Author's Notes: Sorry it's taken me a while to update this one…real life and writer's block intruding again. Busy week ahead, but hopefully I'll get some time to write. I hope, as well, that lots and lots of new ideas start popping into my head! Thanks for reading!
Peaceful was not a term either of them would have used for the sleep they had that night. Mackenzie pulled away from him somewhere around 2am and proceeded to take most of the sheets with her. While he was relieved he hadn't awoken to her fist in his face, it wasn't terribly pleasant to find yourself nearly naked and sheetless in the middle of a winter's night in New York.
He got up and grabbed the old quilt Mackenzie kept on the chair in the corner of their room and settled back into bed hoping for a little more sleep. Mac was curled into a ball on the opposite side of the mattress. She was holding one of his pillows over her head as if she was hiding. He could only guess at the dreams she was having…her body was so close to the edge of the bed she was nearly on top of her nightstand. He longed to reach out to her and pull her into his arms, but he feared that would only serve to scare her more.
"I'm here Mac. You're at home…in New York…and you're fine. You're safe Mackenzie. I promise." He whispered this to her from his side of the bed over and over until he fell asleep.
The alarm came far too soon for either of their liking. He could hear Mac groaning as she rolled over in bed.
"Why am I plastered to my nightstand and why do I feel like I ran a marathon last night?" she asked groggily.
"Because you spent most of the night curled so tightly into a ball that I'm amazed you didn't lose circulation in your extremities Mac."
"So, therapy is working wonders already, huh?" she quipped. She sat up against the headboard and tried to stretch the kinks out of her neck.
"Did you think one session would cure you? And if you had bothered to stick around just a few minutes longer yesterday, you could have heard Habib tell you that he fully expected you to have a bad night."
"Did I? Have a bad night that is? Have I injured you any further?"
"No, Mackenzie…you didn't hurt me. You were about two feet away from me most of the night."
"I don't really remember dreaming about anything in particular. I mean, obviously I did, but what it was I couldn't begin to tell you. Billy, why are you wrapped up in my grandmother's quilt?" she asked, cocking her head at the rather odd sight of her six foot three tall boyfriend trying to cover himself with a small pink and blue flowered quilt.
"You decided to curl yourself into most of our sheets and blankets at around 3am Mac. This was the first thing I could find."
"I'm sorry" she said reaching out to pull the bed sheets back up over both of them.
"Hey, I just got up and grabbed a blanket. Easy problem to solve. I didn't know what to do for you though. You didn't look particularly comfortable, but I didn't want to risk scaring you by trying to pull you back from the edge of the bed."
"Probably a good idea. Charlie would kill me if you came in today with a broken nose. I guess seeing Habib is a bit more necessary than I would have liked to think. I get it Will. I'll pick up my prescription today and hope that it does some good tonight" she said wearily.
He knew she hated how most drugs made her feel. She was one of those fortunate people who had barely been sick a day in her life and so almost never had to take medication. When she did though, it usually hit her like a brick wall. He would never forget the great root canal incident of 2005. One damn Vicodin after her dental appointment and she had been so out of it he had to carry her to a taxi and apologize profusely to Charlie's secretary who had returned from lunch to find Mackenzie sound asleep on top of her desk.
"I told you before and I'll tell you again Mackenzie…I won't make you do anything you don't want to do. But you can't possibly feel very well rested this morning."
"Not terribly, no." Just as she said this, her Blackberry began signaling again and again that she had incoming email. "I guess our two days of unscheduled vacation are officially over."
"We'll try to take some actual vacation time soon Mac, I promise" he said as he pulled her into his side.
"That would be nice Billy. I'd like to spend some time away from the studio that doesn't involve psychiatrists or anti-depressants."
He watched her head for the bathroom and hoped those pills would help tonight. He really needed a decent night's sleep soon.
The day progressed quickly. Mac was buried in work for the better part of the morning and early afternoon. When he stuck his head into her office to ask about lunch she just looked at him like he was insane thinking she could leave the building. She asked him to pick up her prescription and something for her to eat.
He returned to find her sitting on the floor of her office surrounded by mounting piles of paperwork.
"Is this a bad time? I brought you lunch, but I seem to remember you behind the desk when I left and now it looks as though you have been brought to your knees by memos and spreadsheets" he remarked taking a seat in the one corner of her office untouched by the tornado that must have come through.
"One of the interns lost paperwork I was supposed to have given to legal for an FCC filing yesterday. I wasn't here so apparently they came in here searching for it and now I can't find anything. This is why I never take vacation time. Inevitably something goes wrong and I have to fix it when I get back. Just leave that on my desk and with any luck I'll get to eat some of it before show time."
"Mackenzie, it's three in the afternoon and you have yet to eat anything today. Take five minutes and sit at your desk and take a few bites of food please" he begged her.
She wasn't sleeping well and now she wasn't eating. The Mackenzie McHale School of Journalism: one must suffer for the news. Well, he sure as hell wasn't enjoying watching her suffer and he didn't really know how much more of it he could take.
That must have shown on his face because she relented and reached for his hand so he could pull her up off the floor. She curled up in his lap and laid her head on his shoulder. They didn't exactly avoid public displays of affection in the office; they just didn't make a habit of it either.
"I'm sorry. It seems all I do these days is make you worry about me. I'm not trying to you know."
"I know that Mackenzie. And part of me will worry about you no matter what happens. I love you, that's part of the deal. But you could try and take care of yourself a bit better too. It might take a little weight of my shoulders to know you cared half as much about yourself as I do."
She tilted her head up to kiss his cheek just as Maggie and Jim decided to burst into her office with twin looks of despair on their faces.
"Uh, sorry guys…didn't mean to interrupt your lunch, or whatever, but our interview for the A block tonight just cancelled on us" Jim informed them.
"We had twenty minutes scheduled for that and now we have to fill it in the next four hours!" Maggie added in a somewhat panicked tone.
Mackenzie got up out of Will's lap and made her way toward her laptop.
"Wait! Everyone stop for a minute. Mackenzie, put the computer down. Jim, Maggie sit. We can all work on this from right here while Mackenzie eats something. Isn't that right Mac?" Will challenged her.
Though he could tell her first instinct was to argue with him, she stopped and set her laptop down on her desk. She grabbed the salad he had set on her desk earlier and opened it and gestured for everyone else to take a seat.
They all managed to cobble together a different layout for the show within the hour and Will called an old law school friend of his who now worked for the ACLU to fill in for that night's discussion of illegal immigration. By the time the evening was over Mackenzie was falling asleep in her chair and Will wasn't looking too much better. They dragged themselves out to their car after bidding the staff goodnight, both silently praying they would have a full night's sleep.
"Pills, Mackenzie" Will said as they made their way to their bedroom a half an hour later. His usually expansive vocabulary was failing him. Though he didn't want to force the medication on her he was silently praying that this was part of the solution. God, he needed sleep.
She picked up the prescription he had filled for her earlier that day and looked at it with disdain.
"I know you're not thrilled about this Mac, but you trust Habib don't you? He said this would help your sleep and would calm some of the anxiety you're going to have trying to work through some of your issues from the stabbing. Please Mackenzie, for once trust the people around you to care for you, ok?"
"I do. I trust you anyway. I know you want what's best for me Will. I trust you…the pills and the therapy, not so much" she replied sadly, sitting on the side of their bed.
"I know you don't. So then, trust me when I say I think this will help Mac. Can you just let go of a little bit of control for a while and trust my judgment then?" he fairly begged her.
"I'll try. For you…I'll try Will." She opened the pill bottle and reached for the water he had set on her nightstand.
They both changed out of their work clothes and lay in bed facing each other.
"I love you" she told him, tracing his face with her fingertips.
"I love you too. Feeling sleepy yet?" he asked her.
"Feeling drugged, I think. I've never liked that feeling."
"I know you don't. Just try to relax Mackenzie" he pleaded.
"Roll over please" she slurred to him.
"What?"
"Roll over…reverse spoon remember?"
He smiled at that and turned away from her. Sure enough, she sidled her way over toward him and planted her nose at the base of his neck. Soon, he could feel soft little breaths against him as she fell asleep with her head resting against his shoulder blade.
"Goodnight Mackenzie. I love you."
