Hi guys! Hope you enjoy! By the way, I have no earthly idea how long it would take to return to work after a gunshot wound. I went with an even month. If that's not even close, I apologize. Thanks for the reviews, you guys are the best.

Disclaimer: The characters don't belong to me.


"You have that serious look you get when you're thinking too hard about something," Mackenzie accuses and she traces the worry lines on Will's face. It's been four long weeks since the incident, as Mac has taken to calling it, and she finally had gotten the all clear to return to work. She had watched one last show from bed earlier that night, and when he had returned home and crawled in next to her, he had looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

On day six of her convalescence, she had quietly brought up the subject of returning to her apartment. She didn't want to, he didn't want her to, but in typical Will and Mackenzie fashion, neither of them had communicated their wishes very well. The conversation that occurred reminded Mackenzie a whole lot of the famous "Who is on first" comedy routine. It had also resulted in their first minor fight as a newly reunited couple, and had ended finally with Mac yelling,

"I don't want to go home, you dolt! I just didn't want to overstay my welcome!" And Will responding with,

"Well, I certainly don't want you to go home, I've been trying to get up the courage for days to ask you to move in for good, for Christ's sake!" Mac's face had softened and a small smile crept across her face.

"You want me to move in?" She had asked.

"Of course," he sighed.

"You don't think it's too soon?" She questioned. Will had shrugged.

"I know that we wasted a lot of time, and I'd like it if we didn't waste any more," he answered truthfully. "But I understand if you aren't ready." Dr. Habib had prepared him for the possibility that Mackenzie might need more than two days to decide to move in with Will.

"You've had a life altering epiphany brought on by the realization that you could have lost her, but she was unconscious and recovering from a gunshot wound," Dr. Habib had said. "Just don't totally freak out if she needs more time to make such a big decision."

"I'm ready," Mac assured him, tugging on his t-shirt and pulling him closer to her. "I don't need more time. I absolutely do not need more time."

She had only been home once since then, Will firmly planted by her side, to pack a suitcase with essentials. Since then, he and Lonny would stop by on the way home from work most nights to grab things she requested. They took handfuls of clothes and boxes of books and her apartment was emptying out as his, no their, apartment was becoming more cluttered. Will strictly forbid Mac from physically moving anything, but she was given free reign to buy new furniture and he hired movers and decorators to pack up the rest of her things, and she was allowed to oversee the progress from the couch, dictating where to hang photos or put rugs and vases.

The move gave her something to do while she was stuck in bed, and kept her from completely losing her mind. She was far from completely moved in, and she still had to figure out what to do with her apartment, but she was there every night when Will returned home, and it felt so damn good.

And now she was returning to work, and he was brooding. She wasn't sure what exactly was wrong, but she knew him well enough to know that he had entered full on brood mode.

"Don't worry about it," he says, kissing her softly. "You should get some rest."

"I'm fine," Mackenzie waves his concern away. "I'm worried about you."

He doesn't know exactly how to tell her, because she's so excited about returning to the office, and he'd hate to dampen her mood, but he's terrified of her returning to the office, and not just because, her hurting aside, being cocooned in his apartment these past few weeks, leaving only a handful of times to go to doctor's appointments or to her old apartment to pick up things or oversee the packing, has been wonderful. But mostly he's terrified for her. In here, she's safe, out there, she's not. The unresolved threat is there, lurking, and his breath catches when he thinks about it.

"Please don't worry," he says, and he picks up her hands and intertwines their fingers. "It's just my stupid shit." He sighs. "I'm just...I couldn't stand if anything else happened to you."

He wants to lock her up, here in their apartment, where she's whole and unharmed. He wants to make sure nothing can hurt her, nothing can touch her, and he knows that's ridiculous, and that he can't. They have to resume their lives, she has to resume her life, but it's hard to forget the image of her bleeding.

"Will," Mackenzie's voice is soft.

"There's...you know, still people who want to hurt me."

"Trust me, I know," Mac mutters.

"You were shot because you were standing next to me," Will says.

"You're afraid it could happen again?"

"Of course I am!" Will cries.

"You're right, it could." Will makes a strangled sounding noise, and Mackenzie squeezes his hand. "Or you could be hurt. Or it may never happen. But you can't worry about it, Billy. Because you can't do anything about it," Mac tries to reason. "I know you feel guilty about what happened, and I know only time is going to make that any better, but I promise you no one blames you, least of all me. And I would be lying if I said that sometimes I didn't think about it. I worry about you too, you know. But we can't live like that."

"I know," he says, and he tugs her closer to him. "I do know that."

"All I know, Will, is that I'm here, you're here, we're both fine, and I love you," Mac tells him forcefully. "And for the moment, I can't think of anything else that matters."


"This was Mackenzie's first week back at work, right?" Dr. Habib asked. "How'd it go?"

"She was a force to be reckoned with," Will said with a small shake of his head. "Of course, she over did it and tired herself out, but other than her being exhausted at the end of the night, it's going pretty well."

"Now that the week is half over and nothing bad has happened, are you less terrified?"

"I never said I was terrified," Will argued, and Jack just stared at him. "Okay, yes, I was terrified."

"But you made it through the first couple of days, and things are slowly going back to normal?"

"Except that she lives with me now, and when we leave at night, we leave together," Will pointed out.

"Those are good changes, I would think," Dr. Habib said.

"Those are very good changes," Will corrected.

"Are you still waiting for the other shoe to drop?"

"I'm not," Will tried. He sighed. "It just always does seem to drop."

"You can't live like that," Dr. Habib said.

"I'm aware, Mac and I already had this conversation," Will smirked at his doctor. "You're becoming more and more superfluous, Doc."

"I imagine you think that would offend me," Jack returned the smirk. "But it's actually sort of my goal to make myself superfluous."

"I know that I can't keep worrying about things out of my control, but it's only been a month. Cut me some slack. I'm doing pretty well, all things considered." Will acknowledged the fact that he was fucked up. But even still, there was no one he was going to bounce back from watching Mackenzie slip away from him while he held her bleeding in his arms, not in a month.

"You are doing well," Dr. Habib agreed. "And I think it's great that you're talking to Mackenzie about your fears."

"I can't screw this up," Will said. "This relationship, I can't fuck it up. Ruining this relationship is the only thing that scares me almost as much as that fucking psycho still out there."

"You won't screw it up," Dr. Habib reassured.

"You don't know that, you can't say that for sure," Will argued.

"Considering all that you've been through, and the fact that both of you have lived without the other and you were both unhappy," Dr. Habib said.

"It sucked," Will interrupted. "Being away from Mac sucked."

"Right," Dr. Habib continued. "So odds are you're going to work harder than most to make sure that this relationship works."

"It has to," Will replied. "It just has to."


Sometimes they were so busy that Will forgot that he had ever been worried about Mackenzie returning to work. She tired easily, and he hovered more those first few weeks back, but with an election and all the other things happening in the world, they were so crazy busy that Will forgot about the threat.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Thanks to Lonny's constant presence, it was hard to completely forget about the threat, but Lonny only showed up in the mornings and after the show to escort Will and now Mackenzie home.

Some things had changed. Will always exited the building before Mackenzie, his body firmly planted in front of hers. She wasn't sure if that would ever change, if he would ever slip up and hold the door open for her and let her slip out first. But she didn't mind it, not really, it eased his mind and it was such a small thing. He would take her hand and he would lead the way out of the building, his body protecting hers, Lonny protecting him. She knew that he replayed that night in his head, sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night and have to tug her closer, and she knew that he was seeing the blood stain her blouse, his hands shaking and covered in red, and she would plant a row of kisses along his jaw and whisper that she was there and that everything was okay.

They still fought, though now they worked out their differences sometimes with Will pulling Mackenzie into his bathroom in his office and attaching his mouth to hers against the locked door. More than once Mac had to veto office sex.

"This place is made entirely of glass," she argued. He had raised a challenging eyebrow, and she had shaken her head with a smile.

And they had visitors, Will had visitors, something that had rarely happened before. They started doing dinner at their apartment after Thursday night's show every week. Sloan was a regular, as were Jim and Maggie, who were dating, casually, Mac had told him. Neal was there with a new girl almost every week, and usually there was at least another member or two from their team. Charlie stopped in when he could, and Don had been showing up more and more after the ten o'clock show was over and making sure his seat was next to Sloan's. Some nights it was just a few people, and some Thursdays it was a crowd, causing Will to wonder how in the world Mackenzie had ever gotten him to agree to this.

"I get tired of Hang Chew's," she pouted.

The funny thing was that he actually liked it. Which surprised the hell out of him.

"Sometimes I think being shot was the best thing that could have happened to me," Mac mused one night as they were curled up in bed. It was a Thursday, and Sloan had been the last to leave. It was a small crowd that night, just Sloan, Tess, and Neal. They had argued about reforming welfare, and drank copious amounts of wine, which Mackenzie knew was going to bite everyone in the ass when they arrived at work in the morning.

"Don't say that," Will's voice was firm.

"Would we have gotten here without it?" She asked.

"Yes. We would have. And that night? The night you were shot? That was the worst night of my life, Mackenzie. So I can't imagine finding anything good about that night."

"I'm just saying, silver lining," Mac murmured. Will knew she was a little more than a little drunk, and he pressed a firm kiss to her forehead. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm happier than I've been in a really, really long time, Billy."

"I know," he brushed her hair off her face and leaned in for a kiss. "But still, don't say that."

"It was harder for you," she said suddenly. "My being shot. I was unconscious. It was harder for you that night than it was for me. Although, it was no picnic for me, either. But, still."

"It's not an experience I would be willing to repeat," Will said, and that was an understatement. It was an experience that still kept him up at night, terrified. It was an experience that had done some damage, and he was so, so grateful that she was okay and that here she was in his bed, but it was still something that he could have done without.

"No," Mac said softly. "I wouldn't want to either."

"Go to sleep, sweetheart," he told her. "You're going to be cranky in the morning. Maybe you shouldn't have cracked open that third bottle of wine."

"You, shush," she smiled a crooked smile at him. "I love you, Billy. A lot."

"I love you too, Mac," he replied. "So much."