When the alarm on his phone beeped at 8:00, Will immediately got out of bed. He hadn't really been asleep for a while and had been trying to convince himself that he was actually asleep when he wasn't. He threw on sweatpants and went out through the living room and into the kitchen. He made coffee, mostly out of habit, watched it brew, and when it was ready he poured himself a cup. He took it over to stand in front of the door to his balcony and stared out across the skyline. Somewhere, about 3 miles uptown, she was busy with her own preparations. She was, he gathered, anxious and nervous and excited… just as he was.
Will grabbed a tall chair from the breakfast bar and pulled it in front of the glass door. He sat for a while and stared outside. How did he get so lucky? By rights, he should still be miserable. After everything that had happened… Mackenzie's "mistake" and their break-up, her running away to Afghanistan, her return to ACN, and then forging of a professional relationship, which became a friendship, a partnership in the truest sense of the word. And woven into it, like the patches of a quilt, were all the many times he'd hurt her- in retaliation, in revenge, out of hurt and anger and pain… so how did it all still manage to come together as it did? First they became colleagues, then friends, and then, on Election Night 2012 they became so much more. He had hurt her over and over just to see the pained expression in her eyes. He'd hurt her so he didn't have to acknowledge how much he deeply loved her, and she could just as easily have said no as yes when he tripped over himself to propose to her a year ago, once he realized what he'd been doing. He had been hurting her just to avoid feeling what he knew was there, underneath it all, in places he didn't want to venture to. When Will said he was lucky, he meant it. After being an asshole to the woman he couldn't live without, over and over and over again, for six plus years, she still had been there waiting for him to come to his senses. She knew he couldn't live without her- she simply waited for him to come to the realization himself.
His phone buzzed over on the counter. He glanced at the screen and saw that It was Charlie. Charlie- the man who'd had the foresight to bring Mackenzie back to where she belonged. He was right when he'd told Will that he hadn't been a nice guy in Mackenzie's absence. Charlie was a wise man.
"Hey, Charlie," Will said as he answered the call.
"I'm calling to see if you want to go for some breakfast, before you become a married man." Charlie responded.
"That actually sounds like a good idea. I'm a bundle of nerves right now and it might do me some good to be distracted for a while." Will said.
"OK, meet me at the diner up your block in a half-hour." Charlie said as he hung up. Charlie kept his phone conversations brief. If you wanted to have an actual conversation with Charlie, you needed to be sitting with him, preferably in his office and with a glass (or a bottle) of bourbon on hand. Will was sure he'd be hearing words of wisdom all through breakfast from the long-married older man.
Will decided to hop in the shower and throw on something presentable before he headed out. He dressed in a watch-plaid button down shirt that Mackenzie loved, and a pair of khakis. He finished getting himself ready and made the bed, but still had 15 minutes before he needed to leave to walk the block and a half to the diner. He decided to send a text to Mackenzie, to see what was going on with she and Sloan in Midtown.
"Hi, my love," he started. "What's going on over there?"
A minute later, his phone buzzed. "Don made us a gourmet breakfast of french toast stuffed with fruit and bacon and coffee and is making sure I eat all of mine. I think he doesn't want my dress to fit." was her reply.
"I don't think you'll have to worry. You're gorgeous." Will sent back.
"You're such a flatterer, McAvoy. I can't wait to see you later." she said in response.
"So what's on your agenda after you roll out of Sloan's kitchen?" he asked.
"Our hair and make-up appointment is scheduled for 11:00. Once we're done, we'll head to the church and change there. We have a room where we can dress and relax." Mackenzie stated.
Almost immediately, his phone buzzed with the completion of Mac's thought. " While we're at the salon Don is going to take the dresses and such over to the church so they'll be waiting there. The flowers are being delivered around the same time, so he'll supervise." she said.
And then another text came through. "Poor Don. I don't know what Sloan had to do to get him to do all of this for us, but it had to have been a lot! He's been so sweet, though. He said this is his gift to us." Mackenzie punctuated her sentence with a smiley face. Cute.
Don had volunteered to get both Mackenzie and Sloan to the church on time. In fact, he'd been enlisted to get the girls to the salon to have their hair and make-up done, and to the church… he'd been cheerful about the role he was to play while around the office earlier in the week, but Will suspected that Sloan had cajoled him into doing it while they were in bed one night, possibly in exchange for favors about to be rendered… Will just had to giggle to himself at the thought of Don herding Sloan and Mac into the salon and assuring them they they looked gorgeous. There was no way women as beautiful as Mackenzie and Sloan could look anything but incredible, but they'd never tire of hearing it, and Will knew their questioning would be incessant. He didn't envy Don his task.
