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It starts when they spend thanksgiving with his family. After many years of Will making excuses not to join them and with the news of his engagement, it turns out to be a loud occasion, filled with excitement. His sisters, Grace and Abigail (happy to have MacKenzie back in their lives) had eagerly questioned her over her plans for the wedding; asking about dates, venues, flowers and invitations. MacKenzie for her part seemed slightly overwhelmed and confessed that she did not want anything too large. That had shocked Grace and Abby, and they immediately set out to convince her of the benefits of going all out on her wedding day. After all she was only going to do this once. Will had just grumbled from his corner about going down to City Hall.
Well to be fair his sisters weren’t completely the instigators in all of this. Mac’s sisters were on her too when they had gone to England to see her family for Christmas. Mac’s mother was maybe the most insistent out of everyone that they have a big wedding, because after all her oldest daughter was (finally) marrying the man she had longed for all these years. MacKenzie had tried to brush it off, telling them she wasn’t the big wedding type of girl. The ground work however, had already been set by his sisters so it did not take much for Mac’s three sisters to convince her that she would regret not having her ‘dream wedding’. Will, really didn’t know where her sisters had acquired their apparent wedding expertise from as MacKenzie’s youngest sisters, Matilda and Gwendolyn (the twins), were not married. Her other sister, Alice, had gotten married in recent years so maybe she spoke from a place of knowledge.
That’s all it had really taken.
So when he wakes up at two a.m. on a cold mid-February night to find her side of the bed empty, he’s not surprised. In fact it’s been happening more and more lately. It seems like lately every spare moment she has is dedicated to wedding plans ( in the mornings after the first run down, she’ll follow him into his office and sit at the table haggling him about colours, guest lists and place settings until he reminds her that they actually have work to do). He’ll find her up in the middle of the night pouring over plans, even if she’s had a rough day and they only managed to get to bed at midnight.
Will had managed to distract her with his hands and his mouth when they had gotten home that night but it seems it wasn’t for long. He sighs and rolls over in bed while rubbing a hand over his face. He’s tired but he knows that he’s not going to get any sleep without her next to him in bed so he decides that he might as well get up and go find her. Plus it’s so much colder in the bed without the warm weight of MacKenzie draped all over him.
He pulls himself up from the bed and moves out the bedroom to the living room where he knows she’ll be. Will curses softly under his breath when he realises how much colder it is outside of the bedroom because he turned the heating off when they went to bed. He stumbles half asleep with the soft light coming from the living room guiding him and he finds Mac curled up on the with one of the thick fleece throws that they keep on the couch wrapped around her lap. Her glasses perched on the edge of her nose as she mumbles to herself, scribbling on her note pad, surrounded by multi-coloured pieces of cardboard and her laptop open beside her.
He has to stifle a groan when he sees the cardboard because he really thought they had finalised the cardboard they wanted for the wedding invitations last week (and her having them out can only mean one thing). Apparently he doesn’t quite muffle his groan enough because Mac’s head whips up from her note pad as she turns to her side to see him walking towards her.
“Hi honey, did I wake you?” she asks him once he’s come around the couch and seated himself on a spot that’s not covered with cardboard.
He grunts in reply while nodding.
“Well, I’m sorry.” And Will thinks that she really doesn’t sound sorry. Her tone of voice really leads him to believe that she would have elbowed him awake at some point. “But now that you’re awake I’m glad that you’re here because I could use your opinion”
He just stares at her. She can’t be serious.
“MacKenzie, it’s two in the morning!”
She in turn stares right back at him as if she can’t understand his protests. And honestly she can be so stubborn sometimes.
“Is there really any decision so pressing that it cannot wait until morning?”
Mac bites her lip as her eyes drift down to all the cardboard surrounding her. “Well…”
Will just shakes his head because, no. Three weeks they’ve been doing this; going back and forth on different styles for the invitations.
“Mac” he sighs running an exasperated hand through his hair.
“I know we picked something out last week but look” She says gesturing around her “They sent over more colours and I just can’t help but feel like we might have rushed in our decision. Please, Billy?”
She looks up at him with those hazel eyes and he knows he’s lost. And at this point MacKenzie knows that he would do anything for her. Will was serious when he said that he would never hurt her again and to him that also meant making up for everything that he had done to hurt her in the past. That’s why he agreed to the big wedding and sat up with her while she made up her mind and then changed it over every little thing. They had both been unhappy for so long that he would spend the rest of his life making sure that he did everything he could to make her happy. Will would give her the world if she asked, because he loves her ( for the way she always brings him back from the edge of his own destruction and how she pushes, makes him better; makes him believe that he can do better. Be better).
“Oh, alright” Will relents with a small smile tugging at his lips when he sees the happiness spread over MacKenzie’s face. “But I just want you to remind you that we can go down to City Hall anytime, okay? If this planning stuff all gets too much for you, you can just say the word and we’ll elope”
If he’s really being honest that’s what he had wanted from the get go because the MacKenzie that he had loved before had been flighty and unsettled. Though she is not like that anymore because being away from him and being at war changed her; he still has those niggling bouts of insecurity and fear. Fear that she will run again, that he won’t be good enough for her creep up infrequently. Then he will see her, and she will thank him for the way that he loves her so fiercely that it grounds her, roots her in him. The way he looks at her like she is the brightest star in his universe, keeps her planted. Light of his life. (He had joked with her that she should have saved that for her wedding vows).
MacKenzie just shakes her head and laughs, pointing out that going to City Hall doesn’t really count as eloping.
He shrugs. “Either way, I’m serious.” He leans over and takes her hand in his “because at the end of the day I just want to be married to you. I’m thinking about forever here, and a wedding is really only one paragraph in the story of our life together. It’s not the be all and end all”
At that Mac gives him a soft smile.
“I know, darling.” And then she hesitates. “It’s just that at some point I thought that you were never coming back to me and they were some people that told me as much too. So the fact that we’re actually here and planning our wedding is still quite amazing to me. And I’m so thankful for that and the fact that you love me.”
Will leans forward and kisses her soundly on the lips, with more energy than he should have in the middle of the night.
“Well if we’re going to do this let’s do it right” he says as he stands up and begins to move her laptop and pieces of cardboard off the couch so they can lay out properly ( he has a feeling that they will be there for a while). Mac gets up to help him when she catches on to what he is doing.
Will gets on his back, stretching his legs out in front of him and then motions for Mac to join him. Once she’s all settled with her back against his chest and the throw wrapped tight around both of them he motions to the mess on the coffee table.
“Alright, show me what you’ve got”
MacKenzie smiles brightly and begins to show him the new cardboard colours she got as they nuzzle together on the couch on the cold February morning. And he knows that she will probably change her mind again but he’s okay with it because there’s nothing he won’t do to become her husband.