Whirligig
A/N: This was written for hetbigbang, and is fairly long. My current plan is to post a chapter a day, approximately.
I started writing this in about May, way before S2 aired. So there are things in this story (generally minor things, as far as I'm aware so far) that are inconsistent with S2. My apologies. What I was assuming when I wrote this was that S2 would end, and everybody would still have their jobs, and that most things in the newsroom would be fixable within a few months, or at least on their way back to stability. In order for this story to make any sense, it's probably best if you make those same (relatively non-taxing) assumptions. I would appreciate it, at least.
Also, thank you to Steph for betaing this. I'm sure I drove her crazy more than once throughout the process, but she was patient, and I appreciate it. Also, thank you to pathosocial for making the cover image for the story for me as part of the hetbb challenge.
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Chapter 1
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She was late.
Well, given that she usually got to work at least half an hour earlier than she actually needed to, strictly speaking she wasn't so much late as on time.
Late for her though.
Mac sighed as she walked through the front doors of the ACN building. Because she was late enough that it was possible someone would comment on it if they noticed. Sloan definitely might. But Sloan wasn't usually in the newsroom when Mac got in. Not when Mac got in at her usual time at least.
Sloan might be around when Mac walked through the bullpen doors today though. She turned and headed towards security, trying to banish images of smirking colleagues from her head.
Mac didn't know what was wrong. Not with Sloan, with herself. Nothing was wrong with Sloan. Not that Mac knew of at least. But Mac was definitely experiencing minor issues of some kind.
She wasn't sure her brain was screwed on straight today. At the very least she hadn't quite woken up yet.
Mac sighed as she showed her pass to the security guards stationed just inside the doors of the building. Then she turned towards the elevators. In her head, she kept drifting back to the disaster that had been her morning.
First, she'd forgotten to program her coffee maker, and the resulting lack of caffeine, Mac firmly averred, was the cause all subsequent problems. Caffeine-less, she'd apparently forgotten how to work her shower, staring at the knobs for a good thirty seconds before actually turning them on. After that, finding appropriate clothes to wear presented her next challenge. Mac was sure that she'd mentally decided on her outfit for the day the night before, but damned if she could remember what it was when it came time to actually get dressed. That had resulted in a delay of at least ten minutes.
Then she burnt her toast and spilled her yogurt. She spent eight minutes searching for her right shoe, and she very nearly left her apartment without her purse (okay, she had left her apartment without it, but not her building; given the rest of her morning, Mac was counting that as a win).
Mac had even skipped a run to the coffee shop (her typical source of caffeine on the mornings she and her coffee maker were fighting) because she was running so late. So now she was power-walking down the hallway towards the elevators twenty minutes before the first rundown meeting of the day and half-dreading any potential interrogation.
Luckily most of the people she worked with wouldn't even notice her arrival time. Mac was sure Jim wouldn't, for one. And if other people did notice, they wouldn't comment.
Not most of them at least.
A smirking Sloan was still a definite possibility.
And there was a chance Mac would get a comment of some kind from Don if she happened to pass him in the hallway. "Hey Mac, looks like eight o'clock's becoming a little lax these days. If you need a hand, ten could always step in."
Mac practically see Don's smug grin.
At least Will probably wouldn't notice. His own arrival time was pretty flexible, and he never seemed to keep track of anyone else's. Not based on the number of times he asked Mac (daily) if some staff member or other was in the office yet. She doubted he kept track of what time she started her day. Or if he did (which part of Mac's brain argued that he might), then he was probably practical enough to assume she had an appointment of some kind that had delayed her.
Unlike impractical her, who'd already over-analyzed every possible outcome of her delay.
She really hated being late.
It was small comfort to Mac to conclude that really, most people wouldn't even say anything.
Still, the biggest hypothetical problem was Sloan.
Mac could just see it now, Sloan's sly comment. Maybe even a knowing smile from the other woman as she asked if Mac was just getting in, probably adding that it was late for her, wasn't it? Sloan's tone deliberately just a smidge too innocent to actually be so. Mac was sure Sloan would throw in an artistic eyebrow raise just for good measure. She was damn good at those.
And Mac would try very hard not to feel a little self-conscious about her arrival time. Which was ridiculous, obviously. She was a grown woman for god's sake! A grown woman who unfortunately had a practically pathological work ethic and a guilty conscience. A dangerous combination when she was irritated with herself for a mistake (any mistake, no matter how minor).
She wasn't sure why she was so worried about it. It was absurd.
She knew she was being absurd.
She was allowed to show up at different times once in a blue moon. Like when she actually had an appointment of some kind. There were billions of explanations for her tardiness, all of them far more reasonable than her own brain's fixation on the issue. She just wasn't awake enough to deal with any of this.
Mac growled in frustration, pushing the button to call the elevator with more force than necessary and trying to force her mind towards actual work.
She didn't succeed.
Because she knew that if she was really unlucky, after the eyebrow raise, Sloan would start implying all sorts of reasons why Mac might be arriving late for work. Reasons that would undoubtedly be more fun than the truth (that sometimes her brain just refused to wake up with the rest of her body). Reasons involving potential men that Mac had met and brought back to her apartment, or maybe she'd gone back to theirs (Mac didn't know the details of Sloan's lurid little fantasies; she had no idea which option Sloan would pick). Mac had mentioned a cute guy at her gym to her friend a few weeks ago. Maybe Sloan would single in on him as a potential paramour. And the cause of a very late night, and consequent late morning.
Mac stifled a groan as she waited for the elevator.
If her luck ran its usual course, that would be the exact second Will walked past. And even though they'd been working together for a few years now, and even though the two of them really were absolutely, perfectly fine with everything, and even though they'd both been on dates with other people in the interim (though not in a while, at least not on her side), there was always a bit of residual awkwardness between Will and herself when actual talk of dating came up.
Mac cursed her tardiness yet again. Particularly since she didn't think Will was seeing anyone right now.
Not that she kept track or anything. But there hadn't been any drop dead gorgeous women stopping by the newsroom lately and fawning all over him.
Mac scowled to herself as she stepped onto the elevator. She considered her options on the way up.
Maybe there was a way she could sneak into her office, avoiding Sloan and thus the entire unfortunate scene.
Unfortunately her office was on the opposite side of the bullpen from the doors. And given all of the glass on the floor, there was no way she could avoid detection entirely. Unless something unexpected happened simultaneously on the other side of the room.
And she was not going to create some kind of ridiculous diversion. She had her pride.
Maybe Sloan would be in a meeting... Or pursuing a story! She was a news reporter. Maybe she would be off finding a story somewhere, chasing down a lead, speaking to a source. Yes. Mac would hope for that. She would hope that everyone in the newsroom would be busy and she wouldn't have to answer irritating questions about the fact that she was (sort of) late, in case any were asked.
Then Mac remembered that she was their boss, and that it was none of their business, and that she hadn't done anything wrong. So she was just going to walk in there and go about her business, woe to anyone who tried to get in her way.
Resolution made, Mac confidently strode down the hallway and through the doors to the newsroom, nodding at anyone who happened to look up.
No one paid her any particular attention at all. Not other than Jim's quick question about whether one of the monitors in the control room had been fixed (it had).
Mac resisted the urge to repeatedly bang her head on her desk when she got into her office.
She really should have seen this coming. After all, the newsroom's reaction to their boss showing up a little behind schedule (but still in time to make all of her meetings), was the same reaction as every single other sane person: They'd barely noticed.
But then, Mackenzie admitted, she herself often wasn't sane.
She always did this. Over-thought even the simplest things. It was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing when there was actually a genuine problem to solve (quick-thinking and analysis had saved her more than once when she'd been embedded). But it was a curse when the problem was imagined. Sometimes she couldn't get her brain to just shut down.
At least she could blame this particular overreaction on the fact that she wasn't quite awake yet. Or she hadn't been.
Her brain's whirlings were always worse when she was tired or stressed.
Sitting here, at her desk, waiting for her computer to boot up, Mackenzie felt like herself again. She was awake now. Her brain was kicking into gear. The news had that effect on her.
With a couple of clicks of her mouse she opened her e-mail so she could check it before diving into the day. Mac skimmed the subject lines of the stream of unopened messages confronting her and trying to decide which she needed to read before the rundown meeting.
Her early-morning foolishness didn't even cross her mind again until she was walking back across the bullpen to the conference room. Now that she was feeling functional, she couldn't believe she'd gotten so worked up about arriving to work slightly later than usual. It was absurd. It was days like these that she felt like she wasn't actually a grown woman at all.
Talk about blowing a situation completely out of proportion.
She'd built it all up in her head so much (contingency plans and everything!), that it was almost a letdown when no one even noticed that she'd been running a bit late. Mac shook her head as she settled into her chair for the rundown meeting.
Only to have a paper cup full of coffee appear in front of her.
She let her eyes flicker up the arm holding her gift and was surprised to see Will on the other end of it.
Her face lit up as she realized he looked slightly awkward, avoiding her eyes for the briefest of seconds before his gazed shifted back to her face. "Noticed you weren't in when I got here," he told her gruffly. "Thought I'd grab an extra cup of coffee, just in case."
Mac smiled. Whenever he did something like this, and she was reminded of just how well they still knew each other, she couldn't help the warm fluttery feeling that appeared in her chest. "Thanks."
She thought she saw the corners of his mouth quirk up just the slightest little bit. But she might have been imagining it.
"I assume nothing's wrong?" he asked.
Mac shook her head, stupidly pleased by the hint of genuine concern she caught in his tone. "Just a rather extreme case of the Monday mornings."
Will nodded, relaxing slightly, before turning and heading to the other end of the table.
Mac leaned back in her chair, pondering her coffee. So he had noticed.
Well, that was nice.
Will would know all about her occasional issues in the morning. He'd have known just how much she might need the coffee.
And he'd have laughed at her if he'd realized the extent to which she'd overanalyzed things. He always had in the past.
That thought cut through the warmth in her chest, leaving her feeling vaguely sad, as thoughts like it always did. And, Mac rather suspected, always would. She was about to indulge in a sigh, when the taste of coffee with just the right amount of sweetness pulled her out of it.
Instead she pushed her wistfulness aside in favour of starting the meeting, asking in a loud (and cheerful) voice for story ideas.
But like so many thoughts in her head, pushing a voice aside didn't silence it. In fact, Mac was secretly convinced that sometimes her brain worked on at least two levels. One level focused on dealing with what was actually going on around her while the second grabbed hold of any and all stray thoughts that were unresolved and picked them apart, only to thrust them forward again the second the upper level of her brain had a quiet moment. The notion that Will might understand more about the structure of her mind than anyone on the planet bounced around her subconscious for the entire rundown meeting, picking up steam, only to re-emerge in the foreground of her mind when she was back in her office and finishing up the coffee he'd brought her.
Mac sighed as she tossed the empty cup in the trash.
It'd been sweet of him to notice that she wasn't in. Of course, that was what Will did. He noticed. (When he wasn't going through life on autopilot.) He noticed things that mattered to him.
So he had noticed she was late.
Because apparently sometimes she still mattered to him, probably in spite of himself. Mac could only imagine that part of Will wished he could go back to comfortably hating her like he had for years. The place they were in now was far more complicated. Uncertain, really.
Mac dropped wearily into her chair. She'd gotten over her mental issues of the morning, only to pick up a whole new set once she got to work.
And all because a different Newsnight anchor than the one she'd expected had noticed she'd been running late.
Mac bit her lip, the tenderness she'd managed to tamp down on in the bustle of the rundown meeting exploding in her chest again now that things were quieter.
It was awfully inconvenient sometimes, working with a man you were still in love with.
Particularly one who used to love you.
And she did. Still love Will, that is.
She'd tried not to. God she'd tried not to. More than once actually. She'd tried when she'd been embedded after he'd ordered her out of his life. She'd tried again, multiple times, when she'd come back to New York and been confronted by just how much he hated her.
She'd failed each and every time. More fool her.
Because it turned out that not only did she have a brain that couldn't let anything go, she had a heart that functioned exactly the same way.
So, pathetic as it was, she still loved him. Stubbornly.
Maybe her heart was making up for the length of time it'd taken her to realize she loved in the beginning of their relationship by being irritatingly constant now.
Will had always been constant. His feelings had been obvious. Steady. Terrifying. Until one day, they stopped frightening her. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. She'd already destroyed their relationship; she just hadn't told him yet.
Will had definitely loved her.
And sometimes she wondered if maybe, if he still... (Sometimes she hoped.)
Not that she could ever ask.
And not only because unrequited love was always painful, and it would just about kill her if he said no.
She didn't have the right to ask how he felt about her. She was the one who'd destroyed their relationship. She was the one who'd betrayed him. Who'd destroyed what little ability Will had developed to open up to people and trust them since his nightmare of a childhood.
There'd been a brief period over a year ago, after he'd left her a voicemail while high that he wouldn't repeat sober, when Mac had thought that maybe she'd found the courage (or the audacity) to ask him, albeit in a roundabout way, how he felt. But he'd shut her down so ruthlessly as to leave her in absolutely no doubt as to where he stood on the whole "opening up to Mackenzie" issue.
And then the voicemail hadn't even turned out to be what she'd thought it was (not that she'd heard it from him).
So she'd backed off, put firmly in her place.
She couldn't ask him how he felt and the two of them had long since passed the point where she could tell him how she felt.
It would hurt too much to say it only to have him strike a lance through her chest when he rejected her. It would hurt too much, and it would destroy the fragile truce they'd created around the show.
Mac shut her eyes tightly. She couldn't say it. She didn't have the right to say it.
She could do the show.
They could make something together. She could help him be the man he should be, at least professionally. The man he'd been born to be. The man he wanted to be, when he wasn't frightened of the consequences.
She could do little things for him. Things a friend would do. Small kindnesses. Share a drink at a bar with colleagues after work. Bring him pyjamas if he was sick. Organize a Valentine's day gift from the office. Kick him in the pants when he needed it. Offer a sympathetic ear when he was ranting about all that was wrong with the world. Share Chinese food after a long day.
Mac glanced at her trash can.
A perfect cup of coffee, exactly when it was needed on a bad morning.
Her eyes focussed on the tip of the empty cup peeking out over the top of the bin.
She couldn't say I love you. In no way could she say it. Absolutely no way.
At least not out loud.
xxx
