A/N: For Meg, who wanted me to start equaling the disparity between how often I've injured Mac versus how little I have injured Will. Although, how I'll make up for dropping sarin on Mac, who knows. Title and lyrics taken from "Thistle and Weeds" by Mumford & Sons.
I begged you to hear me, there's more than flesh and bones
Let the dead bury the dead, they will come out in droves
But take the spade from my hands and fill in the holes you've made
But plant your hope with good seeds
Don't cover yourself with thistle and weeds
The last thing he remembers is trying to get out of bed when he found the glass Mac left on his nightstand to be empty. He'd been hacking away – Will doesn't know what kind of luck you have to have to catch fucking pneumonia ten days after getting engaged – and in desperate need of water, standing in his bathroom at the sink, when spots started encroaching on the corners of his vision. The next thing he knows, he's on the bathroom floor, the left side of his chest burning like his ribs have cracked in half to use as kindling.
Cautiously, he tries to get up, but only somewhat successfully manages to prop himself up against the glass shower wall. Ten minutes later, he's finally conceding to regretting the fact that his BlackBerry is next to his pillow. If he could call MacKenzie for help he'd graciously bow to the Life Alert jokes that would come his way. Instead, he winds up slumping down against the cool tile floor and, letting his raging fever and possible broken ribs win, dejectedly drifts off to sleep.
Which is how Mac finds him a little over an hour later.
"Billy!"
Shit.
"I'm alive," he mumbles, blearily blinking open his eyes. "Not vomiting blood or – overdosed on anything."
"You're on the floor!" she cries, stooping down. How she manages in four inch heels, he has no clue. A worried crease appearing in her forehead, she runs the back of her hand from his cheeks to his back. "Again! What happened?"
"I apologize for that," he coughs out, immediately feeling all the blood leave his face at the sudden surge of pain.
Mac's eyes go wide. "Honey?"
"Coughing fit," he explains in short bursts, bracing a hand against his aching ribs. "Needed water. Distinct lack of oxygen."
Carefully, she helps him sit up against the wall again. "Where does it hurt?"
"Besides everywhere?" he mutters, eyes fluttering shut when Mac's delightfully cold hands frame his face. "I think I hit the counter on the way down. I haven't been unconscious the whole time. Mostly too damn tired to get up."
"Tired?" she asks disbelievingly.
"Okay." He inhales as deeply as he can, testing how much his chest cavity can expand before protesting violently. "It may have hurt like a son of a bitch and I gave up and decided to take a nap."
"Yeah."
Hearing her heels clatter off her feet to the floor, Will opens his eyes to see MacKenzie appraising him. "What are you doing?" he asks, deliberately calm as she manipulates him into sitting up straighter, tests out grips on his arms and under his shoulders.
Looking at him like he's gone insane, she very clearly enunciates, "You're going to get up, and then I'll get you dressed, and then we're going to the ER."
"Oh no."
He realizes, of course, that he's not exactly in a position to negotiate, half-slumped on the floor covered in fever-sweat.
"Oh yes."
She manages to get him up, though, and to the bed where she left him before rushing off to work at ten o'clock with the promise that she'd drop in to check on him during her lunch break. Immediately he wants nothing more than to crawl under the covers, pillow his head on Mac's lap, swallow a Vicodin or two, and fall asleep. No need to move. No need to go to the hospital, and get poked and prodded and questioned. Just Mac, combing her fingers through his hair, and their bed.
It's not gonna happen.
With military-esque efficiency, Mac props him up against the headboard and marches into the walk-in, reappearing moments later with a plaid button-up, a pair of socks, and sneakers. She's almost deceptively strong. But still extremely gentle – MacKenzie carefully manipulates his arms to get the shirt on him, before kneeling down to put on his socks and shoes.
"I feel like a five-year-old," he mutters, watching her tiredly.
She snorts, standing. "Jim, in full camo gear, had to have his pants cut off him because he got shot in the ass. This is nothing."
"Oh… okay."
That's not particularly reassuring, but he's glad that all things considered, he has further to fall in Mac's eyes.
Sighing, Mac leans in and kisses him on the forehead. She's probably taking his temperature, he realizes, but she lingers anyway, lightly wrapping her arms around him. "I'll call a car," she says, her mouth still near his hairline. "And Charlie, so he doesn't find out via Google alert. And Jim, too. Don can handle Elliot at eight. Jim and Sloan can handle ten o'clock."
He nearly passes out again in the elevator, and Mac worries out loud that she should have thought to give him a Vicodin before leaving but he waves her off, trying to find a way to comfortably hide his face in her neck while they finish descending the remaining thirteen floors. Getting into the car is abjectly terrible, white spots crowding his eyeline while he gives up breathing through the pain and waits for it to abate. The driver hits every pot hole and takes every hard turn and he feels his eyes glaze over, and Mac must notice because her arm wraps firmly around his waist and she braces him the best she can until they finally reach the emergency room entrance at Mt. Sinai-Roosevelt.
Having no fucks left to give, he lets two orderlies pretty much hoist him out of the car.
(But he declines the wheelchair, ignoring how Mac rolls her eyes.)
Charlie's already in the ER waiting, and follows them into the trauma room that the nurse shuffles them into.
"How in the hell?" he asks, after helping Mac help him up onto the exam table. "You found him on the bathroom floor, again?"
"I'm right here," he grouses.
Mac steps out of his immediate reach, and he hears himself make a sound that vaguely resembles a whine, quieting when she steps back within his grasp.
"Yeah, good thing I didn't listen when he told not to bother to come check on him at lunch."
"Literally right here," he groans, weakly tugging Mac to step between his legs so he can lean against her. She's the one who made him come here, she better let him – wordlessly, Mac pulls his head to rest on her shoulder, threading her fingers through his hair. He barely restrains himself from moaning in happiness at how warm she is.
(Once more he's gone from being far too hot to being absolutely freezing.)
"He thinks they're broken?" Charlie asks.
He feels Mac, who has placed her chin on top of his head, nod. "He's done it before. he knows what it feels like." Of course, he told Mac he broke his ribs while quarterbacking, not going round-for-round with his father. "And I got a look when I was getting him into a real shirt, his left side is pretty bruised already. My poor baby."
The last bit is spoken without even the hint of a patronizing tone, with MacKenzie kissing his temple like she somehow knew that's exactly where the throbbing in his head is radiating from.
God, she really is perfect.
Charlie snorts, but Will can't bring himself to care. Mac's arms are so warm around him and his complete inability to stand up is completely humiliating and the fact that he managed to catch the office cold five days after Election Night is pitiable, but this, this is nice. Mac is warm, and her shirt is soft, and she smells good. Will's never gotten up the nerve to ask what perfume she started wearing after returning from the Middle East – it's not the one she wore when they were together the first time, that one was Fracas and this one is muted floral and sandalwood and not sweet at all – but he should do that soon, and buy her a bottle for his apartment.
"On the plus side, once this hits the internet the mob will stop shouting that Will's only faking sick because of the suit," Charlie deadpans.
"They'll say I did it," she giggles. "Since I'm the dirty crazy slut who's trapped him into marriage to save my career."
Painfully, his head snaps up.
"Wait, who's saying that?" he asks. Christ, what has he missed since Mac coerced him into stay home sick yesterday. "I'll hand their asses to them if they–"
But all MacKenzie does is laugh, and if he wasn't thirty seconds from falling asleep he'd lift his head from her shoulder to glare at her. "Babe, you just got beat up by the bathroom counter, you're not in the state to hand anyone their ass to defend my honor. Which is doing just fine on its own, all things considered."
"Or Jim could defend your honor," Charlie muses. "He's probably up for the challenge."
"Me," he says, getting a mouthful of Mac's blouse. "I will defend MacKenzie's honor."
"Stop trying to rile him up," Mac says, scolding Charlie. Or would be, if she wasn't laughing lightly. "It's fine, Will. It was just a gossip columnist running their mouth. I think they're one of Nina's friends."
His head does snap up then. "I'll call Nina and–"
"No, you will not call Nina," she replies, cutting him off and forcibly pushing his head back to rest on her shoulder. "You're going to get chest CT and an x-ray so we know that you're not about to puncture a lung, and then a prescription for cough syrup with codeine, and then I'm taking you home, getting you nice and heavily medicated, and putting you back to bed."
"But this is my fault."
Some small corner of his brain recognizes he's pouting, but he decides that since his face is hidden against Mac's neck that he doesn't care. While Mac's plan for him sounds nice and lovely – barring the chest CT – he was the one who fucked everything up with Nina and now anything coming Mac's way is his fault, and he is going to be the one to fix it.
"The vultures were going to circle anyway, Will. We knew it was coming," Charlie says plainly.
"I still don't like it." He sighs, and immediately regrets it.
"Neither do we, but if we respond it'll look worse than it already does. The pictures the photogs I'm sure are camping out outside are gonna take of you and Mac leaving here looking like a bona fide couple will clear things up." Even though his eyes are closed, Will can hear the impish grin on Charlie's face.
"Regardless, it is what it is," Mac says, soothingly, punctuating her sentence with another kiss. "They'll stop writing that I'm a power-hungry scarlet woman once it becomes more profitable to write me as some other leggy sexist trope. I think I'll get more upset if they start writing me as the good honest woman standing by her man."
"Hey," he protests.
Mac continues on uninhibited. "Behind her man. They'll probably go for the more obvious metaphor."
"Mac," he whines.
(That may be closer to the truth, but neither version is particularly flattering. Maybe he could write an email and accidentally send it to every AWM employee to clear up the fuzzy details on how he and Mac got engaged, read the tabloid reporters in on his stupidity and eleventh hour plea for her to stay, and how his fiancé is a saint for taking care of him right now on top of managing a hundred-plus person staff, salvaging their show from the ruins, and meetings with legal about the lawsuit.
Although he doubts Mac would be particularly enthusiastic about being canonized by the fourth estate.)
"Let them be happy splashing around in the mud. Until it hurts the show, I don't give a fuck anymore," she declares, overly cheerful about it. But he decides to let it go, for the moment. "And neither should you."
"But–"
"No buts," she interrupts, using the same facsimile cheery voice. You're sick as a dog, Will. Just let us handle it."
"Okay," he grumbles, if only because he knows he doesn't actually have the means to fight this at the moment. Might as well look like he's willingly conceding to Mac and Charlie, after all.
Give him a week, though…
Charlie's phone rings then, and he wanders back outside the ER to deal with whatever problem Rebecca has handed him now. The trauma bay isn't exactly quiet, but in the middle of a dreary Wednesday it's not busy either, and Will finds himself dozing off against the backdrop of monitors and chatting nurses and the scuffle of sneakers against linoleum, until finally the queue for the CT wears down enough that a nurse comes to collect him to go to Radiology.
Two broken ribs.
He avoids looking at Mac's face as the ER doctor points out previous breaks, fine lines along his ribcage and shoulders. Some he remembers, some he doesn't, but no wonder he has back problems. And then the cloud of white in the lower lobe of his right lung, which has the doctor writing prescriptions and giving orders that he hopes Mac is taking notes on, because he's more than half asleep at this point, leaning heavily on her and praying for the doctor just to clear him already so Mac can take him home.
As a rule, Will hates hospitals. The reasons are nebulous, even if the source of it isn't. And maybe if the reasons were easier to parse he'd have gotten over it by now, but all he wants is for the lingering fear that he's somehow going to get into trouble – for saying the wrong thing or attracting the well-meaning attentions of the wrong nurse – to go away or to just leave, entirely, and sort out the problem on his own.
Even if it's not a lie this time, that it was an accident.
He just wants to go home, where no one will ask him questions. Mac hasn't not even after the spectacle that he made of his father's death, and she knows him too well to start asking them now despite even her strongest journalist intuitions.
You're an adult, he reminds himself. There's nothing they can take from you.
But still.
The next hour or so is hazy. Mac fills his prescriptions at the hospital pharmacy, and by the time he's handed his discharge papers and she and Charlie get him back into the car that the service sends he's swallowed enough codeine and oxycodone to fell a horse.
(And taken a hit off an inhaler, but that's neither here nor there.)
At least his entire left side is no longer making too much of a bother of itself. Relatively, anyway. And the nice cottony feeling in his head is helping, too. And whatever was in the inhaler, too.
What seems like just a few minutes later, Mac is sitting him down on the bed and working the button down shirt off him, and then gingerly getting his tee shirt off one arm at a time before gently tugging it up over his head. His sneakers are next, then socks, and he knits his eyebrows together in confusion when she works his sweatpants off, too, until she murmurs something about clean clothes, disappearing into his closet.
He appreciates the sentiment once Mac manipulates him into a pair of proper pajamas that he's fairly certain haven't seen the light of day since the last time he was in the hospital. He tries to help, briefly, but Mac shushes him and continues buttoning up the front of the cool and clean blue striped shirt.
(Hot, again. His fever shot up to 103.2 in the ER, and then evened out.)
Helping him lie half-propped up on a barricade of pillows, she says something about how she'll be in the living room working if he needs her.
"Aren't you heading back to the office?" he manages, his eyelids dragged down by some invisible weight.
Forcing them open one last time, he sees Mac roll her eyes. "Shout if you need me."
Her lips are cool against his forehead, and that's the last thing Will's mind processes before plunging deep into sleep.
Mac really is deceptively strong. Because after about five minutes of non-stop coughing and wheezing, she marshals the strength to haul him out of bed and into the bathroom. Before anything else she turns the shower on all the way on hot, steam starting to pour out in billows. A quip about how often Mac has gotten him in and out of his clothes today is swallowed up by a cough, so instead he just lets her peel off his pajamas.
He does manage to choke down his cough for long enough when she starts taking off her clothes.
"We're gonna take a shower together and I can't even properly appreciate you stripping for me," Will rasps. "Or ripping off my clothes."
Hastily piling her hair on top of her head, Mac smirks. "It's less us showering together and more me keeping you upright for the duration, dear."
Putting up no resistance, he lets Mac tow him into the shower. Immediately he can breathe easier, or at least less painfully, but his balance is a vague memory at this point. He sways, distantly wondering how long he can keep standing, until Mac winds her arms around his waist in support.
He winds up leaning on her more than he'd like to admit, letting the spray from the dual-head beat down his back until the muscles unlock and loosen and the rattling wheeze in his chest begins to die down.
"Don't fall asleep on me," she whispers, one of her hands coming up to brush through his wet hair.
"I won't," he sighs.
"Do you want me to wash your hair?" she asks, already reaching for one of the bottles of shampoo lining the ledge on the wall.
"Do I have a choice?" he mumbles drowsily. He's been standing for maybe ten minutes and his legs are already feeling wobbly. They should just keep standing like this, wrapped up together under the water. Until it goes cold, but his building is pretty good about keeping the scorching, skin-peeling water coming, so they could feasibly stand here for hours. Provided his legs don't give out.
"No, not really," she says matter-of-factly, peering up at him with a non-negotiable look in her eyes. "You can't lift your arms at all and now's as good a time as any."
Leaning away from him, she opens the cap on the bottle and deposits a large amount of shampoo into her palm. But there's really no use in protesting. MacKenzie will do with him as she wants, and even if he wasn't too tired, he probably wouldn't fight her on it.
"I'm not five." His hands skirt up and down the sides of her spine, tracing so far as it doesn't make his ribs protest.
"You've already expressed that sentiment to me," she says, lifting herself up onto her tip toes (he's forgotten, in years gone by, how much smaller Mac actually is than him) to start scrubbing his head. "But for the sake of argument you're also, you know, injured and sick and I'm your fiancé which means you have to let me take care of you now, unlike the last time I found you unconscious on your bathroom floor."
"You beat me up with a magazine when I was in a hospital bed," he counters, letting his eyes fall closed when Mac turns her nails in to lightly scratch his scalp.
"Yeah, well." Flustered, she scrambles for a retort. "I was stressed at your monumental stupidity."
Will wonders what it would have been like, if he had let Mac in back then. But it had been a daunting prospect a year ago, to let himself need people. And now here he is, letting Mac bathe him and clothe him and only some small portion of his brain is screaming out that it shouldn't be allowed.
He still doesn't know how to explain it.
But it's not a problem with MacKenzie, it's his own shit that he still needs to sort through. At least so it stops screwing up his relationship with Mac, because he knows if the situation was reversed he wouldn't be letting her protest either, and he would have gotten her to the doctor's office yesterday like she tried to get him to go.
But the fact that all he wants right now is to be in bed with MacKenzie doing whatever she's doing with her nails against his scalp – that's an improvement, he thinks.
"I'm serious, you nailed me – if we can't have children, it's your fault," he finally replies, slitting his eyes open before belatedly remembering that he and Mac haven't talked about the possibility of children since 2007.
(He'll blame it on the fever if she reacts poorly.)
She snorts, wrinkling her nose with what he thinks is amusement. "Let's get through the lawsuit before we worry about inflicting our progeny upon the world."
"Good point," he yawns, jerking slightly when Mac places two fingers under his chin to tip his head back so she can start washing his hair out.
(When was the last time someone did this for him? His mother was always chasing after his sisters and brother, and not needing to be taken care of was always a good defense against Dad.
He doesn't remember things like baths and bedtime stories, because he was always the one running them. And god forbid he ever got sick – honestly sick, not a questionable concussion or phantom fracture to a limb – because McAvoys never got sick, according to Dad, who'd be ripping him out of bed if he even had the thought to sleep in.
Then again, Dad also ignored the symptoms of a heart attack until he died, so Will thinks old John McAvoy might have gotten his, in the end.)
"How's the staff?" he asks once Mac finishes getting soap out of his hair and starts in on a cursory attempt to wash the rest of him. "I mean, we were ready to leave the network to them a week and a half ago, so I recognize the irony–"
"The staff is fine, you are not."
His mind is fuzzy, so it takes him awhile to piece together a response. "There are several staffers who I could point out are not fine–"
"Will," she sighs, lifting her eyebrows.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it."
Even though he offers no explanation, she seems to understand what he's just said. Nodding, Mac drops her gaze and reaches beyond him to turn off the water.
Getting dressed again is a task, and by the time their combined efforts have him dry, he's shivering, teeth chattering and he couldn't give less of a fuck about the look of wide-eyed concern on Mac's face as she gets him into a pair of flannel pajamas that she's unearthed from some far corner of his dresser.
Another pained gasp off the inhaler, two tablespoons of cough syrup, and Vicodin later MacKenzie is helping him shuffle into bed before rummaging through his closet for something to wear herself. By the time she's dressed, he's not too tired or uncomfortable to admire her in a pair of his boxers and a long-sleeved University of Nebraska Alumni tee shirt.
Having barely any appetite, he eats eggs and toast for dinner, and after she finishes takes their plates back into the kitchen all he wants to do is curl up with her like he's been wanting to all day. Except that, of course, cuddling with broken ribs isn't exactly easy.
(He caught a glimpse of them in the fogged mirror while trying to towel himself off, a garish swath of purple and yellow on his left side.
No shit Mac was worried; he has to remind himself that it's good that she does that, that nothing is going to happen to him if she does that.)
But MacKenzie manages to make it work. After taking his temperature again – 102.4, it's down from earlier, that's good. I'll consider letting you stand unassisted. – she props herself up against the pillows and maneuvers him to lie back between her legs, rest with the back of his head on her shoulder.
"This way in case you have to cough you don't have to kill yourself trying to sit up," she explains, but all he can focus on is the warmth radiating from her body, the steady rise and fall of her chest, the vibration of her voice in her throat.
He's like ten minutes away from falling asleep, maximum.
Will doesn't even realize how late in the day it is until Mac turns on the TV, muttering something about there being no shenanigans with their show and having Don on speed dial.
"Good evening. I'm Elliot Hirsch and I'll be filling in for Will McAvoy, who's out sick with two cracked ribs and pneumonia. Welcome to News Night…"
Mac giggles, rubbing her hands up and down his arms.
"I had to keep Sloan from rushing to the ER, Charlie couldn't talk her down," she says. "And Don, apparently, briefly lost his shit over our latest installment of terrible luck. But Sloan assures me that he didn't throw himself into any doors this time."
He watches the show through dry, feverish eyes. Mac's hand only twitches towards her BlackBerry twice, but Elliot and Don do a good job. And he's certain that Sloan and Jim will do a good job at ten o'clock, but he sure as hell won't be awake to see it.
They're fine. They're all fine, and reasonably safe, and doing well. He can rest. Or, at least, take a few more days off.
"Go to sleep, Billy," she murmurs, turning the volume down and the captions on.
Feeling, for the first time in years, completely okay with feeling not okay, he does.
Thanks for reading!