Work Text:
Summer 2013
Lizzie moved to San Francisco in June, just in time for street fairs and cool summer fog. “You guys,” she tweeted, “I live in a postcard” (hashtag #wow). Her first few weeks went by in a colorful blur punctuated by photographs that went viral the moment they hit the Internet – the reunions and the lunches and the scenery and the boyfriend, heavens above, the boyfriend.
Darcy and Lizzie had been together for months now, and everyone agreed they were perfect for each other. His unwavering support lifted her confidence, while her affectionate teasing made him laugh at himself and helped him open up to people. Their friends had never seen either of them so happy.
She set up her company in the smallest suite of a sprawling office building near the airport. (“Slightly less postcard-y.”) The carpet was garish and the closest window was out the door and down the hall, but her family and friends decorated the place with books, photographs and tongue-in-cheek paperweights until she felt at home.
That summer Lizzie spent most of her time either in front of the camera or hunched over her desk. She only went to her cramped apartment to sleep, if she went there at all. It was far too easy for Darcy to coax her into the city instead, where she could forget her homesickness over drinks with friends, or quiet evenings alone with him.
One of those evenings, as they relaxed in his ridiculously spacious penthouse watching the lights twinkle across the Bay, she heaved a mock sigh and said, “We’re due for a fight, you know.”
“A fight?” He was understandably puzzled, considering the way she was almost sitting in his lap. “Regarding which topic?”
“I don’t have one picked out or anything. I’m just saying, it’s bound to happen. Things have been going smoothly for too long.”
He’d been twining a lock of her hair through his fingers; now he gave it a playful tug. “I beg your pardon, you and I fight constantly. We were fighting just last night.”
“That’s called ‘sex,’ darling.”
“Lizzie,” he laughed. “Before that. Over dinner.”
“That was a debate about Charlotte Brontë, and you enjoyed every minute of it.”
“Only because I won.”
She poked him in the chest. “Okay so first of all the hell you did, and second of all, spirited discussions leading to foreplay do not count as fights and you know it.”
Darcy made a thoughtful noise and tucked her more securely into the curve of his arm. “I had rather hoped we shared sufficient animosity before our relationship began.”
“Nope, sorry,” she declared. “All couples have arguments. It wouldn’t be healthy if we didn’t.”
“Very well, if we must.” He retrieved his phone from the end table and opened his calendar. “Is next Thursday at 8pm convenient for you?”
Lizzie responded by tickling him and trying to steal his phone, which ended in a reasonably successful attempt at making love on the couch.
She was right, of course. Their first serious fight happened two weeks later, and it was a doozy.
She first met him at VidCon. His name, “I am not even kidding,” was Pierce. He went into business in San Francisco about the same time she did, and he seemed determined to make her his first conquest.
“Lizzie Bennet, right?” said Pierce during a networking event, waving his fussily-ordered whiskey sour in her face. “You had that video blog about, what was it? Sisters and boyfriends?” He winked at her. “Loved it, babe. Really cute.”
She related all of this to Darcy, Fitz and Brandon at a Nob Hill wine bar, with such a spot-on impersonation that Fitz snorted Olivier Leflaive Chardonnay out his nose. “I swear this guy is the smarmiest douchebag I have ever met in my life,” she said. “And I know I’ve said that before, but I really think my instincts are sound on this one.”
Soon after, she found herself in direct competition with Pierce over a promotional video contract for an up-and-coming renewable energy firm. It was a tantalizing opportunity, the kind of high-profile project that could put a small digital media company on the map, and Lizzie was sure her team could do it justice.
But no matter how many hours she spent doing the research and fine-tuning her pitch, she couldn’t win the confidence of the energy firm’s jovial, pot-bellied CEO. She was too new, he told her on his way out of the meeting room. Too inexperienced.
“Too girly, he means,” Lizzie ranted to Darcy a few days later. She had just learned that Pierce got the CEO drunk at a sports bar and was now bragging to everyone that the deal was almost official. “It freaking kills me that a hack like Pierce can get an edge on me by blathering about the Giants for an hour.”
Darcy, whose romantic evening had been spoiled by the whole business, agreed for the tenth time that Pierce was a thoroughly useless sort of person and motioned to the waiter for the check.
Lizzie finally resolved to stop letting it bother her, and soon she was too busy planning the next theme for her literary channel to give it much thought. But early the next week, as she was attending a forum in the Financial District, she bumped into Pierce in the hotel lobby. Bracing herself for another round of gloating, she was surprised when he scowled at her instead.
“So,” he said, looking her up and down. “Got your boyfriend to bail you out again, huh, Lizzie? Guess I should have seen that one coming.”
Her biting reply was right on her lips when something stopped her. She narrowed her eyes and left the hotel without a word.
Within ten minutes she had Charlotte on the phone. “I know you’re busy and it might be nothing,” she said, raising her voice over the traffic on Washington Street. “But do you think you could check something for me?”
Charlotte got back to her that afternoon. “You’re not going to like this,” she said.
When Darcy made his usual invitation for Lizzie to stay in the city for the evening, she refused. She sent a message telling him to come to her office after her employees had gone home – a sharply-worded message, lest he get the wrong idea. He arrived with annoying punctuality at nine o’clock and found her leaning against her desk, a small severe figure in her dark suit. “We need to talk,” she said.
Darcy came to a stop in the middle of the floor. “So I see.”
“I hear Pemberley is getting a new production manager at the Los Angeles office.”
“Yes,” he said, cautiously. “May I ask where you obtained this information?”
“Never mind that,” she said. “You interfered, didn’t you? You stole Pierce’s top employee so he would lose the contract.”
He faltered for a moment, eyebrows raised. Then he came up with the worst possible thing he could have said: “You are overreacting.”
Lizzie’s chin shot up. “Am I.”
“We made an offer to a qualified professional. He accepted of his own accord. It was perfectly ethical.”
“This isn’t about business ethics, it’s about you and me. It never occurred to you to talk to me first?”
“Lizzie, for heaven’s sake, I did you a favor.”
“You don’t understand.” She started pacing, fingers pressed to her temples. “My competitors, my potential clients, all of them are waiting for any excuse to dismiss me as some flighty girlfriend sleeping her way to the top. God, I can only imagine what they must be thinking of me.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. “I do not pay attention to what such people choose to think.”
“Of course not!” she practically shouted at him. “You don’t have to! You don’t know what it’s like for women starting out in this industry, okay? I don’t have the luxury of getting things handed to me when―”
“Handed to me!”
Lizzie pinched the bridge of her nose. “William….”
“The circumstances of my inheriting Pemberley Digital were not particularly favorable, Elizabeth.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said; but it was too late to call her words back.
“I was twenty years old.” He was furious now, red-faced and rigid in a manner she had not seen in months. “Catherine de Bourgh tried to claim control of the company, and she wanted to take Gigi away from me. I had to fight for everything I have. So you must forgive me if I do not find my privilege readily apparent.”
He slammed the door on his way out. Lizzie threw a paperweight across the room.
Gigi called from Sanditon three days later. Lizzie, running on little more than coffee and sarcasm, groaned aloud when the notification appeared on her computer screen.
“Hey, Lizzie!” Gigi waved at the camera, fresh as a daisy in one of her many vintage sundresses.
“Domino, do not record.”
Domino chirped obligingly. Gigi looked sheepish. “Found that feature, huh?”
“Makes sense, since I’m the one who suggested it.” It came out harsher than Lizzie intended. She made an effort to smile. “What’s up?”
The younger woman’s face fell into a concerned expression that was disturbingly like her brother’s. “Is everything all right? You looked stressed out in your last video, and William’s been avoiding Fitz and me all week.”
“It’s fine. We’re just going through a thing.”
“What happened?”
“Long story.” Lizzie relented a bit, slumping in her chair. “Basically, he went over my head on a business matter and tried to hide it from me.”
“Ugh, William.” Gigi rubbed her forehead. “Believe me, I know how … particular he can be about management decisions. He just really wants your venture to succeed, Lizzie. He talks all the time about the important work you’re doing.”
“If he really has faith in me, he shouldn’t feel the need to step in and throw his weight around.”
Gigi looked troubled at this, like it hit close to home. Lizzie grimaced. “I’m sorry, it’s not fair of me to dump all this on you.”
“You guys are going to be okay, though, right?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not – I mean, we just need to… Look, I have to go.” She couldn’t talk with Gigi staring at her like that, it made her feel like she was kicking a puppy. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
When matters remained unresolved as of Friday night, Charlotte declared a state of emergency and drove in from San Mateo to discuss the issue over dessert.
“This guy had applied for jobs with Pemberley before,” she said. “It looks to me like the opportunity came up at the right time and Darcy went for it.” She nudged the plate of cheesecake in Lizzie’s direction. “He is right, you know. Tech companies lure employees away from each other all the time. It’s part of the game.”
“He could have at least told me,” Lizzie said. “Is that so unreasonable? Damn it, I thought he was past this kind of thing.”
No answer from across the table, but she knew the look on her best friend’s face quite well by now – the Are You Sure You’re Not Willfully Misinterpreting Something look. She put her fork down and sat there feeling miserable.
Charlotte allowed a few moments to pass before delicately clearing her throat. “Have you heard from him yet?”
“Just a one-sentence email saying he’ll be out of town until next week. Not exactly promising.”
“Give it some time, okay?” Charlotte smiled her patient, practical smile. “It’s probably not as bad as you think.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Jane during their Skype chat that weekend. It was after dark in New York, and her shadowy apartment made a weird contrast with the late afternoon sunshine streaming through Lizzie’s window. “I’m sure he was only trying to help. He cares for you so much.”
“You get where I’m coming from, don’t you?” Lizzie pleaded. “I know you and Bing love each other, but aren’t there times when you just want to claw his eyes out?”
“Um.” Jane knitted her brow and tucked her hair behind her ear. “No, not really.”
Lizzie sighed. “Right, stupid question.”
“Soooo,” Lydia drawled over the phone, “does Darce-face think he knows what’s best for everyone, or…?”
“EXACTLY.” Lizzie flopped backwards across the bed.
“Like, okay.” The line garbled a bit as Lydia shut the door to her room. “I know we were unfair to him before, and I’m grateful for his help back in March, I really am. But…”
Her deep breath made a huffing noise in Lizzie’s ear. “I’ve been thinking about it lately, and it’s like, Darcy didn’t get my permission, you know? He still owns the rights to that tape even though I never agreed to it. I kind of feel like he should have tried to talk to me instead of being all knight-in-shining-armor about it.” She hesitated. “Does that make sense? I get that he’s a good person and everything, but….”
“No, it does make sense,” Lizzie said softly. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“It’s okay to be mad,” said Lydia, and the smile returned to her voice. “Don’t worry, he’ll probably sort his shit out and send you flowers or something gross like that. And if he doesn’t, I’ll show up at his fancy-ass apartment with water balloons.”
For the first time in a week, Lizzie laughed. “You’re really amazing, baby sis, you know that?”
Lydia giggled. “Yeah, I know.”
The flowers arrived at her office the next day, along with a note asking whether she would mind terribly if Darcy paid her a visit in the near future. Lizzie sent him a text saying she would like that very much.
She was sitting barefoot on the front steps of her apartment building, drinking a beer and watching the sky turn orange over South City, when Darcy’s driver dropped him off. He stood in front of her in his business clothes, looking tired and out of place.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hello.”
“When did you get back?”
He checked his watch. “Seventeen minutes ago.”
She had to look at his shoes at that point, because his prim, pitiful expression was about to make her laugh and it wasn’t time for that yet. “The benefits of living by the airport,” she said, and waved her bottle at him. “Do you want one? They’re terrible.”
He relaxed ever so slightly. “Since you put it like that.”
Lizzie and Darcy were still talking in her kitchen at two in the morning. They talked about Lydia and Gigi, about Darcy’s parents and Aunt Catherine, about Lizzie’s lingering insecurities over her career. “I hope I did not convey the idea that you cannot succeed without my help,” he said. “I have every confidence in your efforts, you know that.”
“And I have confidence in yours. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“You can hardly be blamed. I was insufferable – again.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “My shortcomings on these matters are not always clear to me. I’m afraid I must ask for your patience.”
Lizzie smiled and angled a wry look at the ceiling. “You’re lucky I love you so much.” The full weight of her words hit her a moment later.
Darcy crossed the kitchen in one step and gathered her into his arms.
The make-up sex was spectacular.