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Fic - bridging the schism (Darcy, Lizzie/Darcy) pg, 1/1
Title: bridging the schism
Summary: The details are, undoubtedly, his favorite part of any plan. Or: How Darcy plans to fix this mess.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,565 words. Set post 78. Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alinaandalion for the early look. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. First time writing Darcy in this capacity, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated.
Gigi is waiting in his office after.
She’s sitting at his desk, feet propped up, grinning like a lunatic when he walks through the door. This doesn’t surprise him as much as he assumes most people suspect it would.
“Am I in trouble?” she asks, tone almost sing-song, but she is completely unashamed, Will knows, and she mostly doesn’t care, so it is also a mostly pointless gesture to even bother asking.
Still, his mouth twists for a moment before he presses it into a thin, straight line. “What do you think?” he replies pointedly, but without bite, motioning for her to get out of his chair and her feet off of his desk.
Gigi does neither, of course. She hardly ever does as she’s told when he’s involved. Not out of petulance or spite, but simply because she is one of the few people who can, and she takes a bit too much pride in it. Gigi likes to keep Will on his toes, to remind him that he’s young, that business and work have no place overtaking every single crevice in his life. His gratitude for such interventions changes daily, but that never deters his sister.
(Will sometimes wonders if his mother made Gigi promise to do this – to intervene, to remind him what fun is – the same way she made Will promise to always take care of his younger sister years and decades before he would have to learn how to be a man of his word. He knows the answer is more than likely yes. It is the Darcy way, after all – they never fail to keep a promise.)
Exaggerating a sigh, Gigi reaches for her phone, fiddling with it for a moment. He figures she’s probably texting Fitz, or updating her twitter, and the past few days of code names and awkward conversations are slowly starting to make sense, but his head is still spinning and his skin is still warm where Lizzie had touched him, so he can’t quite manage to work out the intricate details yet. Instead, he busies his hands with searching for a file somewhere near his sister’s feet and tries not to feel like such an idiot. It doesn’t entirely work.
“Honestly, William,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I think – no, I know – that if you didn’t have me you would never get anywhere with these things. Look at how much progress we’ve made today alone. It was quite a success.”
It takes nearly everything in him not to roll his eyes. “I am quite capable on my own, thank you.”
When she laughs again, it’s almost as if she is hysterical. “Oh, that is just adorable,” she grins.
William Darcy likes his life ordered and neat, the details of it arranged just so. He likes to cultivate and solidify a plan for every venture between A and B.
It’s something his father taught him to do years before. An unwritten rule to life, he had called it when Will was just a boy with crooked teeth and an even more crooked grin and full of all the love and admiration only a son can have for his father. It has defined his life ever since, said rule, carrying him through grade school and college, through business school and now the business world. Everyone around him, all those who can truly say they know him, see Will’s penchant for plans and order as an undisputed fact.
Will does not deny that he does not have the greatest track record when it comes to women, and he certainly does not deny that things with Lizzie didn’t exactly go according to plan the first time around. He tried to once, tried to explain to Gigi and Fitz his version of things – the accurate version of things – but, as they so aptly reminded him, the internet served as witness to his failures, and it will never let him forget. And after watching video after video of her reviling him in a such a way that still sometimes makes his stomach sick, he realized what he did wrong, he realized where things went so horribly, horribly awry.
Will understands that when he told her how he felt, he never once took into account how she may feel – about him or the situation or even the possibility of a them.
After she rejected him, he did as he was told – he went home, watched her videos, and got stupidly drunk in the process. He kept clicking through each one, pouring more and more alcohol down his throat with every jab and impersonation, through every mention of George Fucking Wickham, and tried not to find her so compelling and distracting, tried not to be so annoyed with how wrong he may have been about Jane. Mostly, though, Will saw what he can’t believe he didn’t before – that her face, that face he found so utterly captivating – told every emotion, every truth concerning how she felt about him. Will just hadn’t been able to look past how he felt at the time to see it.
So he wrote her the letter, gave his explanations, tried to make her understand things from his point of view.
Will accepted the fact that she may never feel the way he does. He'a a pragmatist, a realist, and Will respected her anger and gave her the space she deserved.
And he would have continued to do so – until Gigi decided to intervene. Until Today, when he watched Lizzie’s face as she spoke to him, saw the twist of her mouth when she looked at him, the barest hint of something akin to affection as it flicked across her features.
One of his favorite things about Lizzie is her face – how captivating it is, how compelling it is, and how it gives her away every time with its honesty. While in the past, with other women, perhaps Will would have saw this as a point of weakness, but with Lizzie he finds it admirable, brave even, and he is slowly getting better at reading it.
Today, what he saw gave him hope, and he holds onto it as tightly as he can.
The one thing people most often forget about William Darcy?
When devising a plan on how to get from A to B in the most efficient manner, he knows how to adjust in the face of extraneous variables.
It’s how he manages to stay ahead of the curve.
Will has countless scenarios of how it – they – may happen, but his current favorite, the one he devised during the long drive home after he saw her at Pemberley the first time, is this:
Soon, there will be some sort of gathering – a lunch, or even a dinner perhaps – orchestrated by Fitz and Gigi that will begin as a foursome and end as a twosome once the others make an excuse to leave. There will be awkwardness, of course, after their departure. Will expects this; he will be prepared for it. Lizzie will start to make some excuse as well, even move to leave, but he will ask her to stay, and she will. They will have dinner. If he is feeling particularly bold, he will order wine. He will try to make a joke and it will fall absurdly flat, he knows, because Will is never funny when he is trying to be. But Lizzie will laugh nonetheless, and it might start out of politeness but it will be genuine, it will reach her eyes, and he will think it is, perhaps, the prettiest she has ever looked.
The awkwardness will fade and he will ask her to tell him about herself – about her family, her work, what she wants for her future. Lizzie will be guarded at first, but he will press lightly, and once she gets started, once she starts talking about Charlotte and Jane and even Lydia, about all the things she wants for herself, she doesn’t stop. She will open herself to him with her honesty, and he will think quietly to himself about how much his mother would have liked her humor, how much his father would have liked her tenacity, how much Gigi likes her already.
They will part ways just outside the restaurant; Lizzie will refuse his offer of a ride home, but he Will wait with her until her taxi arrives. He will open the door for her when it does arrive, say something about how much he enjoyed dinner, how much he would like to do it again. Lizzie will pause, look up at him, and there will be a moment of confusion that gives way to clarity before she smiles, teeth and all, and murmurs quietly, I would like that too before saying goodnight.
The next day or the day after, he will ask her to dinner again. She will say yes. He will pick her up at her borrowed house and arrive five minutes early just so he can figure out what do with his hands when she opens the door. Will takes her to his favorite restaurant downtown – nothing fancy or pricy, just somewhere they will both feel comfortable. He will order beer and they will talk about work and Gigi, about the newest project Pemberley Digital is about to launch. She will say something that makes him laugh, and will watch him closely as he does, so much so that it makes him self-conscious; he will pick at his napkin nervously, ask what? softly without looking her in the eye. Lizzie will tell him that he has a very nice laugh. She will tell Will that he should think about doing it more often.
After dinner, he will drive her home, and they will argue about music, their likes and dislikes. She will tell him he has horrible taste and he will maybe agree. He will hope she will someday get used to it, maybe even find it endearing that he sometimes likes show tunes and will probably never gain understanding as to why certain things are popular. When he walks her to her door, he will think about kissing her. He will watch her mouth as it moves to say goodnight and Will can taste her already, can feel every single part of him wanting to lean in, to brush his mouth against hers.
But Will’s mother raised him to be a gentleman, so he merely brushes his lips against her cheek and thanks her for a nice evening.
Their second and third dates will follow the same course. At the end of each one, he will want nothing more than to lean in, capture his mouth with hers, beg her to ask him in, but he doesn’t.
He will need her to be the one to kiss him, to ask him to stay. He will need Lizzie be sure, certain in the same way as he, and Will is okay with waiting until she is.
On their fourth date, she will kiss him. Lizzie will kiss him just outside her door at the beginning of the date and not the end. It will come as a surprise – the way her fingers twist around his tie and pull him close, the way she looks at him just before their mouths touch. Will, of course, kisses her back. It will be lovely, and slow at first. He will want to take his time. Lizzie will taste like mint and a touch of salt, like a promise, he will think. Late, he will hate himself for thinking something so ridiculous, but at the time, with her arms winding around his neck and her body fitting so neatly against his, he will not care. He will want to ask her to let him inside, to forget dinner, to forget Gigi and Fitz waiting for them at the restaurant. He will kiss her more deeply, more soundly, pushing her backwards until her back hits the door to let her know just how much he wants her, wants this, but Lizzie will laugh and pull away. She will remind him that promises are promises, and he will reluctantly follow her to the car.
Maybe they will make love that night, and maybe they won’t. (Lizzie will laugh at that, he knows – the way he uses the term make love. It will embarrass her and she will call him silly and old fashioned, ask him to never, ever use the term again. He will smile, and kiss her soundly, and tell her no. He will explain to her that sex and making love are two very different things. He will explain to her that for him, with her, it could never simply be just sex.) Maybe it will be two nights later instead, or even three. Maybe it will be after their plans get ruined by work, and instead of the movie he promised her they will end up on the floor of his living room, eating take-out with the radio turned down to a dull noise in the distance. Maybe when she leans into kiss him then, Will is able to read everything she wants and needs in the way her tongue flicks against his because he knows her better now. After a while he will lead her to his bedroom because she deserves more than the floor, and his hands will shake just slightly as they memorize every inch of her. Lizzie will mock him for being too serious, and he’ll laugh as they kiss.
They will be gentle with each other at first. They will take their time. And He will wake in the morning to her there, wrapped around him, and he will be happy. She will be happy. Routines will form, tested and true, the kind Will can never see becoming tired. Lizzie’s time at Pemberley will end, graduation will sneak up on her, and she will leave to go back home, but there will already be plans for long weekends. She will start mentioning relocating to LA, moving in with Jane. Will won’t push, refuses to tell her how much he wants her close, how much he misses her after she leaves and he’s in San Francisco and she’s home, but he will hope, and help her move her things when she decides. It will be hard, their relationship, but it will work. They will make it work.
You see, most every plan Will has that involves Lizzie has the same endpoint.
It is the details that differ, and they may change with his mood, the day, or even the hour, but they are, undoubtedly, his favorite part.
He stays for a few days longer than necessary after his meeting with the board. If anyone were to ask, he would tell the truth – it is strictly business.
There are numerous meetings and brainstorming sessions. He even heads down to R & D to glance at their latest projects and the newest product that is set to launch next month.
The afternoon after he encounters Lizzie in her office, he catches her eye from across the way. Appreciates the slow smile that spreads across her mouth, the way she meets his gaze and holds it.
He finds himself thinking, not for the first time, maybe.
Another thing people tend to forget about William Darcy?
He is very good at waiting.
Summary: The details are, undoubtedly, his favorite part of any plan. Or: How Darcy plans to fix this mess.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,565 words. Set post 78. Thank you to
alinaandalion for the early look. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. First time writing Darcy in this capacity, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated.Gigi is waiting in his office after.
She’s sitting at his desk, feet propped up, grinning like a lunatic when he walks through the door. This doesn’t surprise him as much as he assumes most people suspect it would.
“Am I in trouble?” she asks, tone almost sing-song, but she is completely unashamed, Will knows, and she mostly doesn’t care, so it is also a mostly pointless gesture to even bother asking.
Still, his mouth twists for a moment before he presses it into a thin, straight line. “What do you think?” he replies pointedly, but without bite, motioning for her to get out of his chair and her feet off of his desk.
Gigi does neither, of course. She hardly ever does as she’s told when he’s involved. Not out of petulance or spite, but simply because she is one of the few people who can, and she takes a bit too much pride in it. Gigi likes to keep Will on his toes, to remind him that he’s young, that business and work have no place overtaking every single crevice in his life. His gratitude for such interventions changes daily, but that never deters his sister.
(Will sometimes wonders if his mother made Gigi promise to do this – to intervene, to remind him what fun is – the same way she made Will promise to always take care of his younger sister years and decades before he would have to learn how to be a man of his word. He knows the answer is more than likely yes. It is the Darcy way, after all – they never fail to keep a promise.)
Exaggerating a sigh, Gigi reaches for her phone, fiddling with it for a moment. He figures she’s probably texting Fitz, or updating her twitter, and the past few days of code names and awkward conversations are slowly starting to make sense, but his head is still spinning and his skin is still warm where Lizzie had touched him, so he can’t quite manage to work out the intricate details yet. Instead, he busies his hands with searching for a file somewhere near his sister’s feet and tries not to feel like such an idiot. It doesn’t entirely work.
“Honestly, William,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I think – no, I know – that if you didn’t have me you would never get anywhere with these things. Look at how much progress we’ve made today alone. It was quite a success.”
It takes nearly everything in him not to roll his eyes. “I am quite capable on my own, thank you.”
When she laughs again, it’s almost as if she is hysterical. “Oh, that is just adorable,” she grins.
William Darcy likes his life ordered and neat, the details of it arranged just so. He likes to cultivate and solidify a plan for every venture between A and B.
It’s something his father taught him to do years before. An unwritten rule to life, he had called it when Will was just a boy with crooked teeth and an even more crooked grin and full of all the love and admiration only a son can have for his father. It has defined his life ever since, said rule, carrying him through grade school and college, through business school and now the business world. Everyone around him, all those who can truly say they know him, see Will’s penchant for plans and order as an undisputed fact.
Will does not deny that he does not have the greatest track record when it comes to women, and he certainly does not deny that things with Lizzie didn’t exactly go according to plan the first time around. He tried to once, tried to explain to Gigi and Fitz his version of things – the accurate version of things – but, as they so aptly reminded him, the internet served as witness to his failures, and it will never let him forget. And after watching video after video of her reviling him in a such a way that still sometimes makes his stomach sick, he realized what he did wrong, he realized where things went so horribly, horribly awry.
Will understands that when he told her how he felt, he never once took into account how she may feel – about him or the situation or even the possibility of a them.
After she rejected him, he did as he was told – he went home, watched her videos, and got stupidly drunk in the process. He kept clicking through each one, pouring more and more alcohol down his throat with every jab and impersonation, through every mention of George Fucking Wickham, and tried not to find her so compelling and distracting, tried not to be so annoyed with how wrong he may have been about Jane. Mostly, though, Will saw what he can’t believe he didn’t before – that her face, that face he found so utterly captivating – told every emotion, every truth concerning how she felt about him. Will just hadn’t been able to look past how he felt at the time to see it.
So he wrote her the letter, gave his explanations, tried to make her understand things from his point of view.
Will accepted the fact that she may never feel the way he does. He'a a pragmatist, a realist, and Will respected her anger and gave her the space she deserved.
And he would have continued to do so – until Gigi decided to intervene. Until Today, when he watched Lizzie’s face as she spoke to him, saw the twist of her mouth when she looked at him, the barest hint of something akin to affection as it flicked across her features.
One of his favorite things about Lizzie is her face – how captivating it is, how compelling it is, and how it gives her away every time with its honesty. While in the past, with other women, perhaps Will would have saw this as a point of weakness, but with Lizzie he finds it admirable, brave even, and he is slowly getting better at reading it.
Today, what he saw gave him hope, and he holds onto it as tightly as he can.
The one thing people most often forget about William Darcy?
When devising a plan on how to get from A to B in the most efficient manner, he knows how to adjust in the face of extraneous variables.
It’s how he manages to stay ahead of the curve.
Will has countless scenarios of how it – they – may happen, but his current favorite, the one he devised during the long drive home after he saw her at Pemberley the first time, is this:
Soon, there will be some sort of gathering – a lunch, or even a dinner perhaps – orchestrated by Fitz and Gigi that will begin as a foursome and end as a twosome once the others make an excuse to leave. There will be awkwardness, of course, after their departure. Will expects this; he will be prepared for it. Lizzie will start to make some excuse as well, even move to leave, but he will ask her to stay, and she will. They will have dinner. If he is feeling particularly bold, he will order wine. He will try to make a joke and it will fall absurdly flat, he knows, because Will is never funny when he is trying to be. But Lizzie will laugh nonetheless, and it might start out of politeness but it will be genuine, it will reach her eyes, and he will think it is, perhaps, the prettiest she has ever looked.
The awkwardness will fade and he will ask her to tell him about herself – about her family, her work, what she wants for her future. Lizzie will be guarded at first, but he will press lightly, and once she gets started, once she starts talking about Charlotte and Jane and even Lydia, about all the things she wants for herself, she doesn’t stop. She will open herself to him with her honesty, and he will think quietly to himself about how much his mother would have liked her humor, how much his father would have liked her tenacity, how much Gigi likes her already.
They will part ways just outside the restaurant; Lizzie will refuse his offer of a ride home, but he Will wait with her until her taxi arrives. He will open the door for her when it does arrive, say something about how much he enjoyed dinner, how much he would like to do it again. Lizzie will pause, look up at him, and there will be a moment of confusion that gives way to clarity before she smiles, teeth and all, and murmurs quietly, I would like that too before saying goodnight.
The next day or the day after, he will ask her to dinner again. She will say yes. He will pick her up at her borrowed house and arrive five minutes early just so he can figure out what do with his hands when she opens the door. Will takes her to his favorite restaurant downtown – nothing fancy or pricy, just somewhere they will both feel comfortable. He will order beer and they will talk about work and Gigi, about the newest project Pemberley Digital is about to launch. She will say something that makes him laugh, and will watch him closely as he does, so much so that it makes him self-conscious; he will pick at his napkin nervously, ask what? softly without looking her in the eye. Lizzie will tell him that he has a very nice laugh. She will tell Will that he should think about doing it more often.
After dinner, he will drive her home, and they will argue about music, their likes and dislikes. She will tell him he has horrible taste and he will maybe agree. He will hope she will someday get used to it, maybe even find it endearing that he sometimes likes show tunes and will probably never gain understanding as to why certain things are popular. When he walks her to her door, he will think about kissing her. He will watch her mouth as it moves to say goodnight and Will can taste her already, can feel every single part of him wanting to lean in, to brush his mouth against hers.
But Will’s mother raised him to be a gentleman, so he merely brushes his lips against her cheek and thanks her for a nice evening.
Their second and third dates will follow the same course. At the end of each one, he will want nothing more than to lean in, capture his mouth with hers, beg her to ask him in, but he doesn’t.
He will need her to be the one to kiss him, to ask him to stay. He will need Lizzie be sure, certain in the same way as he, and Will is okay with waiting until she is.
On their fourth date, she will kiss him. Lizzie will kiss him just outside her door at the beginning of the date and not the end. It will come as a surprise – the way her fingers twist around his tie and pull him close, the way she looks at him just before their mouths touch. Will, of course, kisses her back. It will be lovely, and slow at first. He will want to take his time. Lizzie will taste like mint and a touch of salt, like a promise, he will think. Late, he will hate himself for thinking something so ridiculous, but at the time, with her arms winding around his neck and her body fitting so neatly against his, he will not care. He will want to ask her to let him inside, to forget dinner, to forget Gigi and Fitz waiting for them at the restaurant. He will kiss her more deeply, more soundly, pushing her backwards until her back hits the door to let her know just how much he wants her, wants this, but Lizzie will laugh and pull away. She will remind him that promises are promises, and he will reluctantly follow her to the car.
Maybe they will make love that night, and maybe they won’t. (Lizzie will laugh at that, he knows – the way he uses the term make love. It will embarrass her and she will call him silly and old fashioned, ask him to never, ever use the term again. He will smile, and kiss her soundly, and tell her no. He will explain to her that sex and making love are two very different things. He will explain to her that for him, with her, it could never simply be just sex.) Maybe it will be two nights later instead, or even three. Maybe it will be after their plans get ruined by work, and instead of the movie he promised her they will end up on the floor of his living room, eating take-out with the radio turned down to a dull noise in the distance. Maybe when she leans into kiss him then, Will is able to read everything she wants and needs in the way her tongue flicks against his because he knows her better now. After a while he will lead her to his bedroom because she deserves more than the floor, and his hands will shake just slightly as they memorize every inch of her. Lizzie will mock him for being too serious, and he’ll laugh as they kiss.
They will be gentle with each other at first. They will take their time. And He will wake in the morning to her there, wrapped around him, and he will be happy. She will be happy. Routines will form, tested and true, the kind Will can never see becoming tired. Lizzie’s time at Pemberley will end, graduation will sneak up on her, and she will leave to go back home, but there will already be plans for long weekends. She will start mentioning relocating to LA, moving in with Jane. Will won’t push, refuses to tell her how much he wants her close, how much he misses her after she leaves and he’s in San Francisco and she’s home, but he will hope, and help her move her things when she decides. It will be hard, their relationship, but it will work. They will make it work.
You see, most every plan Will has that involves Lizzie has the same endpoint.
It is the details that differ, and they may change with his mood, the day, or even the hour, but they are, undoubtedly, his favorite part.
He stays for a few days longer than necessary after his meeting with the board. If anyone were to ask, he would tell the truth – it is strictly business.
There are numerous meetings and brainstorming sessions. He even heads down to R & D to glance at their latest projects and the newest product that is set to launch next month.
The afternoon after he encounters Lizzie in her office, he catches her eye from across the way. Appreciates the slow smile that spreads across her mouth, the way she meets his gaze and holds it.
He finds himself thinking, not for the first time, maybe.
Another thing people tend to forget about William Darcy?
He is very good at waiting.