HIs MacKenzie in more than just in his head now, with his ring on her finger.
She's going to be his wife.
Probably not anytime soon, but now that he knows that there's a finish line, not just months of no contact stretching out in front of him, dwindling hope that she'd ever come back, or even talk to him again, that they could even pass each other on the street as strangers… not that Will thinks he could ever be indifferent to her.
But still, she hasn't slept, and he doesn't want to dump this on her right now.
"You think I have sexual prowess?"
Snorting, she tries to put his hands on her breasts. "Either that, or absence makes the memories grow fonder and it's been such a long time."
He pouts, tracing the lace trim on her cream-colored satin bra.
"Speaking of 'a long time,' shouldn't we, you know, make this special or something—"
Her expression shifts then, from mocking to open and plain.
"Clocks running down, Billy. You can be sweet to me after if we have the time." Her lips quirk into a small smile, and he undoes the fastener, sliding the straps of her bra down her arms, pushing the cups aside. "Besides," she continues, sliding a hand back into his hair when he ducks his head to trace the curve of one breast with his tongue. "All your love letters are fresh in my mind. I think you're in the clear for a couple of years, or whatever the metric is."
Even still.
Candles, and Italian from the place on 48th and Broadway that she's always loved. The memory of being tucked into a corner booth with her, kissing a smidge of tiramisu off the corner of her mouth, takes up residence in the front of his brain for a brief moment before he's distracted again by her skin, dry and cracked in places from months spent trailing after rebels in the desert. He makes a note to get her into the bath later, sure that he has lotion in his bathroom somewhere that he can rub into the dry spots.
He draws one nipple into his mouth, enjoying her breathy gasp when he circles the bud with his tongue. After several long minutes reacquainting himself with the delights Mac's breasts have to offer (and her managing with some modicum of success in getting his clothes off of him) he begins to move down her stomach, intent on tasting her before anything else.
"Okay," he answers her—rather belatedly, he realize—-before pressing a soft kiss to the six-inch jagged scar that he knows she got covering a religious protest in Islamabad, worrying about what other scars she's picked up since, in Syria. "But after broadcast we're ordering in and I'm going to show you exactly how much I've missed you."
"You can start right now," she answers softly, smiling in the way that makes the corners of her eyes crinkle, stroking her hands over his shoulders, tightening her fingers into his skin when he begins to kiss his way lower. "No—I mean get up here, idiot. I want you—"
He laughs when she hauls him up her body, and together they start to center themselves on the mattress.
"And get your pants off," she demands, before trying to erase the grin he knows is splitting his face with a kiss, hands going to his belt.
And then, getting frustration with his lack of complicity, presses her knees in around his hips and rolls them so that she's on top, working his belt and jeans open, and finally he feels like (well, not feels like, more like he feels the ticking clock again, and he wants to make this last, take it slow, because she deserves it, he wants to make it good) complying, lifting his hips so she can pull his pants and boxers down, kicking them off the bed once she gets them to his knees.
The seconds slip by after that, stretched thin under their hands.
MacKenzie stays on top, watching him through half-lidded eyes, biting her lip when she sinks down onto him. And sighs softly when he frames her hips with his hands, stroking the lines of where her legs meet her pelvis with his thumbs. Smiles, rocking her hips forward, sighing again when he flexes up into her.
He urges himself to be slow.
She laces their fingers together above his head, using his hands as leverage as she tries to re-find their rhythm. Which eventually becomes a joint effort, when she finds the angle she likes and, stilling, chin dropping towards her chest, a pleased moan escaping her lips. Will takes her momentary distraction as the opportunity to slide a hand between them, rubbing the swollen hood of her clit until her hips jerk forward, and then chases the movement with his own.
It gets more heated, from there, and MacKenzie eases her body down onto his until he can wrap his arms around her lower back, feel her breasts pushed up against his chest, the muscles of her abdomen rippling with her movements. The next time she looks at him, smiling breathlessly, her hazel eyes are dominated by lust-blown pupils, and he slides a hand into her hair, tugging it back from her face and bring her mouth down to his.
(Distantly, he can hear one of their BlackBerrys going off, probably in a pocket of one of their strewn-about articles of clothing. Neither of them go to answer it.)
He manages to hold on as her cries begin to escalate some time later, and she moans out of the kiss to bury her face in his neck. His hands return to her hips, bringing them together harder and faster and her knees part so there's space between them at all. Urging her on with his voice in her ear, she begins to roll her hips into his thrusts, and he fights to keep pace with her even as he feels his own climax coming up on him.
Turning his wrists inwards, he gets a hand between them again, and Mac grows louder, nails biting down into his shoulders, until stiffens, bearing down, inner muscles clenching, and he follows her seconds later.
Eventually, Will regains his faculties enough to look at the clock.
10:13 AM.
Thank God.
Well, okay, he's probably going to be late for the rundown, but at least his ego is safe. And Mac is satisfied, sprawled out on top of him and still trying to even out her breathing. He occupies himself with combing his fingers through her much-longer hair for the time being.
Minutes later, she has the same revelation that he did, and turns her head to look at his bedside clock. Moaning petulantly, she rolls off of him.
"You have to get back to the newsroom."
Groaning, he sits up, and looks down at her.
He should have gone into a career where he could get away with calling out sick more often, he thinks, stroking her bare stomach.
"Will."
He steeples his fingers over her abdomen, trailing the pads of his fingertips to the places he knows will make her squirm.
"Hmm?"
He doesn't want to leave her, and traces the ident of her navel to the jutted curves that mark the beginning of her pelvic bones, cresting up to her hips.
"I'll be here when you get back. I promise." She catches his hand, eyes wide and round and earnest, and brings his fingers to her lips. "Or I could be in your ear tonight, if you want. I need sleep, but I could make it in by the 4 o'clock rundown."
"I just want you to shower with me, first and foremost," he says, bending to kiss her again.
She laughs. "I can do that."
Spending the next fifteen minutes reminding himself of other ways to touch Mac's skin, he eventually leaves her between his sheets with damp hair piled on top of her head, beginning to doze off. Looking back, Will collects her clothes, folding them over the footboard. He grabs her phone out of the pocket of her sweatshirt and puts it on the nightstand next to her, kissing her cheek before slipping out.
He winds up being eight minutes late to the first rundown meeting, avoiding Maggie's knowing grin, stealing her notes to look over.
Nice hair, she pencils into the margins.
He steals her pencil, too.
Shut up.
Maggie, much like Mac, rolls her eyes audibly. And then steals her pencil back.
How is she? she scribbles, trying to look like she's paying attention to Jim at the other end of the table. Although, Jim looks pretty distracted himself, BlackBerry buzzing in his pocket.
...Will thinks that's probably Mac.
Asleep.
Or not. He assumes he'll find out soon.
Maggie not-so-accidentally jabs him in the back of his hand with the point of the pencil. You're actually 12. Not the answer I was looking for.
I should fire you for the way you talk to me.
How. Is. Mac.
She's fine. Really. And she really is sleeping.
"Where have you been?" Jim finally asks him between pitches, shuffling through wire reports, trying to locate a specific one in his veritable haystack of collated and post-it noted news alerts.
Maggie bites down on her lip. Jim knows Mac's in the country, she writes quickly. If you wanna fuck with him.
"An old friend is in town. Our meeting went late."
Maggie does snort. "Meeting."
Will kicks her under the table.
SEX. HAIR.
Jim freezes, giving him the once over. Maggie keeps writing, and Will divides his attention between Jim trying to not put the pieces together and Maggie's increasingly untidy scrawl taking over the bottom half of a piece of loose-leaf she had been using.
So are you two engaged now? Did she just show up in your office? Can I make money writing a book based off of this?
Will smirks down at the piece of paper.
I plead the fifth.
Maggie pouts. This is not a court of law this is the court of Jordan you can't plead anything.
"Oh," Jim stammers out eventually, checking his phone again. "How'd that go?"
"WILLIAM DUNCAN MCAVOY."
"Well," Maggie answers cheerfully for him when everyone else turns their head to see Sloan storming through the bullpen towards the conference room. Jim sits down and puts his head in his hands. "It went well."
"What is this?" Sloan asks, holding out her phone at him. And then when her phone makes the text message alert, pauses, and checks her notification. Will suddenly remembers what Mac said earlier, about getting Sloan to freak out on him and…
"Oh my God," Sloan says quietly. At first. "Oh. My. God. You didn't."
"I cannot tell you what I did or did not do unless you're a little more specific."
"You asked her to marry you. Oh my God. She's—she's in your bed that's where she is and there's a diamond that could probably pay for a medium-sized house in the suburbs on her finger." Sloan finally remembers she has to finish getting to him to do whatever violence she has planned and rushes through the door to the conference room. Will studiously ignores the confused looks on his staff's faces. "Why didn't you tell me Kenzie was coming back to New York?"
"Because I didn't know myself until I found her in my office…" he looks down at his watch, "three and a half hours ago."
"Wait," both Jim and Maggie say.
"So you didn't know she was coming home?" Sloan asks, bewildered.
"Wait, Mac's here?" Tess asks.
"Nope," he answers Sloan, ignoring the chatter rising up behind him.
(This is somehow going to get to Charlie within the next twenty minutes, he knows it. Charlie has a nose like a bloodhound for anything having to do with Mac and himself, and he's going to have to answer for both him and Mac while Mac gets to sleep.
She's crafty.)
"So you haven't spoken in ten months," Sloan begins slowly, advancing on him. "But you asked her to marry you."
She said yes, didn't she?
"It seemed like the least drastic thing to do to get her to stay," Will answers honestly, leaning back in his chair. Also she told him to, pretty directly. What was he supposed to say, oh, we've wasted nine years, let's waste another even though we both know how this is going to end? What was the point in waiting on the off-chance that they could both be happy now.
(And he's pretty damn happy, so even Sloan's interrogation and the senior staff's sudden attention on his person life can't irritate him.)
"And she said yes?" Sloan asks, eyes widening.
Maggie stands up and comes around the table to look at the ring on Sloan's phone. Numbly, Sloan lets her take it out of her hands. Foul, Will thinks. Maggie's already seen the damn thing. But then she passes it to Tess and Tamara, who pass it to Kendra, whose jaws drop slightly and the surge of pride he feels may or may not be purely masculine in nature.
(It's a fucking nice ring. He'd made sure of it, even when it was a stupid practical joke. If he was buying MacKenzie a fake ring, it was going to be a nice fake ring.)
"No, she's wearing the ring anyway," he retorts, looking back to Sloan and crossing his arms under his chest.
"Don't be a jerk."
He sighs, leaning back so that the chair tips up off it's front legs. "Mac said yes. Mac is home. Mac will be returning to the position of EP of this show. And for the love of God I thought I'd have more time before the Sabbith Inquisition because when I left thirtysomething minutes ago she was sleeping."
"Wait, Mac is coming back?" Martin cuts in.
"Shut up, Martin. Not the important part," Tamara snipes, before leaning forward onto her forearms to look down the conference table at him. "You and Mac are getting married?"
"Um, yes."
He vaguely resents Gary's response. "Glory glory Hallelujah."
"So wait, when do we get to see her?" Tess asks.
"She's coming in for the 4 o'clock rundown," Jim says, scrubbing his hands over his face, looking like the little brother who's just realized that big sister has sex. Which is an attitude Will would prefer they'd all take, since it'd involve substantially fewer questions and would probably preclude Maggie making fun of his hair.
Which he knows Mac ran a comb through, so it can't be that bad.
(Seriously, Mac gets to nap and zero questions, and he's functioning on three hours of sleep and is facing the firing squad. And Charlie hasn't even heard yet.
Well, Charlie will probably just try to get him drunk.
That won't be too bad.)
"And she'll be producing the broadcast tonight," Jim continues over the excited din (okay, he likes the excited din about Mac's return, feeling another swell of pride), "although she won't formally be back for another few weeks."
(They'd discussed this briefly in the shower. Staff is going to have to get shuffled around since promotions have been made in Mac's absence, but Will knows that Jane Barrow is about to get fired and Sloan will be moved to 7 o'clock, so they'll make everyone fit.)
Minutes later, another shout can be heard across the bullpen—a distinctly male voice—and Will sighs, preparing for Charlie's swing at this recent turn of events.
"Well I'll be damned!"
Mac doesn't quite know what to expect when she enters the 25th floor of the AWM building a little past 3:55 in the afternoon. She had napped until a little after 2:30 PM, getting a little bit more than three hours of sleep (which she'll function fine on, she's gotten used to getting her sleep in little increments again) before getting up and wrestling her hair into some semblance of neatness, tying it half back, and finally getting into the change of clothes she'd brought with her.
(Will had offered her his credit card to go shopping for whatever she needed, but she'd waved him off, planning on getting as much sleep as possible before coming in.
She could exploit her fiance's generosity later. Or so she'd told him.
She did stop by the Sephora on West 34th to buy replacements for all the makeup she'd tossed out before shipping out of DC, quickly applying it in one of the mirrors at the end of one of the aisles, trying to not get distracted by her engagement ring in the reflection.
It was a struggle.)
It's a very different newsroom than the one she left behind.
She couldn't tell that from this morning, before it had come alive. It's more than just different names on plaques, people in different desks, different positions, interns she doesn't know.
Genoa is over. And it didn't destroy any of them. She's left, and she's come back, and everyone's still standing, just like how she taught them to.
Pressing her fingers to her lips, she bites back tears.
She wishes she had come home months ago, but has already dedicated herself to not regretting it. She'd started to, earlier, while Will washed conditioner from her hair, and he cut her off there.
No regrets.
They don't have the time.
And well, Mac thinks, that's essentially what she told him this morning.
They've gotten here eventually, through their own choices, and that's what counts. They don't need to worry about things left undone or not done ever again.
She lingers in the doorway to the conference room, folding her arms under her chest, watching the staff listen to Jim sketch out a segment at the dry erase board.
Maggie notices her first, and Mac wiggles her fingers at her, grinning when Maggie's face splits into a smile.
Good.
Maggie's better, like Sloan had written. Like Jim had said. But it's nice to see, with her own eyes.
Eventually the others notice, and the meeting comes to a grinding halt, and suddenly she finds herself with arms full of staffers and Kendra and a few of the other girls grab her left hand and she hears about Sloan accosting Will ("I didn't really mean it as a challenge, you know.") and Charlie accosting Will ("That was just unfair.") and Maggie hugs her twice before it's all over and Sloan and Don come down from her office and the 4 o'clock rundown becomes the 5 o'clock rundown by the time she can finally sit down next to Will, gesturing to Jim to stay at the helm for the time being.
She's back in Will's ear four hours after that.
They're still only the third most popular cable news show and they're still tilting at windmills, and to many people (and there are certainly people who question her decision to stay at ACN, offering her more lucrative positions at shows with bigger audiences, and she's been more than acutely aware of that these past few months than any other time, but she's come back) it's not much.
But they've made the most of it, her and Will, and their show.
At 9 o'clock, the opening strains of the News Night theme welcome her home.
Thanks for reading!