And now for something completely different...
So I've had massive writer's block for Reasons Why lately, and this just sort of came to me while I was listening to the Beatles' song 'It's Only Love,' I highly recommend it. Comments and thoughts are extremely welcome, please don't hold back but also please review, lovelies.
Note: if you've come here looking for something funny or zany, I highly recommend my own epic, Reasons Why. Not that I'm doing any cross-promotion or anything...
Hope y'all enjoy!
Will Darcy doesn't believe in love.
He knows it doesn't exist because he saw his parents divorce when he was eight- the grunted answers at the dinner table, the sneering accusations and the arguments that kept getting louder and louder until finally, one day, they told him.
Actually a letter typed by his father's secretary told him, but who really wants to go into details, anyway?
When Will gets caught in a rainstorm, he looks at the sky as if to say, "Why did you do that?"
See, Will has this theory about life, that if you just ask why things happen and go about everything very reasonably, then your life will be fine.
Yeah, Will knows it's full of shit, too.
Still- he thinks it's a nice idea. He'd like things to be simple, and even though he doesn't admit it or even acknowledge it, he knows that when he goes to Pottery Barn and drowns himself in leather sofas and wicker baskets and brown cabinets, he's being a hypocrite.
He's learned over the years that girls, just like locks on a door, are interchangeable, and that there is no single person in the world who could make him happy. He's not a loner, per say, with a trench coat and a penchant for Morrissey (although he does like the Smiths) but the only person who really gets Will Darcy is Will Darcy. Even Charlie Bingley, his best friend, partner in crime (only on April Fool's Day) and all around great guy, doesn't understand him sometime.
Every Sunday, Will and Charlie meet up at the coffee shop near Charlie's work and "talk it out like good bras," as Charlie puts it. Will is always torn between the desire to laugh or cry whenever he hears Charlie's Jamaican accent.
"God, Will. Sometimes I think you're a moron," Charlie tells him after hearing Will's latest date-and-dump story.
Will laughs quickly and looks down at his cup of coffee, pretending like he's not hurt by the comment.
"I mean, this is what, the 6th girl you've dated in the past month?" Charlie continues, oblivious to Will's discomfort. "That's a pathetic accomplishment, even for you, and you've had your fair share of pathetic accomplishments."
"Thanks."
"Anytime." Charlie grins quickly and falls silent. Will doesn't want to say anything; changing the subject from pathetic accomplishments to the hot girl at the gym just seems desperate. Although he does need to get her number. He makes a mental note to do that the next time he goes, and the sound of Charlie snorting interrupts him.
"What?" Will asks, watching in amusement as Charlie chuckles loudly.
He picks up a napkin and takes out a pen from his pocket (yes, Charlie wore pocket protectors when he was in middle school) and writes something on it Will can't see. He slides the napkin across the table towards Will and gets out of his seat, heading for the café exit.
The napkin reads,
Making mental notes about girls=a loser
I'm out
-Bing
Will crumples the napkin in his fist and then realizes the picture he makes: a guy in a coffee shop, drinking a latte, writing notes to himself on a napkin. All alone.
'The bastard,' Will thinks.
And then the check comes, and Will curses out loud this time.
Will meets her at that stupid, stupid Christmas party.
Charles Bingley is just the kind of guy who, upon moving into a brand new apartment, throws a Christmas party to meet his new neighbors, all of whom show up.
Will stands on the edge of the room, watching everyone over his glass of wine as they talk loudly, and the sounds bounce off of the ceiling. Someone is playing the piano, and it makes him think of the church where they had Georgiana's funeral, and suddenly he feels like he can't breathe.
When you see your younger sister die at age 16, you see the world differently. And when said younger sister was Georgiana Darcy and if you're Will Darcy, your world is turned upside down.
He'd loved Georgie (never Georgiana, too formal and stuffy for a girl so alive) enormously and she'd seemed like one of the few people he could actually talk to.
They had their own way of communicating, their mom used to say, and Will would laugh it off and ruffle Georgie's hair. He wasn't superstitious then.
On the day of the accident, he swore that he felt like someone was sticking a knife in his back. And then, a few seconds later, he'd gotten a text, a fucking text. His parents couldn't even extend themselves to call him.
G is dying.
Come to Mercy Hospital.
He'd gotten there too late; she'd already died. Will remembered walking into the hospital and how it had felt just so small and ugly and when he'd seen Georgie, all broken and bleeding and no way to fix her, he'd felt like strangling the doctor.
And that name, Mercy Hospital, was just too damn ironic. They say to pray for mercy for your loved ones but Will prayed and prayed and prayed but no one takes mercy on a sixteen year old girl who is walking across a sidewalk one minute and then gets hit the next minute and dies before her brother can say goodbye.
Now, the room is too small, too full of happy people who don't know anything, anything at all. He quickly passes Charlie and ignores him as Charlie's head pops up and watches him, a concerned frown forming. The pretty blonde beside him asks, "Is everything alright?" and he turns back to her and lies, saying "Yeah, everything's fine."
Will makes it to the terrace just in time; his stomach loses the clenched feeling when he starts to cry, and he doesn't care anymore that he's a 28-year-old man crying over his dead sister at his friend's Christmas party, where people just don't do those things.
The irony of his circumstance doesn't go unnoticed by him. Damn that Ivy League education. He's outside, crying, on a fucking terrace during a Christmas party. He looks at the tile and notices it's black. It makes him think of how he still wears black on Sundays. When Amy, girlfriend #4 of the month, made a joke about him being Gothic, he broke up with her on the spot. Charlie told him later that it was a good thing Amy was girl, because if he had said that to Will, Will would've "punched the shit out of me."
Gradually his tears fade, and all that is left is the pinched, formal face that he wears for funerals, work, and strangers.
If you let them catch them when you're feeling vulnerable, you're a dead man: the Will Darcy Code of Honor.
And it is that pinched, formal face that Elizabeth Bennet sees when she stumbles out on the terrace.
"Sorry! I just needed some air," she explains as she leans down to adjust the strap on her shoe.
Will just looks at her, slowly taking in the tousled, brunette hair, the blue dress, and her eyes, which are so bright and look like they could see his soul. Dimly it hits him that the reason why she stands out to him is because it's been too long since he's seen someone who looks so alive.
Oh god. He's already waxing eloquent about this girl. Charlie's face pops in his head and he can just see Charlie with a calculator, saying, "Now let's see. She's got all the instant attraction things that you go for, meaning that you'll be a bastard to her just because she somehow matches up with the physical traits of your perfect woman. This means it'll take you, oh, about a minute or two to repulse her. Good job, Will."
Will tells the Charlie in his head to shut up, and then he notices that Blue Dress Girl is smirking at him. She hasn't even touched her messed-up hair yet, and somehow this endears her to him a little bit more.
"I'm Lizzie, by the way," she offers. "Lizzie Bennet." Will sees that the smirk is still there, so he just nods his head in acknowledgement. He feels a little trapped in his body, like the real Will Darcy is watching the fake Will Darcy go through the motions, and then he thinks that he's seen It's a Wonderful Life too many times.
She doesn't seem deterred by his cold greeting; rather, she moves closer to him and looks down at the street below. "God this view is amazing. I mean, you can actually see the stars- I'm so jealous of Charlie for having this place!"
Charlie. She called him Charlie and she hadn't even known the bastard for five minutes.
He doesn't know whether this fact increases or decreases his attraction for her.
The smirk is still there as she asks, "So you got a name or what?"
Will's jaw drops. No one's ever talked to him like. Correction- no girl has ever talked to him like that. Ever.
He takes a little too long to respond, and Lizzie smiles regretfully at him as she walks away and says over her shoulder, "You know, the nice ones just tell you they aren't interested. See you around, Draco."
"Draco? Who the hell says that and what the hell does it mean?" Will roars desperately at Charlie the next morning over the phone before work. He's pacing his office (corner office, thank you very much) and tugging at his tie, oblivious to the adoring looks he's receiving from Louisa, his co-worker.
Charlie chuckles- 'Like a drunken female,' Will thinks viciously- and says, "Will, Willy, Willy boy. King Darcy. Lord Fitzwilliam. The Man in the Moon, the loverboy, the coolest cat on the-"
"Shut the fuck up or I swear to God that'll I kick you in the balls," Will hisses at him.
Charlie laughs more loudly. "Cool it, Clouseu. You know that scrawny boy with the lightning bolt scar and way more millions than you'll ever make?"
Will's arch nemesis is Harry Potter, even though he'll never admit it unless he's had 6 bottles of vodka. Charlie discovered that fact on Will's 21st birthday, and had the presence of mind to tape it.
It is now a popular fixture on YouTube.
Will scratches the back of his neck and sighs. "Harry Potter."
"Oh God you got over that. I thought you never would." Will glares darkly at the painting of flowers. "Anyway, you know in Harry Potter that snotty, stuck up, rich kid who goes around torturing other people?"
"What about him?" Will wonders where this conversation is going.
"That's Draco."
For the next two weeks, Will walks around with Lizzie Bennet stuck in his head. When he's eating, she appears in his head and mocks his food choices. "What are you on, the South Beach Diet?" she asks him when he reaches for an apple.
Will can't believe that this girl is in his head. He doesn't know how the Charlie in his head feels about this invasion, and he almost makes a mental note to ask him before he remembers that it's all in his head.
When he's at work and sees a glimpse of blue, he follows the blue and is always surprised to discover it's just his co-workers. It's a good thing that he didn't change into the Draco costume he'd bought in the Scholastic store, or else it would have been embarrassing.
He doesn't really mind when he falls asleep dreaming about her.
Thoughts? Opinions?
Here's my little explanation for the story:
1) I have only Jane and Lizzie here, as the sole Bennet representatives. I feel like this is really Will's show, and I wanted to give him an opportunity to explain his social awkwardness. Let's here it for the boy! And I did change the initial meet between the two because I wanted to change the tables- what if Darcy had been attracted to her initially, and had been too paralyzed to say anything? However, this is why Jane Austen's book is a classic and mine is locked in my head.
2) I felt like if Charlie had seen Will go through something like he did with Georgie, he'd take on the teasing elderly brother role. Now, that just me, so please please please give feedback.
3) I plan on this being a short story, only around 3 or 4 chapters.
4) Yes, yes, yes. I love the Smiths. And the song 'Still Ill' kind of reminded me of my Will. A little bittersweet, melancholy, yet still hopeful that maybe there will be that one good thing that can save him, even though he claims to be a cynic. :)
Review and I shall love thee forever and dub thee King Charlie of the Nickname-est Valley.