A/N: Thanks to everyone who left reviews on the prologue or followed/favorited this story! Here is chapter one, which flashes back quite a bit in time. I'm trying (however successfully) to take a leaf out of Sorkin's book with his flashbacks.
CHAPTER ONE: TWENTY-ONE WEEKS AGO
There's less pomp about it the second time around. They've fallen into a routine, and while things are hectic with a four-year-old, Charlotte's finally grown up enough that they can keep a schedule that begets some sense of predictability in their lives.
Mac marks the days she's supposed to get her period on the calendar in their bedroom with a little red dot on the bottom right corner. The first day comes and her period doesn't, but that's normal enough. She's forty-two; a day late isn't a cause for alarm. The second day they begin to be suspicious, and after the third she stops at CVS on the ride home.
After putting Charlotte to bed they retreat to their bedroom. Will sighs, sitting on the edge of the bed and watches Mac disappear into the master bathroom, unbuttoning her blouse with one hand, paper bag of pregnancy tests in the other.
"I swear to god, if you've knocked me up again," she grumbles, mostly teasing. He can hear her clothes hitting the tile floor—the flutter of her heavy wool skirt, the clack of her belt buckle on tile.
He laughs, pulling his sweater up over his head before shrugging out of his dress shirt. "You're the one who couldn't wait to get home."
Mac scoffs, and he hears the tearing of cardboard. The toilet lid opens and she asks him to put three minutes on the clock, and thirty seconds later his wife is padding out back into the bedroom in nothing but black lace briefs.
Affectionately rolling her eyes at his appreciative stare, she hands him the tests. Four of them, two brands, none of them yet showing any signs of life. Will remembers something about Jim buying her three different kinds with Charlotte, muttering about triple confirmation.
Leaning down she picks up the shirt he's discarded onto the floor and slips her arms into it, the hem falling to the tops of her thighs. "It was once!" she protests, smiling and climbing onto her side of the bed. "You're fifty-three, you should not be this virile—"
"Thank you?" he says, skeptic, although vaguely proud of himself in an incredibly primordial way. "I think."
Mac pauses to straddle him, kiss him, and then flop over onto her back on her side of the bed.
"Charlotte took us months of hard work," she says in a fond and reminiscent tone.
He brings one of the pregnancy tests back up to level with his eye line, grousing impatiently. The past few hours the both of them have been mentally planning what to do if the stick(s) turns pink.
(Or just says "pregnant," considering the brands Mac chose.)
The brownstone they moved to last year (they traded a doorman and a penthouse for Charlotte to grow up in a house, with a backyard, albeit a tiny one) has more than enough space for another baby, and Charlotte is old enough to be somewhat autonomous. In the fall—a few months before the maybe baby comes—she'll be starting pre-K all day, and they have a deep bench of babysitters that they can rely on.
Taking her hand—he knows Mac's probably freaking out, no matter how much covert smiling she's been doing at him all day—he watches the timer on his phone tick down to one minute.
"Oh god," she blurts out, half-aghast and half-amused.
"What?"
Mac snorts, hoisting herself up to sit back against the pillows lined up along the headboard. "We can't tell the baby they were conceived during a romp on the sink in your bathroom."
Not that it wasn't fun, Will thinks. Or that he doesn't appreciate Mac hauling him into the bathroom attached to his office following the kind of show where the White House calls to ask about their sources.
It's just that Mac was starting to get a reaction to the pill she was on—something to do with the beta blockers she takes for her heart palpitations—and went off it months ago, and was supposed to get an IUD implanted but then Charlotte got the flu, and then he got the flu, and the appointment kept getting pushed back, they were back to using condoms like two college students.
Except when Mac grabbed him by his lapels two and a half weeks ago and pushed him very firmly into his bathroom at work, where he very much did not stash contraceptives. Although he distinctly remembers Mac declaring that she hadn't a fuck to give, thank you very much, in the middle of unzipping his trousers.
"I mean," he starts, looking down at Mac when she leans her head on his shoulder, "we can't tell Charlotte that she was probably conceived on the couch during Law and Order."
Mac snorts. "Do you still really think it was then?"
There's been debate, but simple counting indicates that the end of their scarce seven month sojourn as a childless couple came to an end with a twelve hour marathon of Law and Order reruns that they largely spent naked and joined at the pelvis when not snarking about improper procedure and ripped-from-the-headlines plots.
"The math heavily indicates it was then." He picks up her hand and laces their fingers together. Twenty seconds. "And the law of averages."
She moans. "Oh god… they're going to do the math. They're going to know it was Valentine's Day. Although they won't know it was in your office…"
Ten… nine… eight…
Mac squeezes his fingers in hers.
Seven…. six… five…
This is a good thing, he thinks. A baby is a good thing. Not just thinks, but feels. And the way MacKenzie is looking at him right now he knows even if the tests turn out negative, they're going to start trying. They're terrible planners but once something they want dangles in front of them they realize they want it and they take it, and—
Four… three…. two…
He barely gets a glance at the tests before Mac is pushing him down onto the bed, arms wrapping around his neck.
Here they go again.
After, much later, when they're lying on their backs under the covers, the full ramifications of what has happened—what is going to happen—begin to sink in. It's not abstract, like it was when they found out about Charlotte, when they spent days with their heads in the clouds about the maybe-baby going back and forth about what features should be inherited and what color to paint the nursery and how all names starting with the letter M should immediately be stricken from the list of candidates.
This time the first thought that crosses his mind—when he can feel all his extremities and he's caught his breath—is how tired they're going to be.
Mac nods, drawing the duvet up to her shoulders before rolling to curl into his side.
"I wonder how Charlotte's going to take the news that she's going to be a big sister," she muses. And then snorts. "We're going to have to explain the birds and the bees to her, you know."
"Fuck."
If only they had a less inquisitive child. But she's theirs, so there wasn't even a shot in hell she'd be anything besides interrogative.
Laughing, she tangles their legs together. "You, mister, grew up on a farm. I'd imagine you were told the honest truth fairly early on—"
"I'd really rather her not find out the way I did," he hastily says, pushing himself up a bit onto the stack of pillows still against the headboard. Like most lessons from his dad, being taught about sex was a barbed and pointed objective for the man. Will thinks he had asked, because his mother was pregnant with Michael and his dad knew that the old song and dance about mommies and daddies being in love was—
Well, even if John McAvoy had thought Will would believe it, he wasn't the kind of man to allow his children to indulge in any innocence.
Lifting her eyebrows, Mac stares up at him questioningly, with the same inquisitive look that she taught Charlotte to wear. "How did you find out?"
"Dad wanted to inseminate the heifer he'd just bought off a neighbor. I was five." He twirls a lock of her hair around his index finger and hesitates for a moment, but decides not to linger over everything that his father was and more pointedly, wasn't. He pulls her hair teasingly. "You?"
A wry smile tugs at the corner of her lips.
"I walked in on the French Ambassador bending his secretary over the desk in his private study during a diplomatic dinner. My mum's face when I asked why his Excellency was making Mademoiselle Sinclair make those noises like she was in pain…" Mac drifts off suggestively, and Will thanks god that they yet haven't been caught out when they've forgot to lock their bedroom door. "And then she told dad, who if I recall correctly, used the incident to make the Ambassador advocate the British rider on something or other to President Mitterrand. I mean, I didn't realize what they were doing until later on."
Peering up at him, she dissolves into giggles at his disbelieving snort.
"Okay, so neither of us have—"
"No, we can't exactly use the ways we were taught. If nothing else for the lack of cattle on Manhattan," she says, lightly and facetiously, before rolling onto her back, arms splaying. "I think there are books for this kind of thing," she tells him, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. "It seems like there'd be a market to exploit for that."
She sighs, but after that, is quiet for a long while, a melancholic kind of nervous taking hold of her features.
"I mean, we probably shouldn't tell her for a little while," he says, turning onto his side to face her. Under the sheets, he slides his hand over to rest atop her abdomen. It was around week ten, with Charlotte, that they were finally able to feel something. There'd been weight gain before that — her thighs and hips had softened and her breasts had gotten larger—but he remembers week ten being when something resembling a bump had appeared.
He wants to tell her that everything will be fine, but at the moment that would only sound like an empty platitude to her. Will wants to tell her that they have money, they have people who can help them, and the best OB in the city, and if something needs to be taken care of they can, without a doubt, barring the worst. And with Charlotte there had been low blood pressure and then high blood pressure and questionable blood sugar and bed rest, towards the very end, and Mac wound up going into labor in the middle of a snowstorm three weeks and change early—
But it had turned out alright.
"Yeah," she agrees, still staring up at the ceiling. Reflexively, she smiles nervously, moving her hands to rest over his, one of her thumbs rubbing circles over one of his knuckles. "I'll call the doctor in the morning and see when she can fit me in. I'll see if I can make it for before the eleven o'clock rundown so we can both make it and still take Charlie to school."
"It's gonna be fine," he tells her, moving closer until the tip of his nose touches her cheek.
"I know," she giggles, batting at him when he kisses her cheek.
He kisses her cheek again, more softly. "Not to, you know, tempt the wrath of whoever, but everything turned out just fine the first go around."
"More than fine, really," she murmurs, her smile sticking around. "The first one turned out pretty good. I just hope she doesn't think that we're having another baby because we hate her or something, because you took her to see Cinderella two weeks ago and the last thing we need is for her to switch over from her very interesting and very adorable rendition of Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful to In My Own Little Corner, so—"
Chuckling, he cuts her off there. "I still stand by my assertion that Charlotte singing Rodgers and Hammerstein is vastly better than her Frozen phase."
Mac makes a contented little noise, squirming even closer to him. "At least she got your singing voice, not mine. Anything she'll want to sing along to'll be preferable to a newborn screaming at three in the morning, regardless."
Barring nothing else, the fact that the two of them are already insomniacs (he takes hours on end to actually fall asleep, and Mac jerks awake at both the slightest thing or at the end of a REM cycle) did make it at least a little bit easier the last time. Not that the first couple months of Charlotte's life weren't excruciatingly exhausted, or that Mac, who breast fed until six months, wasn't awake every two hours for months on end and hormonal besides, but at least he was generally awake as well to get up and bring Charlotte to her.
If this kid is anything like their big sister, then they probably need to move Charlotte away from their room so she doesn't show up to nursery school looking like one of the walking dead.
(That'll be reserved for him, showing up for work. Or Mac. Depending on how long she wants to stay out of the game this time.)
"We should move her to one of the upstairs bedrooms. She's been wanting to paint her bedroom pink for months now anyway." When they moved into the brownstone last year they'd chosen green, like her nursery in apartment had been. And now Charlotte has fallen in love with Beatrix Potter. He's sure they can find a mural painter who can do something with that in pink. "And this way we keep in line with our 'no negotiating with the little terrorist' policy."
Mac frowns. "I don't like the idea of having her on another floor. She's still so little."
Four isn't little he thinks, a jarring cognitive dissonance flooding him with anxiety for a moment before he shakes it off. Charlotte has never, will never, have to do things that he's had to do. Not for herself and not for her little brother or sister. She's four, he tells himself. Charlotte is four and believes in fairies and mermaids and doesn't know anything but a warm safe home and a kitchen that never runs out of food. Charlotte is little.
And he knows that. Knows she's little because how her tiny body fits against his chest when he picks her up, or between him and Mac when they bring her into bed. Because she still likes to hold his hand when she walks downstairs and because her blanket is still bigger than her, trailing on the floor behind her. And Jupiter, of course, trailing right behind her as well.
Will can never tell if he's babying Charlotte or not babying her enough.
"Either way, there's only two bedrooms on this one. We could wait until the baby's four of five months old, but if they have the same set of lungs that Charlie did—" And they do want Charlotte to like the baby, which will be better facilitated if Charlotte can sleep. Sighing, he curls one of his arms under Mac's neck, kissing her cheek again at her worried expression. "There's an elevator, Mac, if she doesn't like going down the stairs at night. You know she likes to press the buttons, and we'll put her in the bedroom that has its own bathroom."
"I know, I know," she sighs, letting her eyes drift closed. Their bedroom is filled for a long moment with nothing but the sound of their breathing, deep and even, until a mischievous grin appears on Mac's lips. "You're not going to be able to rescue her from the monsters in her closet."
He'll put a fucking baby monitor in her room, if it comes to it. "Bite your tongue."
It's quiet again after that, until he looks down at Mac to see if she's fallen asleep and sees her smiling—unconsciously, he thinks—up at him. Raising an eyebrow, he rubs his thumb in a wide circle across the bottom of her belly.
What? he silently asks.
Contentedly, she sighs again. "We're having another baby." And then giggles, clearly amusing herself. "We'd better break-out the picket fence."
Rolling his eyes (affectionately, he hopes it looks like), he kisses her once more. Soon after, MacKenzie does drop off, making the small snuffling noises she makes when she's settling into to slumber, her nose winding being pressed somewhere along his collarbone. But he lies awake—like always, but not with worry tonight—tracing the same path over her stomach again and again.
A baby.
Thanks for reading!