A/N: Well, I avoided writing this chapter until I could avoid it no more. Trigger warning for child abuse.
CHAPTER FIVE: TWO DAYS AGO
At twenty-six weeks she's starting to have serious problems sleeping again, and not from lack of trying. Sleeping on her back is out, and lying on her left side aggravates the adhesions from the stabbing. Although aggravated may be too kind a word, he thinks, brushing the back of an index finger down a faded stretch mark from when she was pregnant with Charlotte.
Will remembers how painful it was for her in the last few weeks before Charlotte was born, as their daughter kicked and elbowed and stretched the mass of scar tissue low in Mac's abdomen to beyond what her body was willing to adapt to. And five hundred milligrams of acetaminophen, the maximum of what the obstetrician was willing to allow a day, didn't dull it at all.
And this one is on track to be bigger than Charlotte was.
"What are you thinking about?" Her hand reaches down to where his head is resting on her thigh, her fingers combing his hair into place.
"Nothing."
Mac arches a single brow up from her mountain of pillows. "Liar," she says, tapping the side of his head with her index finger. "I know something's going on in there."
He doesn't want to worry her. They already went through his insecurities the first time around, and he went to Habib and he let Charlie hand him drink after drink and Liz rambled on the phone to him for an hour about how if she could do it so could he, and she's been doing it the past seventeen years with four so clearly he can handle one, and eventually he got over himself. But they're back, the insecurities, accompanied by an acute sense of panic and the lingering feeling of inadequacy that his father instilled in him at a young age.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, fitting his hand over the curve of her belly and looking up at her. She's beautiful, of course, her hair thicker and shinier, her skin rosy and clear, her curves rounder. And it's August now, so all she's inclined to wear to bed is her panties and one of his tee shirts. Tonight's is an old and faded News Night freebie, pushed up under her breasts so he can marvel at her bare stomach.
Mac knits her brows together and covers his hand with hers. "Better, now. Soon we're going to have to add 'pre-natal massage' to your resume."
"Well, I am at your service," he says, smiling despite himself, thinking back six months to other services rendered, against the sink in his bathroom at work. "Although I think that's how this one happened in the first place." Laughing, she murmurs something about how he was exactly complaining that night, which only makes his smirk grow wider. "How's our boy?"
Almost on cue, he feels a foot press back against his palm.
"Good evening," he says, stroking his thumb over the spot on Mac's belly that he feels resistance against. "I thought we put you to sleep."
"He likes your voice," she says softly. "Just like Charlotte."
"The studies say that they can't hear—"
"Oh, screw the studies," she retorts, rolling her eyes. "They're my babies, it's my body. I think I know. Besides, your voice has a distinct cadence. The baby knows who you are."
Will has no idea what that is supposed to mean. "Distinct… cadence."
"Haven't you read the focus group data?" she quips, cocking her head. A moment later she grimaces and looks down at her abdomen, her hands moving to frame either side of her belly, low at her hips. "That's my liver, love. You're going to be just like your sister, aren't you? She liked my ribs. We make long babies." Her eyes refocus on him. "That's your fault."
"You're pretty long in some parts too, dear. Some of my favorite parts." Squeezing one of her calves, he tries to ignore the flaring sense of anxiety burning up his chest. But he's happy, and he knows he's happy. He has no idea why he can't just be happy.
"Thanks," Mac replies shortly, wiggling as she tries to settle into a comfortable position and eventually settling half on her right side, half reclining on her many pillows. Losing her thigh to use as his pillow, Will moves to curl up behind her. Sighing, she reaches back and grabs his hand to return it to her stomach. "Can you do the talking thing so he'll calm down and I can sleep? One more night like the past four and I'm going to lose my fucking mind."
It had worked. Twenty minutes in the fluttering in Mac's belly had stopped, and another twenty minutes later her eyes were drooping, and another ten after that her breathing evened out and every muscle in her body relaxed and Will knew she was finally asleep.
He couldn't stay in bed.
And now, on the floor of the half-redecorated nursery, slumped against the espresso-stained crib he had hauled up from the basement a week ago, he wishes he had. Stayed in bed with MacKenzie, where he would have kept his panic in check for her sake, so he wouldn't be hyperventilating like he hasn't in years in their son's unfinished bedroom.
She had fallen asleep and he had grown restless and gotten up, gone into Charlotte's forfeited room that they had painted with a Hundred Acre Wood mural (they kept the green, there was a debate about keeping the color or painting the room blue) at the same time they had gotten Charlotte's new room painted pink with the Peter Rabbit mural he and Mac had decided to surprise her with (his daughter loves rabbits, and the books, and they chose her favorite illustration from The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and hired a mural artist to paint it on a wall in her new room to ease the transition) and it came up on him with no warning—
Their son's nursery (a name, he needs a name) is—
Will doesn't know how it happened. And it's not like it hasn't happened before, he had flashbacks in law school and during particularly rough caseloads and it's the reason he left the Brooklyn ADA's office before he burnt out.
He walked into his son's nursery—with the carefully-planned mural, the crib and the changing table and the rocking chair that was a gift from Ted and Susan, the clothes his sisters have been sending and the picture his brother scrounged up from when they were boys, the rug that looks like a forest floor and the new crib bedding they'd picked out while just looking at a store in SoHo, still in its plastic wrapping—and it just happened.
(Wanted. Their son is wanted.
Both their children are desperately wanted, and he desperately wants to keep them safe, to make sure they feel loved and secure and they're clothed and fed and happy and all the things he knows can so tenderly shatter.)
He never knows how old he is in the flashbacks, except smaller. John's patterns were set long before he could form memories, and they so easily became instinct to manage and avoid. Fiona was there—
Whimpering, she crawls under the table, catching her hand under the leg of a chair carelessly knocked aside. Her cries escalate, but she knows to quiet quickly, stuffing her sticky thumb into her mouth as she hides. Safe enough, he thinks, eyes darting to their bedroom door.
—but still a baby, barely walking. It was when he was teaching Fiona to walk, he thinks. Mom was holding down a factory job, and Dad was staying home with them. Fiona had started pulling herself up onto anything she could find to hold onto, and the bedroom they all shared was too cramped—
Her blonde curls aren't brushed because she doesn't sit still long enough, and the knots make her cry. The footed pajamas are second hand, but still warm enough. The living room is exceedingly bright, the sun reflecting off the snow outside. Fiona's small hands were in his as he led her across the floor, and Mickey plays catch with himself while sitting cross-legged on the couch.
—at least that's what Will's pieced together, those aren't the moment that his mind forces him to relive.
The sound of shattering glass. Dad emerging, still drunk from the night before, from his bedroom. Shoving Mickey towards their bedroom, telling him to shut up. A blow across his head that makes his vision swim. Fiona screaming from under the table, Dad going for her. Blood trickling down from his hairline. Reaching for Dad to keep him from reaching Fi. Another punch, before deciding to control himself.
He can't remember what Mickey broke fooling around with the baseball.
(It seems important.)
He should have told him not to throw the ball around in the house, but it was twenty degrees outside and there was snow, and—
Fiona screaming from under the table, Dad going for her. Blood trickling down from his hairline. Reaching for Dad to keep him from reaching Fi. Ripping Dad around, landing a hit on his chin. Dad staggering, and then curling his hand back into a fist. Fi screaming. He looks towards the bedroom door that Mickey is hiding behind. Liz is at a friend's on a neighboring farm. Mom is at work. Dad threatening to get the wooden spoon from the kitchen to hit Fiona to get her to quiet, but controlling himself.
A finger, threatening. "You wish you could hit hard enough, Billy."
The back door slams and he goes for Fiona, dragging her out from under the table and into his lap. Mickey jams his boots onto his feet and runs for Lizzie. It's just him, the blood trickling into his eyes and the pounding in his head, and a crying toddler.
Rationalizing himself out of it isn't working, and getting his Xanax involves going into the bedroom, and he knows he'd wake Mac if he did that.
His breathing is harsh and loud in the sparsely furnished, darkened room. The less he tries to focus on it the more he does, and he loses count of the seconds and minutes as they pass until he looks at the clock hanging over the door at sees that he's been sitting here for almost forty-five minutes.
Closing his eyes, he reminds himself it's not real.
"Billy!" Mac looks like she's been standing in the doorway for quite a while, if how tightly she's gripping the doorknob for support is anything to go by.
The fear gripping her features lessens slightly when he looks up, making eye contact with her. Not that he's capable of much more than that; his chest is heaving and his hands and feet have long gone numb, a pitiable amount of oxygen is actually getting to his brain, and he's starting to lose the edges of his vision along with most of his hearing.
That went almost immediately, his ears ringing as soon as he gave control over to the memories his mind was forcing to the surface.
When his eyes focus again, Mac is on the ground with him, trying to squeeze feeling back into his hands. "You're okay," she murmurs, over and over again, and then sits down next to him.
With a strangled cry that sounds foreign to his ears he curls onto his side, hiding his face in what remains of Mac's lap. Shushing him quietly like she does to Charlotte after a nightmare, her fingers drift through his hair.
"You're okay, honey."
He wants to tell her it's not, but he's crying too hard and every time he feels the panic wane his mind tricks him into thinking he's back in the farmhouse, that these arms aren't his wife's, that this room isn't a safe one.
MacKenzie doesn't demand an explanation, or even ask what happened, or tell him to breathe. Of course she doesn't, she's been here before, she knows you can't just fucking breathe and so she just keeps holding him, even though the floor must be killing her. He tries to focus on her, how the tops of her thighs are round and soft and warm and how her voice is airy in the way it is when she's exhausted, how her hands are gentle and firm and this is MacKenzie, he's not a kid anymore, and he's safe in his own home.
"Here." Wrapping her fingers around his, she takes his hand and puts on her belly where their son is kicking ferociously. "See? He knows who you are, Will. He knows you're his Daddy. He knows you love him."
Turning onto his side, towards her, he lifts both his hands to caress her stomach. His fingers are tingling, but when a cloud finally passes from in front of the moon the nursery is bathed in a silver glow and he can see her and finally it begins to seem real.
That this is his reality.
Blinking rapidly, his vision clears and he sees tears welled in Mac's eyes. His breathing hitches again, and she pushes his hand where the baby's last kick was.
He doesn't know how long they stay there like that, but eventually he regains control of his breathing and sits up. Her eyes are still fearful, but she looks more worried for him than anything else.
"I'm sorry," he rasps, leaning forward to hide his face in her hair, to kiss her temple.
All she does is shush him again, before bringing her hands to his cheeks to dry his face.
They need to go back to bed.
Shakily, he climbs to his feet and leans down to help Mac to hers, guilt gnawing at him when she winces and plants her hands on the small of her back. Noticing him watching her, she smiles in a small and tired way, offers him a hand, and leads him out into the landing. Wordlessly, she closes the door to the nursery and tows him back to their bedroom, lit by the glow of a solitary lamp, the one on her nightstand. Her alarm clock reads that it's just past four in the morning.
"I'll call Don in a few hours," Mac says, standing a few feet behind him. "He and Elliot can do the show tonight. Sloan and Jim can handle ten o'clock."
"I'm fine," he replies, realizing half a second too late how ridiculous he sounds.
Sighing, she wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her face in-between his shoulders. "It might be a good idea," she says, voice muffled.
"I'll call Habib," he concedes. "Get the next appointment he has available. I don't want to wait until next week."
"Good," she says, and he thinks she might be crying again.
Breathing deeply as he can, he's trying to clear his head of the cottony feeling when he hears the intercom crackle, and then a sleepy and whiny:
"Mummy? Daddy?"
"Monsters," Mac says, sighing again, sounding almost relieved. Letting him go, she steps back. When he turns around, she's bracing herself against the foot of the bed, one leg through a pair of black yoga pants. "I'll get her. You should take something, sweetheart."
"I—"
"You'll sleep if she's in bed with us, right?" she asks, adjusting the wide elastic band to fit.
"Yeah," he chokes out.
"Then take your Xanax," she says gently, "and drink some water and take ibuprofen. I'll be down in a few minutes with Charlotte."
So that's what he does.
And fifteen minutes later Charlotte is asleep in bed between them, clutching her blanket and her stuffed bunny. Anti-anxiety medication slowing the thrumming in his bloodstream, he wraps his arms around her small body and also falls asleep, under Mac's watchful eyes.
Thanks for reading!