Title: Good
Series: The Newsroom
Pairing: Will/Mackenzie
Rating: K+
Summary: What's that saying about the apple and the tree? she chides, but Will prays that this little apple falls far away from its tree.

Noah usually falls asleep somewhere in the middle of the third book. He demands that third book, is always convinced he has energy left to listen to another, and probably another after that, but he hasn't made it yet. It's just a little thing, but sometimes after he closes the book – a lot of times, every night, sometimes twice – Will leans down and kisses Noah's hair and tells him, plainly but seriously, you are so good, Noah McAvoy.

Noah is mischievous and has his wild days. He toes the line with rules, and there are moments when he will look up at his parents with a look that plainly says can I get away with this scheme I'm planning? It makes Will crazy, the willful disobedience, but MacKenzie just rolls her eyes and reminds him of that segment he didn't run by his executive producer on Tuesday.

What's that saying about the apple and the tree? she chides, but Will prays that this little apple falls far away from its tree.

Noah's school puts on You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown for the spring musical, and he, all of six years old, plays Woodstock. Will knows the musical well enough to know that Woodstock isn't a character in the libretto, but the drama teacher has added parts so that any kid who wants to participate can. And little Noah McAvoy, who has spent these short years of his life listening to Annie and The Music Man and Bye Bye Birdie, wants to participate.

He has no lines, but looks adorable in his little yellow bird costume. He gets distracted during the baseball scene when he sees his parents in the third row, and he waves. For a moment, Will considers not waving back, but the boy just looks so happy to see them that he can't help it.

MacKenzie grasps Will's hand when their kid takes a bow, looking to his left and right to follow along with the rest of the kids in the line, and there are little tears in Mac's eyes.

"He's so big," she says, a little sad and a lot proud. And Will feels sad for his own mother, who always came to these things alone, if at all.

Noah bounds down the stage when the lights come up and careens into MacKenzie's arms, yelling, "Did you see me, Mommy, did you see me?"

"You were absolutely magnificent, darling. The best Woodstock in the history of this musical, and certainly the most handsome."

"Better than the 1999 revival," Will says.

"I 'membered all the words to the songs, Daddy!" he says.

"I noticed! I'm so proud of you," he says sincerely. It's hard for Will sometimes. It has taken six years of practice and he's still not perfect. He doesn't always know what to say to make Noah feel confident and safe, doesn't always have the right vocabulary, but he finds that words like proud and love and always seem to be doing the trick so far. God, he hopes it's enough.

Noah just beams, and now that he's aware that he's pleased his parents, he dares to ask –

"Can we go get ice cream?"

MacKenzie comes out of Noah's room after bedtime to find Will looking through a small cardboard box of photographs on their bed.

"What are you doing?" she asks, sitting down beside him and picking up the glass of wine he's left for her on her nightstand.

"Nothing, I just remembered these pictures that Teresa sent, wondered if there were any of me from when I was Noah's age."

"Oh, let me see!"

She rifles through a stack of baby pictures of Will, cooing over him or pointing out photos that look like their son. Which is almost all of them.

"It's really not fair," she says. "I carried him inside of me for nearly a year, the least he could do is have my ears or something."

"He has your chin."

"Maybe." She pulls out a picture of Will in a sheep costume, labeled Halloween 1965. "Here's one." He takes it from her, smiling just a little at the boy in the picture. A boy who'd already learned how to hide his three-year-old brother under the bed.

MacKenzie abandons her stack of photos to climb behind her husband and wrap her arms around his shoulders. "Don't be sad, Will."

"Noah does look like me," he says. "And I can't even imagine…" He stops, and visibly recoils at the slightest thought.

"I know."

"I mean, ever, Mac."

"I know."

"I looked just like Noah." …and he hit me anyway.

It's been eight years since his father died, and Will doesn't think about him too often. But sometimes, now that he's responsible for this boy, he's more befuddled than ever about why, and how, and just what the fuck? Mac is easy-going about the scrapes and bruises their little boy inevitably gets, especially now that they've taken the training wheels off of his bike. But Will is always checking him for broken bones and cuts that could get infected and do you think he scratched his corneas; he got an awful lot of gravel in his face?

He reaches for his own nightstand and lays a framed picture of the three of them down on the bedspread. MacKenzie, her arms around Noah; Will, his arms around them both. "How could anyone not love that face?"

"I don't know," she says honestly. "But you know what I do know?"

"What's that?"

She loosens her grip on his shoulders to swing around and settle herself in his lap, breaking his concentration on the pictures and running her fingers through his hair. "More than anything else in the world, I know that you are good, Will McAvoy."

And he looks up at her, looks deep into her convincing eyes, and lets himself believe her.