Please allow me to put a quick shoutout to everyone who was kind enough to leave comments on my new fic Hello, Goodbye! That's the most amazing response I've ever had for a fic – different people getting different feels from it is the best compliment you could have given me, and was incredibly touching! Thank you so much guys! I'll sleep well tonight! :)
I should also reassure the people I scared, however, that I AM a WillxMac shipper to the bitter end. I haven't given up. But, for now, back to the angst for a little while longer. For the show must go on…
Hurt – Johnny Cash
Let Her Go – Passenger
I own neither.
Chapter 2: four weeks later
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go
He was sick with himself.
He was throwing himself his own personal pity party, but he couldn't help it. He had nowhere else to go and nothing else, or no one else to be with.
It was nearing November and he was out here smoking, a three-quart empty bottle of Johnny Walker on the ground next to his lounger, strumming along to Hurt on his guitar. His fingers numb, not just from the chords, but from the nipping cold tearing at him as the wind tore through the maze of buildings which comprised Manhattan.
How had he messed this up so badly?
He had heard Jim on the phone to her earlier. He had actually been laughing!
Wherever she was, she was okay. And he so wanted to hate her for that. But he couldn't.
She had said a month. She had said it to everybody. But he – he had heard Jim say…
He took another large swig of Walker and plucked angrily at the chords.
"But I remember everything…what have I become my sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end…and you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt."
He sang it at the night, howling at the veiled moon behind the clouds, not knowing what he wanted to come of it. It's not like anything could. Except maybe a sectioning… But it just seemed to fit.
Despite whatever Mac had said to their staffers, he still caught their disappointed looks at least three times a day. He knew what they thought of his actions, of his choices.
Three weeks earlier…
It had been five days since Jim had come storming into the conference room, calling Will out. Five days since he and Mackenzie had properly spoken to each other. Five days since he had become the unspoken pariah of the bullpen.
Mostly he avoided dwelling on his newfound social status by pondering whether, if he had been public about their break up five years ago, would Mac have been the one being treated like a plague-carrying alien whilst he got all the support.
After that he usually wanted to throw up. Because his mother had consistently told him whenever his little brother broke one of his things that two wrongs don't make a right, so he shouldn't break something in retaliation.
He occasionally wonders whose side his mother would be on right now.
He can see Charlie struggling with his disappointment when they talk. He's the only one who really hasn't abandoned Will. But that's parents for you.
Will acknowledges that everyone is still acting professionally (he's almost certain that Mac has had a word with them), but he's also fairly sure that if he and Mackenzie stood on opposite sides of the room and asked them to pick one, he'd come off worse.
He had caught her and Jim bickering as they exited her office. She looked determined whilst Jim was looking mildly alarmed, and seemed to be trying to talk her down as they both headed off in the direction of the elevators.
He's intrigued.
He used to be the one she'd always run ideas by.
Since she returned that role has been shared fairly equally with Jim – something that was always a tiny, petty twinge in Will's side, but one which he ignored.
In the last five days, however, that twinge has erupted into a fully-fledged jealousy and resentment that he kind of hates himself for.
He knows that if he just comes clean then there is chance to salvage this. But it really is like he has been paralyzed; trapped inside his own mind which has been overthrown by the rebel forces in his brain led by a horrific alternate of himself, and he can only watch as his life falls apart in front of him.
That analogy turns out to be oddly appropriate forty-eight hours later when he walks into a room where Mac, Charlie and Jim inform him that Mac is taking a month's leave to go and cover a story with an old friend in Mali.
He's furious.
Is running off to warzone just what she does? Turns suicidal?
He's about to make this argument when he really looks at the three people in front of him. The steel in Jim's eyes, the resolution in Charlie's, and he's certain that if Mac wasn't staring at her shoes he'd catch the defeat in hers, and so he swallows his retort.
So she is giving up?
He tries to ask this under the guise of asking what will happen about Genoa. It's the first time she's looked at him whilst speaking to him since that day.
She explains that she's only going for a month so she would be back before the shit really hit the fan. And then he said it.
"If you're only going away for a month then why go at all?" He asked, frustration and exasperation entangling themselves so tight into one sentence that it may as well have sounded like a desperate plea rather than a half-legitimate question. Jim looked like he might have pounced, but Charlie was standing next to him, apparently keeping him grounded.
Mackenzie's eyes could have shot lasers, they looked so hot.
"Because I can't even –" he knew she was about to say 'look at you right now', but being his typical Mackenzie, she was refusing to show any sign of weakness to her adversary; which was him these days. "Because I need the time, okay?"
She stepped forward, worrying her lip between her teeth in a way that always drove him crazy, though she had no idea. "I'm not abandoning you guys. I would never do that. But we've already got enough shit press as it is right now along with a stack of problems as high as the ceiling, and maybe if I disappear for a while it will keep the focus on what's really at stake here rather than a non-relationship."
Was she talking about him and Nina, or him and her?
Charlie and Jim seemed to have faded into the background, he was so mesmerized by the fact that she was standing two feet away from him and actually talking to him for the first time in days - even if what she was saying wasn't exactly positive.
"Jim has agreed to fill in during that time, so you don't need to have a hissy fit about finding another EP."
Okay, so now Jim came firmly back into his mind. Will actually gulped.
The look in Jim's eyes was pure loathing. He was not going to give him an easy ride.
Knowing he was personally trained by Mac, Will was certain he'd know just how far he could push revenge without it be ostensibly unprofessional.
Will had no idea how the two of them were going to survive four weeks as partners, but he also felt a totally inexplicable sense of pride at the younger man, who was clearly doing this out of his devotion to Mackenzie. She had asked and he had given without reservation. He had put her needs first.
He had once been that guy. God, Jim Harper!
He could find no argument to justify him wanting he to stay; because right now he couldn't justify himself having the right to ask her to.
He wondered if Mali had been a choice or whether there had been few options. Did she choose danger to piss him off.
Don't be so fucking self-centered Billy! Her disembodied voice spoke tiredly in his brain.
She had been laughing on the phone with Jim.
A tear that he had been stubbornly holding in for the better part of an hour finally made its way over his eyelid and down his cheek. Not that he could feel it in the cold wind. His toes had lost their feeling about twenty minutes ago.
"Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear…you are someone else, I am still right here."
His voice was more of a croak now that the dam had burst, but he managed to get it out before he hugged his guitar to his chest and tried to forget all the times they had sat together, her foot pressing into his thigh whilst he played.
And that's what he was scared of.
She had been laughing on the phone with Jim. She had been happy.
He was miserable.
What if she had found a way to move on? Not that he could blame her. Not after that day. Hell, it's what he would have done. It's what he had done. Or what he had tried to do.
He just wanted her home. He'd deal with the fallout afterwards.
Ignoring the snowflakes that were starting to fall, he stared off into the distance as his fingers slowly stopped moving on the strings, at a loss for what to play.
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go
Okay, appearance from Mac soon, and if the angst is getting too much for you, just remember what I said earlier ;)
Please review if you can! The support and comments/input have been so amazing! I love hearing from you guys! :) Cheers! Ax