A/N: I literally mainlined this entire series the three days before the season two finale and wow has an OTP ever been so rewarding so quickly. Here's to canon and Sorkin learning from Josh and Donna! My first fic for these two, so apologies if I haven't gotten their voices quite right yet.

...and once again, I enter a fandom with smut. Dedicated to Beth (someassemblingrequired) who is, right now, on a flight across the Atlantic to begin her own self-imposed exile... but to learn law. I love you!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

—Mark Twain

She had carried her demons far and wide, across the oceans and the land, nursed her wounds in self-imposed exile. (She had never been so lonely, however, than thirty feet from where he sat, broken in his own way, different from hers. They no longer fit together; they had both become jagged, and sharp, cutting where once they had made whole.) There was a dull ache in her chest, a long-held breath that screamed for release. But still, Mackenzie had gathered her sins like she had gathered her rosebuds, and clenched them tightly in her fist, waiting for penance to come.

It had not. Instead she invested three years in molding herself to his sharp edges, unyielding in her own sort of way, unknowing that his edges were changing as well. Until they fit again, tighter than before, their lives knitted together by some unspoken fiat; Mac had only intended to return his professional life to order.

(It only made sense that she brought him low not once, but again, as his hallucination of Dulcinea at Northwestern. She broke him again, some sweet illusion leading him back onto the staid course. But fixing him had required fixing herself. Together, it seemed, or not at all. They had cut each other more than once.)

Life by fiat, love by fiat. In time past, he had leveled the scales. They were graceless, hopeless, but impossibly tethered. Due North was home; the other.

The sun rose slowly over lower Manhattan, and then, in a flash, its reflection glaring harshly along the gleaming cityscape-long, tinted windows and endless buildings, compelling her to turn within the unfamiliar sheets and press her face into Will's neck. Wakefulness crept up on her slowly, the intimacy and immediacy of their new situation coming up on her like the sunrise; although it was not that Mac hadn't slept beside anyone in the interceding six—closer to seven, if she does the unforgiving math—years. Wade, for one, and Jim, on several haphazard occasions, but it was surreal, being here, now, in Will's arms.

It felt like six years, and none at all. She felt no need to flee the intimacy of it; the feel of the wiry hairs on his arms and legs against her own naked limbs, his warm breath against her cheek, his hands unconsciously spreading out along the sides of her spine, tracing endless parallel tracks onto her skin, as if he too, even sleeping, had to reassure himself of her permanence. Surreal, if the wrinkles and grey hairs were not there to serve as markers of the years spent outside of port. (His arms, of course and always, were the ones she had always searched for. Waking in others was foreign, and harsh, uncharted waters that she did not wish to seek. Home was what she wanted. And him, even when she didn't.) Skirting her hands down his biceps, she felt no regret, at last. Their path back to each other was just as important, if not more important, as to where they had been trying to return.

That was silly, of course, she thought then, pressing tiny kisses onto his neck, smiling when she felt his drowsy murmurings under her lips. Their paths back to each other—flights and miles, arguments both monumental and petty, feats and failures made communal by contract and faith, almost, in how she swept back into his life unwanted, and his agreement to let her stay, a leap of faith in and of itself—were not unimportant; the people they had become in the other's absence were not immutable, nor inconsequential.

She was, after all, more in love with him now than she was six years ago, now that they had withstood both storm and fair seas. It was in their nature, almost, to be foul-weathered. But they would not sink (not unless they did it together); fortune and circumstance breaking and adding to them in time passed, molding them together in unknown seas, terra incognita. The land before, who they were before, had no allure now that they were together again with the horizon stretching out in front of them.

(Genoa had, at the last, been the storm to break them from their holding pattern, the inch needed to push jagged edges together, a seismic shift as big as California slipping into the sea. They could only stay that way for so long, before a parting of the ways, or…)

Will brushed his mouth against her hairline, the unconscious intimacy of it all sending a surge of warmth through her that nudged Mac out of sleep. Shifting her hips—which, honestly, were quite sore in the most pleasant of ways, long-dormant muscles awoken and now wishing for resumed use, and really, who the fuck cared if she walked into the bullpen later with a noticeable limp, the staff was well enough aware of what happened last night as soon as they had made their escape… and again very early in the morning, and… fuck it.

Last night they had caught the trade winds, and now they were in safe harbor. (She had been completely blindsided by his proposal. Although, Mackenzie thinks, lips curving into a smile, so had he. Throw off the bowlines indeed…) Mac hadn't had Will McAvoy in her bed for almost seven years. It was her prerogative to fuck him out of his wits, so long as he collected them again by eight o'clock Eastern Standard Time.

And she intended to.

Again, anyway.

Once he woke up.

No longer engaged in an attempt to fall back asleep, rather engaged in long-reaching tendrils of thought, musings, really, on this man and what it had taken to get back to same place, Mac turned in Will's arms and onto her back, bringing her left hand closer to her face (the ring, after all, was best admired on her finger, she had decided after careful consideration.) It had become a nervous compulsion, to squeeze the fingers of her left hand together, to feel the diamond-studded band against the delicate skin on the insides of her fingers. He had fumbled it onto her finger, really a joint effort, since they had both been too preoccupied with the heady liberty of kissing each other after so many years, and they had smiled like idiots after separating from each other at last—her at the ring and him at her, and then at each other again, until the idea of slipping back into the kiss became too much and they forced themselves to quit their shadowed alcove at the announcement of three minutes back.

Will groaned, turning onto his front, slinging an arm low over her belly, burrowing his face into her collarbone.

Mac felt like laughing, so she did, a sort of surrealism, a sense of lightness, creeping through her limbs. Maybe that was what it was like to win the lottery, or climb a fucking mountain, or—or—it hadn't been easy, things hadn't fallen into place, but somehow it had all paid off there was a quality of disbelief to it all, but she had never been more sure of anything in her life. Smiling, giggling almost, she threaded her fingers through his hair, combing it into place before mussing it up again.

"What's so funny?" he rasped, voice thick with sleep, before turning his head to kiss his way down the curve of her breast.

"You, you delusional old man," she answered, gasping when he bit down on the side of her breast in retaliation. "I can't believe you left this thing in your desk drawer for a year and a half when you have a safe three feet from your desk."

"It wasn't really all that important to me." His hands traced the curve of her waist as he kissed his way back up her neck, taking the time to nip at the juncture of her neck and jaw, before enticing her to stop looking at the ring and kiss him again.

"Liar," Mac murmured in-between kisses, smiling up at him, look at us, we're idiots, before pulling him back down to her, sliding her tongue between his lips, moaning happily when he moved to cover her, forearms coming to frame her face, palms brushing her hair back from her face. Wrapping her legs around his at the knees, she traced his calves with the soles of her feet. "You said, and I quote—"

"I already regret this—"

"Honestly, Billy." She spread her legs wider, trailing her feet up the backs of his thighs, before pulling her knees in around his waist. "You script everything else you say, but not the single most important speech of your life—"

"I had seven minutes before we were—" He sounded exasperated, almost, or as if he would be if she wasn't under him and in his bed. Instead he sounded vaguely amused, eyes belaying his annoyed tone, as if the annoyance lied mostly in the fact that her mouth was not engaged how he would prefer it to be.

Naturally, Mac kept talking. The ring had sat in his desk for a year and a half, after all. "I was literally just sitting at the newsdesk, and you were running around like a maniac, shouting my name—"

"I did fire you. And I thought it would need the full seven minutes." He ducked his head to trace the shell of her ear with his tongue.

Mac shivered, curling her nails into the skin below his shoulder blades, scratching them down his back, making him do the same. "Yeah, rambling on like you did. Anyway, yesterday was Tuesday, it wouldn't have stuck."

"You wanted it to." He took her earlobe between his teeth, and tugged.

"You said 'I love you' seven times and 'marry me' nine times."

"Really?" He pulled back to look her in the face, eyebrows creased.

Mac laughed, smile wide and bright, mussing his hair again. "How I am supposed to remember? You dragged me into a dark corner and started raving about a kid who liked to shred paper."

"It was an allegory," he huffed, nipping at her lower lip.

"If you were on the air I would have put up color bars," she teased, kissing around his mouth, canting her hips up into his. He quirked a smile, kissing where her nose crinkled when she laughed. "Thank god you had the ring, I did say that it would be the ring to do—"

With a squeal, Mac found herself upended onto Will's lap, his fingers curled tightly into her hips, pinning her in place. He was hard under her; laughing (he laughed with her, and Mac thought she recognized the lightness in his face, even as she noticed how his eyes watched as her breasts shook with the movement) she blew her bangs out of her face and began to rock her hips atop of him.

"Mackenzie Morgan McHale-McAvoy? Seriously?" She leaned down over him, close but far enough away that he had to growl playfully, lifting his head off the pillow to capture her lips. "Did you seriously think that was going to work? You know, they would have noticed the ring eventually, it's big enough—"

"I could take the ring back, you know." His hand gathered her hair at the nape of her neck, before pulling her down against him, silencing her with a kiss that kept her mouth occupied for a few minutes, all tongue and teeth and lips, demanding and single minded in it's intent and execution.

"No you can't, you tore up the receipt," she breathed against his lips, sliding onto him slowly, smiling when, without breaking her gaze, his features tightened and he groaned. Mac licked her lips, bracing her hands on his chest. "Besides, I, and I quote, own you." Her breathing hitched when she widened the stance of her knees, sliding down onto him entirely, the wiry curls at the stem of his cock pressing against her clit. "Not just from eight to nine, but—"

She saw the look of amused focus gather on his face the moment before he slid his hands up her front, cupping her breasts, tweaking her nipples before grabbing her waist and thrusting up into her, cutting off the end of her sentence.

"—yeah like that," she gasped, nose scrunching up and mouth gaping open.

Her hips caught his rhythm, and one of his hands left her waist, moving to stroke the sensitive bundle of nerves near their joining. "You're going to use that on me a lot, aren't you?"

Diverted, she threw her head back, but nodded nevertheless, as her chest and face began to flush from exertion, sweat dotting her pale skin. "Bet your ass, McAvoy," she breathed, dropping her chin to look down at him over the lines of her body. Fuck, but she had missed this, how easily they moved together. This was the part that was like coming home, mooring her ship in safe waters even as they moved into parts unknown—with him was safe enough, she knew. Pleasure coiled low in her belly, even as she forced him to slow, moving over him with sensuous grace, tightening herself around him until the air in the sunlight room was cloying and heated, his sheets still wrapped near around her hips.

She sat up straighter, her fingertips brushing over his abdomen; she could feel quivering muscle sliding under skin, and for a minute they slowed even further, eyes catching as she met him in the middle with her hips, and then followed his down to the bed, locking their hips into a slow grind. She knew what Will was going to do the moment before he did it—

He flipped them, catching her legs at the knees and pinning them high and wide, his laugh low and nearer to a growl when she moaned loud and in the clear, nails pressing into the small of his back.

"How about this?" he whispered in her ear, before pressing suckling kisses to the tender skin under her jaw.

"This—this is good," she panted, urging him to go harder, faster. "Fuck, this is good."

Her thighs trembled, and he released her legs to let them come around his hips, holding him to her. His hands framed the sides of her head, holding her gaze to his, and the sense of surrealism came surging back, the lightness, and Mac began to laugh, eyes crinkling. Will rolled his eyes, lowering himself onto his elbows to steal the laughter from her lips as he pushed her higher and higher, until her hips snapped into his, back arching. She tore her mouth from his, moaning, but laughing still.

"Oh fuck." She felt herself tightening impossibly around him as he kept thrusting, coaxing the ripples of pleasure tighter together and stronger, until it was utterly overwhelming and at last, she slumped breathlessly against the pillows. Wrapping her arms under his shoulders, she rocked with him when she felt the movement of his hips stutter into slow, uncontrollable, jerks. Trailing wet, open-mouthed kisses along his chin, she felt, more than heard, his low groan of release.

"Shit," he muttered, nosing along the line of her throat, dropping kisses along her sweaty hair line.

"Yeah."

"We're still good at this."

She laughed again, couldn't help it. "Did you doubt we would be?"

"No comment."

She shrieked with laughter, hitting him indignantly; he collapsed on top of her in reprisal, wrapping his arms around her waist before rolling over onto his back again. Mac bit her lip against a grin, pillowing her chin on his chest, sprawled out on top of him. No regrets. Even if she searched, she didn't think she could find any. Not now, so many years out to sea.

His eyes softened almost imperceptibly. Mac felt her own do so in response; she tilted her head questioningly, shivering when one of his hands lifted to tuck a lock of damp hair behind her ear.

"I love you," he said softly. Lover's words.

She bit her lip harder, but couldn't conceal her smile, not that she had much cause to anymore. It was more habit for them, than anything else, a game. Mac reached up and traced the ash-blond stubble on his chin with the back of one finger. "I love you too."

He was lazy smiles and calm seas, her port in any weather, foul or fair. They deserved this, these wide grins and easy touches, sweat-slicked skin, rumpled hair and even more rumpled sheets, the room bright and his hands on her in the light of day, his ring on her finger. After all—

Both of their phones rang.

"Fuck."

Thanks for reading!