Hey all! Next installment up here. In my notes, I had this as "January — Sloan finds out Don is learning Japanese." But when I started playing around with it, it ended up being more about change: for Don and Sloan and also Will and Mac. I ended up really liking it, and I hope you do as well!

December

"But I don't want to go," Don says petulantly, throwing his neck back and hitting the headboard. Ow. "Come on, we see these people all the time." He thought — fine, assumed — they were doing a night in. He'd had a shift that day in exchange for the night off, but he still has a show to EP and she has a show to host the next day, since they were saving their days for after the kid was born. He wants his bed and a book and Sloan curled into his side.

"But it's New Year's and people will be dressed up," Sloan says, her voice just as whiny as his. She's holding up a few dresses, making a face. He knows that she's worried about whether or not she'll look fat in them. Despite being light to begin with and gaining exactly the amount of weight Michelle recommended, she's been grumbling about cankles and moonface for the last month (he had never heard those words before, but they're apparently a thing).

"But that means we have to get dressed up too. if we stay home, we can wear sweatpants. Come on, Sloan. We love sweatpants!"

"Don, I really want to go," she says. "Next year, we're going to have an 11-month-old, and we probably won't even make it to midnight. We'll be those people we said we wouldn't be, the ones who pass out on the couch at a quarter till and wake up drooling and with a party hat on the next day. I might have to wear a muumuu and flats and drink sparkling cider, but I want to go to there."

She has a point, plus she's pregnant, his wife, and has a birthday in a few days, so he sighs. "Alright. I'll be ready in ten."

"Well that's just stupid," she says. "It'll take me at least 45 minutes to get ready. Can you take Clem for a quick walk?"

He sighs, because he should have known that request was coming. "Sure," he says, swinging his legs off the bed. "I'll be back in half an hour?"

"Thank you!" she calls.

"And Sloan?" he turns in the doorway. "You look great in that one." He points to a navy dress with a lace overlay that highlights the baby bump that she's tossed on the bed. The dress hits a few inches above the knee and is fairly form-fitting, both of which make Sloan comfortable and more confident. She'd gotten it for Christmas at his mom's but had ended up not wearing it. It's more feminine than he's used to her wearing, but honestly pregnancy has introduced new colors and fabrics and even the concept of patterns into her wardrobe. He likes it a lot.

She smiles. "Thanks."

An hour later, they're en route to ACN via subway — there's no fucking way he's paying for a cab through Times Square tonight — and it's making him absolutely hate humanity. There's no room when they get on, so Sloan, eight-months-pregnant-on-New-Year's-Eve Sloan, ends up standing so a drunk punk in a stupid neon hat can sit and shout obscenities halfway down the car at his friends. After Don glare-guilts him into moving, Sloan takes the seat gratefully, but nevertheless chides, "You didn't need to do that."

"Yeah, yeah, because feminism," he grouses. "You shouldn't be standing, period. That's not feminism, that's medical fact."

"Medical fact is I'm pregnant, not that I can't walk," she retorts.

"Do you wanna switch and I'll sit?" he suggests. "Cause I'm down with that." He doesn't like her being out, at all. Maybe it makes him a jerk; he prefers to think of himself as a dad.

"Of course not," she says like it's obvious.

The party is in full swing by the time they get there, and he puts a hand on the small of her back to guide her through the crowd. "Sloan! Don! Wow, you must be days away from maternity leave," Sydney, a producer on the 8 a.m. show, greets them.

Sloan smiles tightly. "Not for another month, actually. He's still got a while to go."

"Oh, my god. Well, you totally can't tell," Sydney smiles.

"Thanks?" Sloan says, slightly confused.

"We need to go find Will," Don says to escape.

"Was she trying to —"

"No idea," he replies as he finally lays eyes on their friends.

"You made it!" Mac says enthusiastically. "I didn't think you would come."

"Of course we did," Sloan says. "Don wanted to be lame and stay in sweatpants, but luckily one of us is cool in this relationship."

"The kid will be well taken care of then," Charlie smiles.

"Hey, wait, Sloan's the cool parent here? Please," Don says.

"Hey! I was elected class treasurer by a majority of my peers."

"Student council president," he retorts.

"I take it back, you're both nerds," Charlie says dryly.

"I'm going to grab a beer," he announces. "Sloan — orange juice with sparkling water?" It's all she's been drinking lately.

"That'd be great, thanks," she smiles.

They circulate, together and separately, for the next couple hours. He's talking with Neal and Neal's latest fling (named Kiley or Kylie or Kyleigh, and she's unfortunately no Kaylee) when Will approaches him with a beer. "Going to be a big year for you," he points out when Neal and Kiley/Kylie/Kyleigh depart to a Jim-less Maggie (Jim pulled A-C-New Year's Rockin' Eve duty this year, poor bastard).

"Yeah," he says, taking an appreciative swig. "Maybe for you too. Gonna make an honest woman out of Mac this year?"

Will snorts. "I'm ready whenever she is."

"So … never?" While Mac's been ready to be married to Will for nearly as long as he's known her, she's continued to drag her feet about the wedding. At first, she wanted time to get to re-know Will, to repair and forgive every wound they'd inflicted upon each other for the last eight years. They needed to trust each other again.

"Probably, or September, but thanks for the support, Dr. Phil. I'll definitely open up to you in the future."

"Well, hey, I do what I can." He scans the room for Sloan and comes up empty. " Have you seen Sloan anytime in the last twenty minutes?" After Will shakes his head, he says, "If she dragged me out tonight and is sleeping on my couch I'm going to give her all the late-night feedings."

"I'm telling her that."

"Yeah, please don't."

There's one place where Sloan goes to hide in ACN, so he knocks quietly on his door before entering. As expected, she's stretched out on his sofa, her ankles crossed, and she's reading — oh shit. "Hey," he says as he enters. He goes for levity. "Fancy meeting you here."

"You know this is my couch, just in your office, right?" she says. "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to learn Japanese?" she holds the book she was reading up.

He shrugs. "I wanted to surprise you."

She turns her head, confused. "While that is a sweet gesture and all, this is a book with two CDs in a plastic pouch. I've been speaking it since birth and spent twenty percent of my life living there. One of those methods is going to be a better instructor than the other."

He shrugs. "I wanted to get a bit under my belt."

"Before what?"

"Telling you, I guess." He didn't really have a plan, beyond 'learn Japanese.' "I figured you probably wanted to speak it with the bean, and I wanted to understand, too."

She softens. "That's really sweet, Don. And I want you to learn it, if you want to. I don't think I'll speak it entirely with the kid, but my mom would shoot me if he didn't at least know how to have a basic conversation. But —"

"But what?"

"I wish you would just tell me things, instead of trying to fix something preemptively and telling me later."

"I don't — What am I fixing?"

"The lawsuit; Zane, way back when; any time you're sick; I think I reserve the right to use your relationship with Maggie as evidence —"

"Ok, A, no, it's so far in the past I don't even have that haircut anymore; B, it's New Year's and I'm not rehashing old arguments about personality flaws tonight, because you dragged us out, so glass houses, Sloan; and C, yes, sometimes I act more like a producer or a journalist than a husband, but this is genuinely not one of those. Sometimes I am just a schlubby husband who wants to impress his wife. I thought it would be a nice gesture. Just trust that it's that, ok? I know it's important to you."

She smiles, and gets up to kiss him. "You know you don't need to surprise me or impress me, right? I married you. I've liked you for five years and I've loved you for two."

"I know. I just like to, alright?" he did. He likes the gestures. He's proud that he, Don Keefer, can make her, Sloan Sabbith, happy. He likes surprising her for a night out, for her birthday, for an extra cup of herbal tea when he glances up and sees her on TV and it looks like she's having a long day. He likes the look on her face right before she scolds him and say he doesn't have to whenever he does any of those things. Basically, he'd do anything for that look of quiet, genuine gratification.

That look crosses her face. "Aishiteru."

"I really haven't gotten past counting in the lessons yet." He's got a pretty good idea of what it means, though.

"You know, if you let me teach you, you'd learn the dirty words too."

"Well now that's a deal," he says. "So what's up? Why are you in here?"

She shrugs. "My feet hurt."

"There are chairs in the newsroom."

"Those aren't very ergonomic. Charlie should get them replaced." He waits a couple beats until she talks, because Sloan, despite being great at deflecting, also regularly gets distracted by her own chatter. "Anyways, I was out there, talking and drinking orange juice, but honestly I wasn't having a great time. My feet hurt, and my back hurts, and we're having a baby this year, Don. A baby," she pauses, as if revealing too much. "Plus, everyone else was really drunk, and I wasn't in the mood to deal with them, hilariou as they were."

He shrugs. "You wanna just watch the ball drop in here?"

"You wouldn't mind?"

It's exactly how he wanted to spend his night. "Are you kidding me? Of course not."

He slides onto the couch, taking off his jacket, and Sloan curls into his side, her head on his lap. He flicks on the TV to A-C-New Year's Rocking Eve Coverage, where Elliot and Courteney from Dayside are gamely chatting with one of the Not-Harry-Styleses from One Direction. "Poor Jim," he smirks. "You're going to have to bring him something tomorrow for dealing with this shit." When Sloan doesn't respond right away, he looks down and smirks. She's dead asleep.

He sits there, quietly watching the show against the backdrop of revelry the next room over, listening to her soft, even sighs.

"Are you two hiding — oh," Mac says, entering and seeing Sloan passed out.

Don shrugs. "Growing a human sounds tiring."

"I think I'll stay with you guys, honestly," she says. "If you don't mind."

"Go for it. We're just waiting for the ball drop." Mac curls up in one of his guest chairs. "Who're you hiding from?"

"I'm not — hiding," she blusters.

"Alright then," he says affably.

"I'm not."

"The lady doth protest too much?"

"Christ, it's a New Year's party, Don, nobody wants to be here."

"Good point," he says, because it's completely true. They lapse into silence for a few minutes. On the TV, Elliot has transitioned to talking with Fred Willard, because why not. God he's happy he's not producing this mess.

"Big year for you guys," Mac says after a pause.

"Could be a big year for you too, you know," he says, absentmindedly stroking Sloan's hand. "You gonna marry Will?"

She shrugs. "I'm thinking September. Does that sound like a nice month for a wedding?"

"Well, that's when we got married, so it seems to be at least decent," he replies. "Can I ask a question, Mac?"

"Why haven't we gotten married, yet?"

"Well, jeez, Mac, way to steal my moment."

"Your moment and my mother's moment and Leona Lansing's moment and once, Bill Clinton's moment. That was a fun conversation."

"So seriously, what's the holdup?"

She gapes, searching for words. "What's the rush?" she finally says. "We're not having kids, so there's no … biological race to legitimacy; we're already living together; he's my life insurance beneficiary. I … like … us."

"You're not having kids?" he's … mildly surprised by that. He expected them to go nuts, to try IVF, to do all those crazy things, to put an exclamation point on the relationship, if not for them, for the world: We're together!

"No," she shakes her head. "I didn't want think I wanted them when we were first together, and then I got stabbed in the stomach, which puts a bit of a crimp on things. I'm forty-one, which is bad enough, but he's a year or two younger than Brian Williams, whose daughter struts around naked on HBO every week. He's not exactly run-around-with-a-toddler age."

"I don't think that's quite the plot of the show."

"My point is, we're both too old. If I really wanted it I have no doubt we could make it happen, but I've got a finite amount of time with him, before his smoking and bad diet and general aversion to exercise do him in. It's selfish to say, as you two embark on this — and I'm so excited to spoil this little little guy to death, so watch out — but I don't want to give that time with him up."

He gets that, he honestly does. "So why don't you just marry him?"

"I don't know. Inertia?"

"That's a terrible reason." It's also total bullshit, and they both know it.

"It took us so long to get back together, then so long to … put everything back together, and now we're good, we're happy, we're busy, and planning the wedding just seems like such a nuisance."

"You could elope. It's been done before."

"You and Sloan got away with it because you'd been dating for ten months and it was impulsive and romantic."

"Almost eleven months if you count the way she does, and the College Board says she's better at it."

"My point is, you hadn't been … mucking up the airwaves for the better part of a decade. We owe it to people, we do. I want to stand in front of everyone and say, Look world! We made it! I am married to this man!"

"So do it."

"But you have to plan it."

"Then hire someone. And for the record, nobody that's a decent person cares if you invited them to your wedding. They're just happy for you. Neal and Jim don't care they weren't invited to our wedding. They're happy we're happy."

"It's not that simple when you've been off and on and up and down and here and there and loud and quiet and right and left for a decade."

He cocks his head and says gently, "What am I missing?"

"I don't know, Columbo, you tell me."

"You're scared," he pieces together. "You're scared to marry Will. Do you not trust him?" He's trying to be gentle, to understand. It wouldn't shock him, given their history.

"No," Mac says emphatically. "I absolutely trust him. I want to be married to him."

"If you want to be married, get married. Seriously. What's wrong? Something's wrong."

"It's just … I know it's not that much of a change, since we live together, but we … I like us, right now. I like him and me, producing the news, going home to squabble about the temperature in the apartment and the color of the kitchen. I don't want to change any of that. We're in a good place that's fragile, that's … pure. I don't want to upset that."

He looks down at Sloan, her face finally slack and peaceful, her stomach larger than he could ever imagine (She's beautiful). "Things are going to change anyways. And not always for the better," though sometimes for the better. "This is a change you can control."

"When did you get so wise, Don?" Mac says, resting her chin on her knuckles.

"About the time this one told me to get my head out of my ass," he shrugs. "Seriously. You said it yourself. You know you don't have all the time in the world left with him. You've lost him before. You should make it count."

"Book your calendar for September then," she smiles, then checks the time on the TV. "It's five till. You're going to want to wake her up - if she misses this she'll be angry."

"Good point," he says, shaking her shoulder gently. "Sloan. Babe, wake up."

"What? What time is it?"Sloan says, sitting up with a start and grabbing his bicep. "Did I fall asleep again?"

"Just for like half an hour," he smiles. "It's five till. You wanna do the countdown?"

"Yeah. Hey, Kenz," she says , sitting up gingerly. "We should probably go home, then. I'm clearly a little tired."

"Will has a car tonight; you two can use it." Mac says. "Come on, Sloan."

Sloan shakes off her grogginess as they grab sparkling apple juice and champagne. Mac finds Will, who has a cigar bitten in between his teeth as he and Charlie argue about how to reform FIFA. Nancy, Sophie, and Maggie materialize around them. Everyone cues their eyes toward the TV, where Elliot's talking about everything that the New Year will bring. Fred Willard and the One Direction boys and Martha Stewart (seriously who the fuck was in charge of booking this insanity?) help him and Courteney count down to midnight. The ball drops, people cheer, there's a lot of kissing and hugging, someone turns up the volume so they can hear Auld Lang Syne. He thinks back to last year — he and Sloan had barely been married three months. He thinks back to the year before that — they had been on three dates. He thinks back to the year before that — he had been here with Maggie. His favorite philosopher, Ferris Bueller, is right: Life moves pretty fast.

"Hey," Sloan says, shaking his shoulder and smiling. "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year," he smiles, cupping her face and kissing her. She holds his wrists in place, so he can pull away but not apart. "Gonna be a big one."

"Yeah," she smiles, her eyes wide with anticipation and wonder.

They stay there for only a few more minutes, before Mac hustles them into a waiting car and thus stalled traffic.

Sloan rests her shoulder against him. "What were you and Kenzie talking about?"

"When?"

"In your office. When I was dozing." She tips her chin onto his shoulder.

"You were full-on passed out."

"I was resting my eyes."

"If that's what you say. We were talking about she hasn't married Will yet."

"Ha. That's a dangerous road to go down."

"Oh yeah."

"What'd she say?"

"She's afraid of stuff changing, you know, between them. If they make it official. She likes them now."

"Well that's better than what she could have said," he wonders what that means, but she continues, "That's normal, the fear of change. Everyone is."

"I'm not."

"That's a lie."

"Not at this point."

"Don, you don't like when your barista switches shifts."

"That's not real change."

"It's a pretty compelling example."

"OK, yes, I have habits that I am comfortable with."

"'Comfortable," she parrots.

"Exactly. But change … It's gonna happen. And yes, sometimes it's for the worst. But it can also be a great thing." For emphasis, he strokes her belly.

She puts her hand over his. "That's not the kind of change you should be worried about. Big stuff happens, instinct kicks in and you deal. Kenzie's just paranoid to be scared of that kind of change."

"Oh, yeah? What's the type of change you're scared of?"

She shrugs, as if it's obvious, but still a little self-conscious. "The gradual kind. It's not the change that you don't control; it's the change you don't notice. Where it takes months or years and suddenly you wake up and you've gained twenty pounds you're never going to lose, or realize that you haven't had sex in six months, or haven't seen this person in two years. Never went on that vacation you were saving up for because life happened. Big changes are risky, but you'll succeed or you'll fail in dealing with them. The little changes, the slow changes — the result is oblivion."

"You sound like a YA novel."

"Think about it. It's with the small changes — which are unavoidable — that you become someone you never thought you'd be."

He leans back, following her point to its logical conclusion. "We can hire a babysitter next year, you know."

"I know," she says. "But we might not. We might not want to. And I think that's OK — having the baby is a big change. We'll adapt, and we'll change, and we'll become parents. Somehow," she cracks.

"So why'd you want to come out tonight so badly, if not because next year we might pass out at 11:45 with party hats on?" Which was exactly what she had done tonight, but he's smart enough not to point that out.

She shrugs. "Because good thing or bad, little change or big, next New Year's we'll be different people. We just will be. And I'm excited — and, Christ, I'm so ready to not be pregnant anymore — but I like us, currently. I'll like us as parents, but I like this now. And we have maybe a month left of it, so I just wanted to … savor it, I guess. The ACN New Year's party might not've been the best place but …"

"You just wanted to."

"Yup," she smiles, ruefully and sleepily. "I admit, might have been better to savor it on our couch." She leans forward, "Hey Steve. What street are we up to?"

"We've made it all the way from 42nd to 46th. I'd sit back, Dr. Sabbith."

"Thanks, Steve." She leans back. "You heard the man," she says as she curls into his side. She's out, again, in an instant.

Well then.

It's nearly two by the time they make it uptown, and he shakes her gently awake before trying to give Steve an enormous tip (he refuses, saying Will's taken care of it). By the time they make it upstairs, they're too tired to do anything (another reason why he still wishes they stayed in, but whatever) but peel off their clothes. As Sloan's settling next to him — wrapped up in flannel pants and enormous socks and a tank top and a cardigan because instead of overheating she's always freezing, which is weird — she murmurs, "This is going to be a really great year, Don."

"Lots of changes," he points, tucking her hair behind her ear.

She kisses the place where his jaw meets his neck and burrows her head in his chest. "As I said. A great year."