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cynicinafishbowl · 7 years

Note

For the dvd meme— any bit in the second or third chapter of Politics and Profanity where Lizzy and Evie are flirting. I’m #predictable

I expected no less from you, madame. I have decided to go with Chapter 2 (under the cut)

By about ten the next morning, Elizabeth realised that Darcy had not taken the intended message away from their meeting. This realisation came by way of the five emails he had sent her by then, amending his schedule in some insignificant manner. [Darcy is a petty little shit when he puts his mind to it] By the end of the day, and another seventeen emails, she was sure that he was having his revenge by inundating her with as much minutiae as he could throw at her. Knowing, thanks to his incessant emailing, that he would not be in his office, she walked towards it, hoping to see Mr Fitzwilliam. He was indeed there, and seemed surprised to see her.

“Miss Bennett. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Fitzwilliam asked as she entered the room. A moment later, having seen her expression, he continued, “Wait. Fitz hasn’t been flooding you with emails keeping you updated as to every tiny amendment to his schedule, in an attempt to mete out some kind of schoolyard vengeance, has he?” [They’ve known each other for literally forever, which mean he knows exactly the sort of shit Darcy is likely to try to pull]

“That and sending me the occasional synopsis of a particularly interesting something which happens to be in one of his red boxes.”

Fitzwilliam rolled his eyes. “Would I be correct in surmising that you could probably use a drink?” he asked, opening the door to Darcy’s office and waving her in. “I can offer you scotch, sherry, [Yes Minister - I couldn’t not] or bourbon.”

“Bourbon?”

“He acquired a taste for it whilst on an internship in America.”

“Scotch, thank you.”

“Have a seat, Elizabeth. May I call you Elizabeth?”

“Only if I may call you Evelyn.”

There’s a definite current of flirting between the two of them in Pride and Prejudice before Fitzwilliam backs off, which in my opinion is because Darcy takes him aside and invokes bros before hos. Obviously in my fic, Fitzwilliam backs off for a different reason, but that is neither here nor there.

My initial plan was to actually have Lizzie and Fitzwilliam date for a while, before they realise that they’re better off as friends or some such, but that didn’t end up happening. I can’t recall why I decided against it. Probably the fact that I couldn’t really think of a plausible reason for them to break up, so it was safer never to go there.

“By all means, Elizabeth, otherwise our following conversation about Fitz is going to be far too confusing.” Elizabeth sank into one of the armchairs in the office and accepted the drink Fitzwilliam handed her, murmuring thanks and taking a sip. “So how many emails did he send you?” Fitzwilliam asked, before cutting her off. “No, no, don’t tell me. Twenty?”

“Twenty-two. Twenty-three if you count the one he sent last night.”

“Christ. And I assume that diligence meant that you actually read them all.”

“Indeed it did,” Elizabeth confirmed, “although every so often there was some interesting bit of statistical analysis from a research paper. Or in one case, a picture of a cat as an attachment labelled ‘virus virus Trojan horse plz open plz’.” [I believe that all email attachments should be named in the manner of lolcats]

“And you opened it?” Fitzwilliam chuckled.

“Of course I opened it. If the computer defences aren’t up to any viruses I’m sent, it’s better that we know about it as soon as possible.”

“So I take it from your visits that you think Fitz has potential in the long run?” [he’s not an idiot]

“What on earth do you mean?” Elizabeth prevaricated.

“If you thought him nothing but a passing nuisance, you wouldn’t be bothering yourself with talking to his assistant after he spent the day annoying you after you reamed him for what was, admittedly, not his fault, but, as I pointed out, something which he probably should have explained from the outset, instead of saying inappropriate things to people with arguably more political clout than him. If you thought he didn’t have staying power, you would just let him run his course, and breathe a sigh of relief when he was replaced and went to work for some top tier law firm.”

“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” [Up until now, Elizabeth had thought he was just along for the ride until something better came up]

“It’s my job to think these things through. If I didn’t think Fitz could go all the way, I would be spending my leisure hours looking for more permanent jobs. Instead, I spend my leisure hours conversing with lovely ladies such as yourself,” he pointed out with a slight inclination of his head. [Shameless. Absolutely shameless.]

“Darcy’s problem isn’t that he’s stupid or even bad at politics from what I’ve seen. His problem is that he’s too… I don’t know… idealistic. [She realises that Darcy isn’t a terrible person, he’s just going about the politics wrong] If he weren’t, he would realise that things are less about actually running the country and more about climbing the greasy totem pole. I mean for heaven’s sake. It’s youth and unemployment.”

“Surely you don’t mean to say that some portfolios are more important than others. Miss Elizabeth, I am shocked,” exclaimed Fitzwilliam in a tone which implied that he was anything but.

“You might very well think that,” Elizabeth paused in her response to take a drink, “but I couldn’t possibly comment.” [Two of my favourite things - that quote from House of Cards, and the Victory Sip, where you punctuate your statement with an exceedingly smug sip of something]

Fitzwilliam chuckled. In response to Elizabeth’s curious look, he said “You know, if you were a bit taller, and significantly more Tory, you’d be exactly his type [He’s essentially describing Caroline Bingley, who is, but for the fact that she’s utterly uninterested in men, exactly his type]. And before you start getting all sardonic, I am in no way implying that that is at all your intent.” [He fails to mention that she is also very close to his type: compact and filled with rage]

Elizabeth, entirely ready to reply with something sardonic, after all, she had hardly come to Westminster to secure some rich, conservative husband [lol surprise bitch, that’s what you’re getting], instead burst into laughter [He’s hot and he’s funny. Such struggle]. “And what, pray tell, was the sample size from which you drew this conclusion?”

“I will admit that my scientific method was somewhat less than rigorous.”

Elizabeth glanced at her watch, and saw that she had another forty minutes until Darcy was due to return to pick up his red boxes for the evening. As such, she was more than slightly surprised to look up from her watch to see him walk into his office [I do enjoy having characters ambush other characters]. He looked, quite rightly, somewhat confused. “You’re not meant to be back for another forty minutes, Minister. You’ve been quite diligent in that respect haven’t you?” she pointed out.

“I emailed you from the car.” [This bitch, am I right?]

Elizabeth pulled out her phone and saw that that was indeed the case. [She has to commend his diligence and commitment to pettiness] Standing, she excused herself. “Indeed you did. Evelyn, it has been a pleasure. Minister, that cat picture was most droll.” [tfw your workplace nemesis is hot as shit, and his homie is super cute and funny. #relatable]

As she left, she heard Darcy ask “What was that about?” [I love having the start of the next conversation happen while its subject is still within earshot.]

Fitzwilliam’s response of “You being a prat,” made her smile as she walked back to her department, where promptly was she greeted by Mr Gardiner. “Where the fuck were you?” [Ah, my Malcolm Tucker homage]

“Drinking scotch with the assistant to the person whom I’m pretty sure just became my nemesis.” [So that’s what the kids are calling it these days]

“I’m sorry fucking I asked,” he muttered as he stalked off.

I love the ‘question, overshare answer, look of disgust’ structure. I use it a lot.

Waiting for her, when she arrived at her computer, were three emails. The one Darcy had sent from the car, updating his schedule, along with a second, newer, email; and one from Mr Fitzwilliam [when did I drop the ‘Mr’ and just have him as ‘Fitzwilliam’? Clearly some time after chapter 2]. She clicked on it.

Elizabeth,

You must come for another chat some time soon. Fitz keeps you pretty well informed of his comings and goings, and I’m invariably always around.

I feel that our chat this afternoon was cut short. [Yeah you do. He thinks she’s attractive, she’s fiercly intelligent, he’s starting to like her]

Yours &c,

Evelyn

Attached to the email was a virtual business card with his details. A smile playing across her features [she is also in the beginning of liking him], she opened the newest email from Darcy.

Ms Bennet,

I hope that my correspondence today has been of a satisfactory level of detail. I have attached my agenda for tomorrow.

Regards,

Fitzwilliam Darcy, MP

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. If he wanted to continue on this line of childish behaviour, that was entirely his prerogative [later on, she comes to enjoy this vague spite-flirting. She has not yet reached that point]. With her work done for the day, she packed her things into her bag and made her way home. It was only when she arrived, to find Jane absent (in her being flooded with unnecessary details of Darcy’s schedule, she had forgotten the altogether more relevant fact of Jane having a date). Elizabeth made herself some eggs, opened her laptop, and poured herself some wine. [All good life choices, like google stalking someone, tend to be motivated by wine]

Having an evening to herself, without the risk of Jane seeing what she was googling and reproaching her for it, Elizabeth opened Chrome and typed ‘Fitzwilliam Darcy’ into the search bar. The first couple of results were official governmental sites, a number of news entries, including the one for which she had been sent to disabuse him, something from a law firm website, and a number of other results which offered no insight into the gentleman. It was on the third page of results [aka Dark Google - if it’s not on the first page, tweak your search term. Things get weird once you’re past that first page of results] that she found something interesting. An obscure Cambridge publication showed a photograph of a young Darcy along with two young men and a young woman, and the caption ---- [Why bother deciding where he went if I can just go the ---- route of Austen?] College University Challenge Team.

Elizabeth very nearly spat out the wine she had just imbibed [spit-takes are never not hilarious]. Here was Darcy, unmistakeably, but over a decade ago. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen, and he was still in the throes of boyhood [the awkward teenage years we would rather forget], his body seeming too tall for his frame [stringbean Darcy], as if he had just completed a growth spurt, which, she supposed, he probably had. Armed with a new search phrase [Good decision, Lizzie. Don’t just keep going deeper], she returned to Google.

She had barely opened the first video when she opened her email to see if Fitzwilliam had seen fit to include his mobile phone number in his set of details. Elizabeth was delighted to see that he had [totally for professional reasons]. She typed the number into her phone and dialled.

“This is Evelyn.”

“Evelyn. Hullo. This is Elizabeth Bennet.”

“Elizabeth! To what do I owe this delight? I hope Fitz hasn’t been pestering you [that’s a lie. He hopes Fitz has been pestering her, because then she’ll keep chatting to him].”

Elizabeth laughed. “No more than the usual. Although it is about him that I called.”

“Oh really?” Fitzwilliam said, with some real intrigue in his voice. “Do go on.”

“I was doing some googling,”

“Of course.”

“I can sense judgement, and I will not have it.” [I swear, the flirting wrote itself]

“Not at all. Please continue.”

“I found a video of Darcy as some lanky teenager on Univeristy Challenge.”

Fitzwilliam let out a hoot of laughter [he remembers stringbean teenager Darcy]. “I’d no idea that was on the internet. Hang on.” Elizabeth heard some shuffling and then frenzied typing, followed by another hoot of laughter. “I am so glad you called. I was making do with occasionally recalling it and chuckling. I never even thought to see if someone had uploaded it. That has absolutely made my evening. I’m going to spend hours making GIFs of this just so that I can send them to him at inopportune moments.” [He totally would]

“Surely you have better things to do with your time,” Elizabeth protested.

“Indeed I do not, for you see, unlike you, I am wildly unqualified for this position and very much did get the job entirely through nepotism [This statement is more or less entirely true]. I take phone calls when he’s out of the office, but let’s be entirely honest, Fitz doesn’t need me around [Not quite true, but definitely not untrue]. A partially trained chimpanzee could do my job [very true]. He hired me because I was an unemployed cousin with a PhD [in retrospect, the timelines make more sense if it’s a Bachelor’s. This was written back when I hadn’t planned for him to have spent quite as long in the military. That changed] in maths so pure that numbers weren’t even involved any more, which of course meant that my job prospects were infinite, and he happened to need a glorified receptionist, and since we always got along well as lads, he gave me the job.” [definitely one interpretation of events]

“Don’t sell yourself short. You could engage in the vicious cycle of academia and teach bright-eyed young things skills which are wholly unusable in the real world so that they too can’t get jobs and so go into academia.” [I wonder what my opinions of professional academia are]

“If I could tolerate youths, then maybe, but ugh, can you imagine?”

“I hate to break it to you, Evelyn, but if they’re at university reading pure maths, I can guarantee that they are about as far from being ‘youths’ as is humanly possible.”

“Excuse you, Miss Elizabeth, I will have you know that there was many a debauched escapade as we dealt with n-dimensional hypercubes.” [debauchery is relative]

“I’m sure.”

“Tell you what, once the GIFs are done, I’ll send you a couple for your own amusement.” [that’s totally not just an excuse for them to keep corresponding at all]

“You are a prince among men,” Elizabeth informed him.

“I know. Feel free to drop by any time Fitz is out of the office, or indeed whenever he isn’t. I’m finding that I enjoy our chats, and nothing worries Fitz more than me chatting about him with terrifying women.” [especially when Fitz worries that he’s going to fall madly in love with them]

“It’s been a pleasure, as always.” [yeah it has]

Elizabeth marvelled at how someone could be so resolutely upper-class, and then read anything other than Classics at university. [really though. I just wanted something that would make him super unemployable, and it was Maths or Classics. Since I decided that Tristan read Classics, Maths it was]

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