The call hadn't really surprised him: he knew it would come, sooner or later, so he had been expecting it. That night at ER, after Mackenzie's car accident, he had begun to formulate, in his head, the plan to disclose that information in the best possible way.
Charlie stepped out of the elevator into Will's apartment and looked around. Something felt different; he couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was but it seemed more like a home than a bachelor pad. He was still trying to figure it out when Will appeared from the kitchen.
"Hey." He greeted him.
"Did you change something?" Charlie asked him, his curiosity winning over.
"Mac's been buying some things to put around the place. She thinks this needs more color and a softer look, whatever the hell that means." Will replied.
"It means that it'll look less like a man-cave and more like an actual flat." Mac told him, walking past him to greet Charlie with a kiss on the cheek.
"How are you feeling?" Charlie asked her, concerned with her tired look.
"I'm fine." She said, smiling at him.
"She's been tossing around all night." Will added. "Coffee?" He asked Charlie, who nodded.
While Will went to the kitchen to make some coffee for the three of them, Charlie and Mac sat down at the table. Mac turned off the four TVs and left the remote next to her. Will quickly returned with their coffee and served it before sitting down on Mac's left.
Charlie took a sip of his coffee and leant back on his seat. "The Press Office got a couple of calls regarding you two. Nothing serious but those paparazzi outside your building makes me think they're onto something."
"Sloan said they know I'm here." Mac said.
"I checked the tabloids this morning and nothing popped out." Will continued. "I don't know what are they waiting for."
"It's only a rumor." Charlie told them. "And there have been rumors about you two since Mac returned to ACN." He continues, consciously avoiding mentioning the famous email that got reported in their own morning show. "They need something more to report, something solid, or the story won't sell."
"What do you want us to do?" Will asked his boss. "I'd be happy to never leave the apartment again but Mac would go crazy and she'd end killing me." He joked.
Charlie looked at him, his eyebrow raised. "Why are you so calm about this?"
"He decided to be the optimistic one." Mac explained, also raising her eyebrow at Will's smug grin.
"God, help us." Charlie said, trying not to laugh at Will's sudden outraged expression. "Tomorrow, first thing, you'll report your relationship to HR." He told them, answering Will's previous question. "Then, they'll release a statement. Simple and easy."
"Not so easy." Mac muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"What?" Both men said at the same time.
"You have to call Nina." Mac told Will, sighing deeply.
"Oh, fuck." Will said, letting his head fall on his hands.
"Why?" Charlie asked them, confused. Neither of them replied, they kept staring at each other. Out of the blue, Mac stood up and walked to the balcony, returning a few seconds later with a lit cigarette on her hand.
At Charlie's questioning look, she shrugged her shoulders. "I'm trying to quit."
"Again." Charlie deadpanned.
"Will made a deal with Nina." She quickly said, hoping that her words would make Charlie stop looking at her like a disapproving father. She succeeded.
"What did you do?" He asked Will.
"Remember I met with her about 9/11?" At Charlie's nod, he continued. "It was a cover-up. She wanted to ask me about my relationship with Mac. We found out that her source was the stalker. Nina was ready to run it but she agreed to wait until we were ready." He explained.
"In exchange of..." Charlie began.
"Being the first to know when we decided to go public." Will ended the sentence.
"And it never crossed your mind to tell me this piece of information?" Charlie asked them.
"Mac didn't know, at the time." Will explained.
"Alright." Charlie said. "Call Nina and tell her to meet us at noon, in my office."
Will stood up, grabbed his phone and went to the balcony to make the call. Mac didn't move, her sight fixed on Will's back. Charlie softly said her name, breaking her stare and making her turn around to look at him. With his hand, he invited her to sit in front of him. "Are you sure this is what you want?"
"What? Having my life spread in tabloid magazines for everyone to read?" She sarcastically replied. "It's something we have to do so we better do it in our terms. This way, we'll be able to control the story."
"Do your parents know?" He asked.
"Yeah." Mac simply said.
"Everything?" Charlie asked, again.
"They know Will and I are back together." She replied. "There's nothing they can do about the rest. I'll tell them once it's over, I don't want to worry them. Besides, it's not something I want to do over the phone."
"I understand." Charlie told her, reaching for her hand and lightly squeezing it. Mac smiled at him in gratitude.
Mac stubbed her cigarette at the same time that Will returned to the room. "She agreed." He said, sitting down next to Mac.
"Of course she did." Mac replied.
"Cover story?" Charlie asked him.
"I told her we'd polish up the deal tomorrow." Will explained.
"Perfect." Charlie said. "Now, call your shadows and tell them I'm taking you out to lunch. You can't spend all the weekend holed up inside this apartment."
"But..." Mac began to object.
"I'm not taking no for an answer." He insisted.
Nina wasn't sure what to expect when she was kindly escorted to Charlie Skinner's office. His secretary opened the door for her and closed it once she had stepped inside. Charlie quickly stood up and walked towards her, his hand extended to shake hers. "Ms. Howard, thank you for joining us."
"Mr. Skinner." Nina replied, shaking his hand. "Will." She said, looking at him.
"Nina." Will nodded in greeting.
Nina sat down at the table, in front of Will, and folded her hands. "Shall we begin?" She said.
"In a minute." Charlie told her. "Mackenzie is on her way up."
As Charlie finished the sentence, the door of his office opened and Mackenzie hurried inside. "Sorry, I'm late." Mac said. "Hello Nina." She greeted the other woman, quickly shaking his hand before sitting down next to Will.
"Mackenzie, I'm glad to see you're alright." Nina told her.
For a moment, Mac was stunned until she remembered that Nina knew about the accident. "Thanks." She replied with a smile.
"So, how does this work?" Will asked, getting to the point and making clear that he would prefer to be doing anything else rather than sitting in that meeting.
"Is this gonna be an exclusive interview?" Nina asked them.
"Yes." Mac simply replied.
"Great." Nina said. "Then, I'd like it to be a cover story. After all the trouble Will had this past year, the fact that he's not longer one of New York ultimate bachelors is something that'll be of interest to our readers."
"Trouble that you were more than eager to write about." Will reproached her.
"It's my job." Nina told him.
"What do you need?" Mac asked her.
"An interview, together and individually. Maybe a couple of pictures? TMI is willing to pay you for the story."
"We don't need the money." Will quickly told her.
"We'll take it." Mac replied. Will turned to look at her, surprised. "We'll donate it to charity."
"Good idea." Charlie intervened for the first time from his seat behind his desk.
"Perfect." Nina said, taking out a notepad and a pen from her purse and writing down some notes.
"Anything about Mackenzie's current 'problem' is off limits." Charlie continued.
"Of course." Nina told him. "Something else?"
"The reason why we broke up the first time." Will quickly answered, grabbing Mac's hand under the table and gently squeezing it, telling her with that gesture that he wasn't saying that to hurt her. "Everybody knows why. We moved past it, there's no need to revive the story."
Nina made a face, weighting her options but, after a few seconds, she nodded at them and wrote that down.
"And I'd like to read a copy before you publish it." Charlie said. He wasn't going to make the same mistake they did with New York Magazine and Brian Brenner. With Nina, he would make sure that nothing she wrote would harm their image. She was about to object but, then, she thought better and agreed with a single nod; Will had made a deal with her, true, but it wasn't written on stone, they could go to any other magazine that would agree to their terms. She wanted the interview, she wanted the exclusive, so if that was the price to pay she would swallow her objections and agree with them.
"When do you want to do this?" Nina asked them.
"If it's alright with you, we could do the joint interview right now." Mac told her, glancing at Will to see if he concurred.
"We want this done as soon as possible." Will continued. "You can interview me afterwards, while Mac's with the PT."
"And, if you don't mind waiting for a little bit, we can have a late lunch and do mine after our rundown." Mac said.
"You two are in a hurry. I'm impressed." Nina told them, smiling. "Do you want to do the photo shoot today, too?"
"I'd have to be after the show." Mac replied. "Or we could do it tomorrow morning."
"I'll call our photographer and ask when works better for her."
"Well, it's set!" Charlie said, standing up. "I have a meeting with Mrs. Lansing in a few minutes. Feel free to use my office." He told them.
"Thanks Charlie."
At the end of the day, Mac was exhausted. Talking about her personal life to a gossip columnist (she refused to call Nina a journalist), answering question after question about herself and her relationship with Will, recalling some hurtful events in her life; those weren't easy things to do. Then, planning the show and producing it before meeting with the photographer to take a few pictures of them. Mandy, the young looking girl from TMI, had been very enthusiastic and passionate about her work, asking them to pose in different places and with different outfits: work clothes for pictures at the studio and the conference room, more casual ones (Will in jeans and a sweater, Mac with a borrowed dress from Sloan's rack) for pictures at both their offices and the Executive Dining Room. She had called them The power couple of cable news. They had borne with it but had politely drawn the line when she had asked for a picture of them kissing.
While Mac changed back into her clothes, Will was sitting on his chair, nodding off. The sound of the office door being opened jerked him awake.
"Oh, I'm sorry." Mike apologized.
"No problem." Will said, yawning. "Mac will be ready in a minute."
"Do you mind if I wait here? I need to talk to her."
"Take a seat."
Michael sat down and folded his hands on his lap. The silence between them was a bit uncomfortable but neither did something to break it. A couple of minutes later, Mac stepped out of Will's bathroom but stopped when she saw Mike there.
"Hey." She said. "Is there something wrong?" She asked her bodyguard.
"Well..." He hesitated, standing up. "I have good news and bad news."
"Go on." She encouraged him to continue.
"We weren't able to figure out how the stalker managed to get inside your building. The good news-" He quickly continued. "Is that we've increased the security around and inside the building so you can go back whenever you want."
"How?" Will asked, earning a glare from Mac. He raised his hands, apologizing, but also telling her that he had asked because he cared, not because he was trying to undermine her.
"There will be someone monitoring the security cams 24/7 and we'll have someone staying outside your apartment door whenever you are at home. You have your panic button and the codewords and you know the protocol if there's another security breach." He explained. "We can review it if you want." He offered.
"I'll go back to Will's tonight." Mac told him. "If you don't mind, of course." She said to Will.
"My home is your home." Will told her, smiling.
"We can go over the protocol tomorrow, I'm too tired to think clearly right now." She told Mike.
"Of course."
"Is Lonny waiting downstairs?" Will asked him.
"Yes." Mike replied.
"Let's go?" Will told Mac, getting up from his chair.
"Let's go."
Tuesday night, after the show, Mac went back to her apartment. That night, and the following ones, she found out that she missed Will, more than she though she would. Those eight days staying at Will's place had been wonderful, despite the circumstances; at her apartment, she felt lonely and eager to wake up the next morning to go to work and see him. How could things had changed so fast? After four years apart, it had only taken a few nights together to reduce her to a bad soap opera character, longing to see and be with her beloved 24/7.
On Friday, they had told the senior staff about their relationship. It hadn't surprised them when they had all stood up and began clapping, offering their congratulations and demanding a celebration at Hang Chew's after the show. Will had complained but, after a quick elbow on the ribs from Mac, he had agreed to go and pay the first couple of rounds.
Elliot, Sloan and Don joined them once Right Now was over. When they arrived, they found their colleagues on the other side of tipsy listening to Charlie recall funny stories about Will and Mac when they first met. Mac patted the empty seat next to her, inviting Sloan to sit there. Elliot sat down between Charlie and Jim while Don went to grab their drinks.
"Tell Chelsea to put them on my tab." Will loudly told Don, earning a sweet kiss on the cheek from Mac and a round of whistles from the staff.
"Grow up." Mac told them, making them burst out laughing.
"The joy of having kids." Sloan teased them.
"God, don't call them that." Will groaned.
"You're their newsparents." Sloan argued.
"And that makes you..." Elliot questioned her.
"The cool aunt." Sloan replied, smirking.
"I'm surrounded by crazy people." Charlie said, to nobody in particular, before draining his drink and getting up. "Well, grandpa is heading home. Don't do anything that I'd end reading on Page Six."
Everybody said goodbye to Charlie and returned to their conversation. They were having a really great time but, when the clock stroke one, Will and Mac decided it was time to leave. They said their goodbyes and stopped by the bar to pay the tab. Will gave his credit card to Chelsea and turned to look at Mac. "Your place or mine?" He asked her.
"Mine, if you don't mind." Mac replied.
"Not at all." He said, smiling. "I'll swing by my apartment to pack a bag and meet you there."
"Perfect." She told him, grabbing her phone to send a quick message to Mike and tell him she was ready to leave. Then, she looked at the staff and saw that they were otherwise occupied so she leaned forward to place a quick kiss on Will's lips. "See you in a bit."
Home, sweet home. Mac thought while she and the new bodyguard rode up in the elevator. When the doors opened on her floor, they stepped out and walked the short distance to her door. She was opening it when she heard something heavy hit the floor. She quickly turned around and her mouth fell open.
"Hi Mackenzie."
Will was packing his bag when he heard Lonny's phone ring in the living room. He wasn't really paying attention to the conversation but the tone in Lonny's voice seemed a bit odd. He zipped up his bag and grabbed it before leaving his room. He saw Lonny hung up and stare at him with an alarmed look on his face, something Will hadn't seen before.
"What's wrong?" Will quickly asked him.
"It was Mike." Lonny replied. "Mac's activated her panic button."
A/N: One more chapter to go and, then, the epilogue.
Thanks for reading!