Original A/N: Hey all! I'm sick on a Saturday night, so figured I might as well update this :) This one-shot is one of my favorites, and it comes before the last one, get to meet Don's brother and some of the rest of his family, and I think they're pretty awesome (I kind of picture Jake Johnson playing the affable, slightly oblivious brother, but that's weird because Olivia Munn played his love interest once too.) But whatever.
Thanks so much for everyone who is reading and reviewing this one, as well as "thicker than forget" my longer piece.
And I've trained myself to give up on the past 'cause I frozen time between hearses and caskets
Lost control when I panicked at the acid test, I wanna get better
I didn't know I was lonely till I saw your face. I wanna get better.
I didn't know I was broken till I wanted to change. I wanna get better
-Bleachers, "I Wanna Get Better"
"Eight tickets. Yes. For tomorrow," Don says, as the woman on the other end of the line starts laughing. "All together, if possible, but given your reaction I'll honestly just take things that are in the same theatre."
"Sir, Newsies is the hot ticket on Broadway right now," the woman says, and he imagines her wiping back tears. "The hot ticket. It could win the Tony! And you want eight tickets, all together, for tomorrow."
He taps the phone's receiver against his head and wonders if he's delusional. "Are the tickets available or not?"
"They're $210 a person," she says.
"That's $1,700! For a play about kids who sell newspapers for a penny. Are you freaking kidding me?"
"Plus fees. Do you want the tickets or not?"
He is going to kill Mitch, one day, possibly tomorrow. He takes a deep breath, and is about to confirm, when Sloan wanders in. She cocks her head and motions at the phone. "One sec," he tells the lady. "Mitch is coming to town tomorrow."
"Mitch?"
"Yeah, he called around noon. It's spring break and it's Madison's birthday and she wants to see Newsies. But of course he hadn't gotten tickets yet, because why would he, since I live in New York, so I should handle it since it's around the corner?" he says sarcastically. Sloan looks as confused at the logic as he is, which makes him feel better. "Anyways. Tickets are $210."
"Plus fees," the agent says.
"Plus fees," he repeats, and then sighs. "I'll take them," he says. "Eight. One sec. Let me grab my card." He quickly wraps up and then says, "I just paid $1,700 for tickets to a musical because my brother forgot about quaint technologies like the phone and the Internet that would've enabled him to take care of this himself."
"What time is it?" she asks.
"It's the 2 p.m. show, they're just driving up for the day," he replies, then remembers he never actually asked if she wanted to come along. "Shit — I got — sorry — I didn't ask. Do you … want to come with us? Are you, you know, free tomorrow? I didn't check." While he thinks she's in it with him, he's never really quite sure. One day she's going to wake up and realize she can do better than him, so he should probably not just expect that she's going to want to spend all day meeting his brother, his sister-in-law, his half-sister, and his elementary-school-aged niece and nephews, none of whom she's ever met in person. "Shit, you have spinning on Saturday. And you grade your papers on Saturday. You should do those."
"No, the show sounds fun. Or, I should say, watching you watch a completely realistic, not-at-all-factually-exaggerated musical about newsboys while having to not be dry or profane around young children sounds fun," she says. "Plus Mitch never finished telling me about how you broke your collarbone in Panama City in 1997, and I really want to hear that."
"It was his fault," he says, for the fifteenth time, but Sloan smirks anyways.
"What time are they getting in?"
"Nine, he says."
She wrinkles her nose. "It's like, what, a two-hour drive from Philly? They want to leave at seven?"
"Yeah, but I bank on them getting in at 11 and they get in at eight," he says. "They're going to go shopping first, I think. What does an six-year-old girl like to do?"
"She's eight, you know."
"Who is?"
"Madison, your niece? She's eight. It's her eighth birthday. You suck at math."
"She's in second grade!"
"You turn eight in second grade. You think you turn six in second grade?"
"I don't remember the second grade, so sure."
"You start kindergarten at five, five plus two — you know what, this is alarming and stressful. Let's not. What time do they want to meet?" He shrugs. "OK, why don't you find that out? And then find a restaurant if they want to grab lunch."
He quells the urge to kiss her. "You're the best."
She smiles, but looks a bit puzzled. "Yes, but I don't know how this qualifies. He's your brother; she's your niece. It's not that hard."
He kisses her then. "I've got to go prep," she says, smiling into the kiss before breaking away slightly. "Please don't start a massive fight with Mitch in the next thirteen hours."
"That was almost $2,000," he says, kissing her again. "That's a long weekend on a beach with you. Of course I'm ticked."
She laughs. "If I'd ever seen you leave the office for more than a dentist appointment between the hours of 10 a.m. Monday and 11 p.m. Friday, I might believe you," she squeezes his hand. "I'm going to makeup. I'll see you at Hang Chew's. Wings are $2 each since it's Friday."
"I can do vacation," he protests as she heads to the door. She just raises her eyebrows, says, "Sure, honey," in a syrupy, mocking tone, and heads out. If the tone hadn't given her away, the use of a pet name would. "I can totally do vacation," he repeats to the empty room.
He heads to a conference call with the six ACN embeds covering the Republican candidates (unsurprisingly, their relationship with the Romney bus is still a little rocky), before popping into the graphics department to check out two charts for Elliot, then grabbing his script and popping into the control room to watch Sloan explain why the Dow has dropped so badly and what exactly it means. After Mac gets done whispering sweet nothings into Will's ear, he asks, "Hey Mac?"
"What's up Keefer?"
"If you were, hypothetically, going to go away for a long weekend, to a location that is both romantic but also has no issues with Internet or television access and isn't that far from New York City, where would you go?"
Mac scrunches her nose, covers her mic to Sloan and Will. "Wow, you really know how to woo a girl, Don."
"I said romantic!" he protests. "Also, spectacular. Those are the two main things, really."
"How about … syrup-gathering in Vermont?"
"Please don't make me beg," he begs.
Mac smirks. "Let me think about it. I'll email you later," she promises.
He ends up staying way late with Mac, Charlie, and Will planning out the rest of primary coverage, so late that Sloan texts him, "Lost wing-eating contest to Neal. Dying. Bed," so he skips Hang Chew's.
He enters the apartment quietly, and peeks into the bedroom, where he sees Sloan curled in bed, the glow from the TV emanating on her skin. "How many did you eat?" he asks, leaning over her to kiss her temple as she makes a noise not dissimilar to the noise a cat makes when being woken up.
"Twelve, in three minutes," she groans.
"An even dozen's pretty good."
"Neal got sixteen. I figured, Europeans don't have the overeating issues Americans do. Surely that will work in my favor," she shakes her head. "Bad move, Sabbith. Bad move."
He chuckles a little as she burrows deeper into the pillow. "Can I get you anything?"
"McGonagall's time turner so I can go back and redo the last two hours of my life," she stretches out along the pillow, wincing, he hopes, because she finds the situation funny. "Did you call your brother?"
"I, ah, you know, I really meant to, and then I … did not."
She throws her hands up against the pillow. "Why am I not surprised?"
"What?"
"You don't like talking about uncomfortable things with your brother, like the fact that he owes you two grand for a pretty 'meh' musical based on an admittedly underrated movie."
"It's not that I don't like talking about uncomfortable things with my brother, it's the fact that I don't like talking about anything personal with anyone in my family," he clarifies, yanking off his shirt. It's a lesson he learned from his father, and he aced that class. He and Mitch were close enough growing up, though Don had never been able to figure out how Mitch was so damn nice and likable and happy all the damn time. In high school, Mitch had been a solid but not spectacular athlete while Don had ran half the clubs in school, captained the tennis team, and been an all-around pain in the principal's ass. Mitch married Melanie when they were twenty-three, and they settled into an incredibly happy, perfectly content existence with their three kids and a picket fence. Mitch developed new condo complexes, Mel was a teacher, and all three of their kids were blonde. They confused Don, on a lot of levels.
"That's so much better," Sloan smirks. "I got a noon reservation at Sarabeth's Central Park South. They have like five kinds of French toast, everyone will be happy."
"I love you," he says, mostly joking, but also completely serious. He slides into bed. "So I was thinking …"
"Yes, Christian Bale was great in the film," she murmurs, teasing.
"I will never get that," he laughs, running a hand down her hip. "When we get that two grand back from Mitch, I was thinking we go on a vacation."
"A vacation?" she asks, intrigued. "For two grand? You're gonna have to sell me on this one, pal."
"For more than two grand. Or a long weekend, for two grand. Jeez, woman. You're the money whiz. I'm just supposed to be the gold digger in this relationship, you know," he laughs. "No, I'm serious. Let's just … go."
"Where?" she asks.
"Jamaica? Bermuda? Mexico? Long Beach Island, even? I don't really care. I'm amenable."
"Amenable to swimsuits and fruity umbrella drinks, more like," she says.
"Yes, that is the definition of amenable," he laughs. "I'm serious. Let's go somewhere. I would surprise you, but I feel like you might react poorly to me throwing your Blackberry out a window and tossing you into a car."
"You do have to give me enough time to pick out what economics journals I want to bring," she laughs, pushing him under her, shifting her knees to either side of his thighs and running her hands down his belly. "And I want a week. A full week. No phones."
"Deal," he grins.
The next morning, they're in the shower when Mitch calls, arriving (unsurprisingly) early. Don convinces them to go to American Girl Place while he and Sloan get ready. He's unsure how he got roped into this adventure, and can't believe Sloan agreed to tag along, but he'll absolutely take it. He's basically prepared to follow her to the end of the earth without question, but he's not going to say that out loud, because that's creepy and he knows that.
They're finally ready — she looks great in red jeans and a blue-and-white nautical-y sweater with a big red anchor on it — to meet his brother for brunch. "You're not nervous?" he checks, as they enter the packed Sarabeth's.
"No. It's an omelette. Are you nervous?"
"No. I'm not nervous. Me? No. Never."
"Ok," she shakes her shoulders, swings her arms in front her, arches her neck to either side to stretch. "Because for the record, I might be a little nervous."
"Called it," he sing-songs as they bump into his brother, his sister-in-law, his niece, his nephews, and his half-sister. "Wow, okay," he says, trying to stay level-headed as he and Sloan stare at the pack of them. "Sloan, you've talked to Mitch, my brother; this is Melanie, his wife; here's Matt, he's in kindergarten, and Mason, he's in third grade; Madison, the birthday girl — happy birthday, Maddie — and Lily Moreno, my half-sister," he smiles. "Guys, this is my girlfriend, Sloan."
"Are you our new aunt?" Matt asks. Sloan's eyes widen and then freeze in her perfect-anchor Mona Lisa smile. She terrified. And truthfully, Don would like to die just a little.
Melanie quickly reaches out to fluff his hair in a maternal but threatening manner. "Excuse him. Pretty sure Lily offered him five dollars to say that. Apologize, Matty, that was nosy."
"I'm sorry," he says. "Wait, why is that nosy?"
"I did make him say that," Lily admits.
"You're grounded," Don deadpans.
"So what do we call her?" Matt asks his mom.
"You can call me Sloan," she smiles, then bends down and gives him her hand to shake. "It's nice to meet you." He has to hand it to her for not running away right there.
"Lily says you're on TV," Mason says.
"I am," she says, nodding. "But only for the boring stuff – the news."
"Do you know Selena Gomez?" Madison asks. "I love her."
"Nope. I saw her in our studio once, though. She had nice shoes," Sloan tries.
"We should probably find our table," Don says, placing a hand on Sloan's back to signal her to straighten. "Whose name did you put the reservation under?"
"Mine, one sec. Excuse me," Sloan ambles off, Madison trailing with more questions about Selena Gomez.
"You know, until today, I didn't quite believe you," Mitch snarks. "Why's she dating you?"
He shrugs. "Honestly I try not to question that too much," he says.
"He's so smitten," Mel says to Mitch, touching his elbow. "I told you."
"What's smitten mean?" Mason asks.
"It means Don looks like he wants to kiss Sloan a lot," Lily explains.
"Oh. Gross, Uncle Don."
"She's pretty though, right?" he asks Mason, who does smirk and nod.
"We can eat now!" Madison yells from the hostess's stand. "Let's sit down, people!"
"So how did you two meet?" Mel asks once they're all settled. She's got one son on either side of her and is in her element.
The two of them exchange a weird look, because the answer is obvious. "Work," Sloan finally says.
"Sloan started at ACN about two years after I did."
"That's how you know each other. How did you meet?"
Don struggles with the distinction. To him, they feel the same. When she started, he'd been a senior producer, focused on keeping his head above water and surfing Will's bearish and boorish whims. He hadn't noticed the new dayside anchor that everyone was talking about — she was smart and gorgeous and brand-new to journalism, but tenacious, blunt, and just a little awkward.
And then … he'd been in the middle of the newsroom, yelling at a source on the phone and bouncing a stress ball, when he missed a catch and the ball rolled away. She'd practically tripped over it, chided him to be careful, and handed the ball back to him. He hadn't been able to say anything before she strutted off, her clingy purple dress showing off her swinging hips. A few days later in a news meeting, she'd made him laugh by saying something sarcastic. He'd responded in kind, and they'd shared a smile. He'd introduced himself, and she had said, "I know." And after that, they had gravitated toward each other, become friends. And after that, she was a fixture in his life.
Sloan wrinkles her nose. "I don't know. In the newsroom, maybe? Don was probably using his rapier wit to bug Elliot or Will."
"Uh, no, Miss Scarlet, I believe it was your witty repartee, in a staff meeting, with Charlie, where we officially met," he recovers. He sure as hell isn't going to tell her that she'd rendered him speechless. That would be way too much of an upper hand between them. He grabs a menu and starts looking at their French toast selection. Sloan's right — there are three types of French toast, and two types of eggs Benedict. Holla.
"No, like when did you meet meet? Like, yeah, I met Mitch during freshman orientation at Nova, but we didn't start dating until finals, when he stood outside my dorm window holding a boombox, after he told me he didn't get Say Anything."
Sloan shrugs slightly self-consciously, because their whole history is deeper and shallower than Mitch's straightforward wooing of Melanie, and it's not something either of them want to get into publicly. She'd said once You get me, and it was true, he liked to think. That was the most important thing. They'd transitioned smoothly, and honestly, and explicitly, from friends to a relationship. But he wonders if he maybe should have used a grand gesture at some point.
He shakes his head. "We've been working together for almost four years. We were pretty close friends for most of those years," he says most, because they had drifted when he started dating Maggie. "I'd use her office to avoid the boss and she'd use me for the coffeemaker in my office and we'd end up talking at most work things, because they're terrible," he shudders.
"Can I get two French toasts?" Madison asks. "Please? It's my birthday."
"Absolutely not," Mel says.
"What if I get one and you get one, and we switch? Birthday treat," Sloan says.
Madison grins, her teeth biting her lower lip hard. "Ok," she says. "Thank you thank you thank you."
After the play — which the four kids love and he has to admit is a pretty peppy look at journalism — Madison begs to go down to the ice skating rink.
"Pretty sure it's closed," Don says, because there's no way he's getting out onto the ice.
"No way, it's open through next weekend," Sloan says.
"Traitor," he says.
"I like ice skating," she shrugs. Since they're holding hands, he involuntarily shrugs, too.
"You grew up in Japan and California, when the hell did you learn to ice skate?"
She cocks her head. "You know where Japan is, right? Next to Siberia. Between the math thing yesterday and this, I'm getting very worried about the strength of the Lower Merion School District."
"I'd be down," Mel says.
"Don and I will be in charge of the hot chocolate," Mitch says.
"You don't want to skate?" Sloan asks, her face falling.
"Uh, no," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "I value my tailbone. And the ability to walk."
"Your loss, sucker," she shakes her head.
Twenty minutes later, he and Mitch are staring at eight cups of hot chocolate as the rest of the group loops around the slushy early-spring ice. Sloan's holding Madison's hands and helping her skate backwards as Lily and Mason watch and laugh. She's pretty awesome.
"So Sloan's pretty awesome," Mitch says, out of the blue, scratching his neck. "Seriously. I think Lily and Madison are about to skip Philly and move in with you two."
"We don't live together, but yeah. She's … yeah." He smiles. He knows he's hit the fucking jackpot here.
"What the fuck, man? Ask her to move in. She likes you, you idiot. You want to hold on to her, right?"
"Yeah. She won't go for it," he shakes his head. "But yeah. I fully intend on keeping her around."
"But you won't move in with her? Don," Mitch, with the authority of having dated exactly one girl, ever, starts in on him, "you need to show her you're serious."
"Sloan doesn't want to move in with anyone until she's engaged," he shrugs. "So hopefully by the end of the summer."
"Seriously?"
He cracks a grin. "Yeah."
"Don."
"Mitch."
"You're serious about this?"
"Yup."
"The end of summer?"
"I mean, I have to, you know … figure out how to get it done in a spectacular fashion. And buy a perfect ring that costs about as much as a high-end sedan. And run it by her so I'm reasonably sure she'll say yes and she doesn't rip my heart out and toss it into a meat grinder and turn it into a hamburger patty. So there are a few things to figure out first," he lifts one shoulder. "But … yeah. I'd like to. And I'd like to soon."
"Don Keefer, pulled out of perpetual bachelordom by a gorgeous TV star who could kick his ass at Scrabble," Mitch claps him on the shoulder. "I thought this day would never come. You could barely commit to a type of pizza ten years ago."
"I wasn't that bad."
"You moved every ten months so exes couldn't find you."
"That was just one ex. A crazy ex."
"You once got a drink tossed in your face because you went on a blind date with the roommate of a one-night-stand."
"You live in New York long enough and you end up dating into the same circles."
"You broke a collarbone in Panama City jumping off a boardwalk to get away from another crazy one-night-stand."
"Alright, I get it," Don groans. "Help me out, alright? This is already nerve-wracking enough without you going over the ninety-three ways I've fucked up relationships in the past."
"She's not going to say no," Mitch says confidently.
"You've known her for what, four hours? And you saw her on Skype what, maybe three times?"
"Yeah but she likes you," Mitch shifts, and pulls a check folded hot-dog style out of his pocket. "She called me yesterday because you bought the tickets for today, and she said that you were going to be too nice and not ask me for the two grand that those tickets cost," he slides the check over. "Take this money, take that woman on a fucking vacation, and ask her to marry you." Mitch grins.
Later that night, after they've sent the Keefer family home (Madison hugged Sloan six times and then cried when her mother told her she couldn't stay in New York), she's lying with her head in his lap as they watch TV in her apartment. "Thank you for talking to Mitch," he says.
She shifts to look at him. "I don't know what you're talking about," she lies.
"You're a terrible liar," he laughs. "Your right eye starts twitching and —"
"I told him not to tell you I called him!" she protests. "He's a regular old Benedict Arnold."
He smiles. "Thank you, first of all," he says. "Why'd you call him?"
She sits up. "Are you mad?"
"No! I'm the opposite of mad. Seriously. But why'd you do it?" He tugs her legs onto his lap.
"Why does it matter why I did it?" she asks. "You weren't supposed to find out."
"But why wasn't I supposed to find out?"
"Because I thought you and your brother needed to talk, I guess. And he owed you two grand, which you weren't going to ask him for because you didn't want to come off as a prick even though it's completely not-prick-y," she shrugs again, slightly agitated. "But mostly because you two needed to talk, and you weren't going to start it, because you're too nice."
"I'm too nice?" he laughs.
"Yes," she says. "You are. You're a nice guy. Even when you're pretending to be an asshole. Or even when you are being an asshole. You're a nice guy and deserve to be treated nicely and your brother is a good guy who was being pretty self-involved about what you were doing for him. To put it mildly. So I gave him a gentle reminder. A secret gentle reminder. I'm never telling him a secret again."
"He's not so bad at keeping secrets," he says, smiling at her, since Mitch definitely didn't spill the whole 'oh by the way, Don wants to marry you' thing for the rest of the day. "But thank you. That … It means a lot to me. You … You're amazing, you know that?"
"You're not so bad yourself," she smiles, kissing him lightly. He kisses her back, then kisses her cheeks, her nose, her eyes, her forehead. She smiles, arches her neck to give him access. He is completely, one hundred percent serious. He's going to ask her to marry him.
Soon.
He just needs to figure out how.
It's gonna be spectacular.
Figuring out their families was SO HARD. Especially Don's, since there were exactly zero mentions of them in the show. So this was one of my biggest hurdles in the piece, an if I were to do it over, I think I would give Don two sisters, one older and stuffy and one younger and ass-kicking younger sister to be biffles with Sloan. Alas! I like Mitch and his kids though.
This version crystallized after was Will's speech to Mac when his dad was dying: A dad is "the one who tells you what the world is going to think of you and if he tells you that you're bad — that, forever." Don's shouldered the burden of being the second son (but smarter and more driven than his brother), the good son (but never good enough), closer to his mother (but outwardly much more like his father), unsure of whether he's good or bad (but pretty sure he knows the answer). Growing up, he was the living representation of his parents' attempts to pretend to be happy — they may have been forced to marry because she was pregnant with Mitch, but he wouldn't exist if they hadn't put on appearances. So he's been dealing with all of that and, in the wake of his dad's death, he was the one who stepped up, set aside his own grieving process, and brokered a peace with the second family, which allowed his own family to tape itself back together and move on with some semblance of peace.
Even before his dad's death, he and his brother were very different, and as he stated in the first chapter, after his dad's death, he could either be angry at a dead guy or move on. So he did, and that required being the good son/good brother. Since he couldn't get really angry, he just kind of … ignored it and focused on things being superficially pleasant so he wouldn't upset the balance. He learned how to put a mask on somewhere, and I figured there was no better place than at home.
So what I like most is that, even with all that, even with his fervent desire to keep his life compartmentalized, he just includes Sloan as a part of all of the compartments of his life (in retrospect, I really wish I'd done chapters with them meeting old friends, but given that these are very contained chapters, I didn't want to expand too much beyond the scope of the show). He initially assumes that she'll want to go with them, before he starts overthinking. But by the end, he's pretty convinced that he's going to ask her to marry him — and he's comfortable enough to tell his brother that.
I think Don's still pretty awed that Sloan wants to be with him. But at the same time he trusts her; he has faith in her opinion of him and he respects the hell out of her, so he goes with it. (He's a little more intuitive than Sloan, which is why I think that, even with all his doubts, he gets to the 'this is it' point sooner. She deduces; at this point, she needs more proof.) It's also a good kind of awe, the kind that spurs him to step up and want to be a good guy and gives him confidence in himself: If she likes him, and he trusts her, then he can't be half bad. He's gonna be the guy, and the guy steps up. So he's stepping up.