Obligatory disclaimer: No money is being made, and I don't own any of the characters and/or brandnames mentioned. It's so far out of left-field, I don't see how you'd think I could.
A/N: This is a fic that came to me while washing dishes, as iron frying pans require a great deal of scrubbing and therefore provide time for odd thoughts ;D I was thinking of how Wilhelmina started out as a mousy, lowly assistant to Fey Sommers and, uh, got a leg up (heheee!) in the company hierarchy. I saw it as sort of a cautionary tale for Betty. So this is a little different from my other fics, as you can probably tell. Constructive criticism is always appreciated :D It is supposed to be a series of sporadic snapshots and totally AU, and time progresses by leaps and bounds, so keep that in mind. Alright, here we go…
The rectangle of red, freshly turned earth stood out, mockingly bright, amongst the hills of crumbly yellow-brown grass. Some of the mud had splattered up onto the smooth gray headstone, and Betty knelt, armed with her grief and Daniel's silk pocket handkerchief, to wipe it off.
Daniel had offered, with moist blue eyes and a heartrendingly sincere set of his mouth, to cover the costs of having Ignacio buried in a nicer cemetery, not one just outside the ghetto.
But Betty had refused. A pauper's burial it may have been, but Ignacio was right beside Rosa now, in any case.
Betty straightened and leaned back against Daniel, one if his big hands over her stomach and the other hand sliding over her hip. Although their relationship thus far had never gone beyond meaningful glances and hugs that lasted a shade longer than appropriate, such little intimacies were permitted now between them.
"Ready to go?"
She nodded her assent. He was lucky to get that much acknowledgement from her nowadays, since she'd been the one to discover her father, cold and lifeless, sprawled on the floor of the Suarez kitchen.
Ignacio had lived alone for about a year prior to his death. Betty had moved out first, then Hilda, Tony and Justin had set up house in Manhattan.
Daniel knew that Betty blamed herself for her frequent loss of touch with Ignacio, even though the man's heart condition had been a ticking time bomb for years. As a result, she'd lost all interest in her articles in progress and refused to eat. This last probably had Papi looking down and shaking his heavenly spatula and swearing in Spanish, Daniel thought ruefully.
Forcibly linking her arm with his as the walked down the gravel drive to the waiting town car, Daniel figured that now was as good a time as any to make a last-ditch effort to save what little spirit Betty had left lurking behind those wide, sullen brown eyes.
"My mother's going abroad for the summer to promote her magazine," he said without preamble.
Betty nodded politely but said nothing.
"She needs an assistant while she's over there to keep track of her appointments and such. Basically what you do for me minus the sex scandals," Daniel teased. "She leaves on Wednesday. So, you up for it?"
For a second the old Betty emerged, and he almost cried for joy to see her put her hands on her hips and look up at him in disbelief. "Daniel Peyton Meade, precious little time you're giving me to find a temp." But her lips were quirked in the first real smile he'd seen in ages. A shadow of its predecessor, just like her temp would be, but still…
"So that's a 'yes,' I take it?"
Betty reached up, pulled him down to her height, and embraced him. "A 'yes'…and a 'thank you,'" she whispered.
It was one of those hugs than went on a shade longer than appropriate.
And, as per usual, Daniel didn't care.
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Daniel fidgeted nervously with his tie and checked his Rolex, twisting it around his wrist, the friction causing a burn.
7:34 pm.
Betty should have been off the damn plane four minutes ago. It was a private jet, for God's sake, a Meade jet. There were no delays.
In the dusk, he saw his mother's crown of frosted hair emerge, her rail thin body. Next was the attendant, dressed in crisp, formal black and starched white, carrying her matched luggage.
She glided down the steps without even holding onto the sidebar, lightly kissed both his cheeks, and embraced him. Daniel found himself intently staring over his mother's shoulder at the door she'd just exited.
He should have been guilty at his distraction, and he was happy to see Claire, but extended international trips were nothing new to the Meade clan.
They were, however, relatively new to…
Her.
His Betty-conditioned eye had been longing for the riot of black curls that entered the room before the girl herself did, the ridiculous (ly sexy) cat's-eye red glasses, the sheen of braces that captured even to dullest light to make themselves shine.
The woman that emerged, though, blinking sleepily (she hadn't been tied in knots, obviously) was unfamiliar. Her silken strands were in a partial updo and highlighted in honey brown. Her bangs were dramatically side swept (of course they couldn't have grown completely out). Expertly penciled and shadowed eyes (natural tones, no less) squinted in a disenchanted manner at the setting sun. She flipped open her Blackberry and began to scroll through her messages, tugging at her pristine white blouse and smoothing her matching skirt as she did so.
She stopped in front of Daniel, eyes still glued to the screen of the tiny device, until she tiredly flipped it closed and deigned to look up at him.
"Daniel," she said, smiling as if they were meeting for lunch at Martinelli's instead of seeing each other for the first time in three months.
"Betty…" he reached out to brush her bangs out of her eyes and could feel her reluctance to let him touch her hanging in the air, thick like the sodden humidity. Her hair felt like a Barbie doll's, thick and luxurious, but entirely false.
He tamped down the laughable urge to turn and run, back to his loft and his illusions, and his memories of a red poncho.
Betty rolled her head back and forth to work out the kinks after her flight, her eyes focused on a point above his shoulder. "So, what have you been up to this summer?" Flawless white teeth flashed in the gathering dusk like a lioness's.
"Um, you know…work." He forced the words upwards through the butterflies in his stomach. I've been listening to the last voicemail you left me over and over with a bottle of Dom P. in my hand since the day you left for Rome to help Mother promote "Hot Flash"…
"Great." Betty seemed to find his lame-o answer completely satisfactory. She hefted her bag onto her shoulder. "Well, I should probably go."
"Yeah, your family's been…missing you," he finished stupidly.
"See you Monday, bright and early," she said in a light sing-songy voice that, instead of being reassuring, made Daniel recoil. He'd heard that voice before. "I'm going to make sure the first issue of "Mode" with your name on the masthead sparkles…"
His eyes focused on her retreating form, her mane swinging lightly against the center of her back. Unexpectedly, she stopped. Rummaged around in her purse.
When she turned back around, the red glasses were back. "This better?"
Daniel's short laugh sounded more like someone had a dog in a chokehold. "Moderately."
Not really.
They looked foreign.
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Daniel didn't want Grace Chin…not really.
But she was short, dark-haired and olive-skinned, had a high-pitched little voice like sunshine, and if he squinted just so, she would do. So he wasn't surprised to find himself hammering her into the floor in one of the private, unoccupied dining rooms at the Meade's annual Black and White Charity Ball.
"Betty…" His last shuddering climax brought the name unbidden to his lips, and if Grace heard, she didn't care. She'd gotten what she wanted from their little encounters all along—she'd gotten laid, and, when her stellar work on Bradford's trial began fully circulating in the media, she'd be getting paid a thousand times over.
"Somebody call my name?" Betty leaned against the doorframe like a Grecian goddess, her feathery black boa sliding off her shoulders, down her curves, to puddle around her stilettos.
She flipped the camera phone closed with a dull, snide snap. "If I submitted this to America's Funniest Home Videos, do you think it would win?"
Daniel tried to decide whether to finish tucking his shirt back into his pants or just start right in with the denial. "It's not what it looks like…Grace and I…"
"Are banging like a pair of symbols in an overworked marching band? I noticed."
Raking her fingers ferociously through her mussed hair, Grace hissed, "Just give her whatever the hell she wants, Daniel!"
Daniel closed his eyes. I'm not here, I'm not here, and this isn't Betty…it isn't her…
"What do you want?" …and I'm not being blackmailed by my former best friend, my…
Betty looked up at him through her lashes and pretended to consider the question. "What I want, Daniel, is nothing unreasonable."
She put her hands behind her back and sidled over, mock-shy, to Daniel. She put her hand on his bicep and rubbed appreciatively. Her eyes cut over to Grace. "You can take a hike now, bitch."
Grace, satisfied that Daniel had everything well in hand, practically fell out of the dining room without even tugging her heels back on.
Betty leaned in closer to Daniel and pulled him down for an embrace.
So that's a 'yes,' I take it?
"A 'yes'…and a 'thank you'…
She whispered to him, her breath whistling through his inner ear like a breeze through a cave. "Wili Slater's old rubber ass—bouncing out of Meade for good. That's what I want."
She pulled back to gauge his reaction. Watching the train wreck.
Daniel swallowed. "And who, pray tell, will be her successor?" He knew the answer.
Betty grinned girlishly and framed her own face with her hands, blinking up at him in faux-flirtation.
"Betty, you've only been a feature writer for six months…nobody's going to legitimately back you as Creative Director…"
Betty skimmed her fingers over the camera phone in her palm like a magician preparing to pull a rabbit out of a hat. "Ever wanted to be a porn star? Think the members of your father's jury watch You Tube?"
"Nobody's going to back you as Creative Director…except me," he finished, head bowed.
Betty's cherubic face lit up. She patted his cheek. "Thank you, Daniel." The most twisted part of it was that she sounded sincere. "Hey," she said perkily, as an afterthought, "aren't you supposed to be handing out big checks right about now? You love that part."
Daniel met her eyes evenly, to his credit. Her face was bland and mildly curious. He offered his arm and she took it.
She chattered on about how gross the sushi bar was this year while he tried to keep from dying.
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Daniel lay sated, at least physically speaking, Betty in his arms. The glow of the fireplace warmed both their naked asses as they lay entwined on the floor of, well, the top floor office of the Meade Publications building.
The CEO's office, originally the long-dead Bradford Meade's.
Recently vacated by an ailing Alexis, recently filled by Daniel.
Life was a riot sometimes.
Only the age-induced aches-and-pains backlash of her years-ago transformation could've made Alexis agree to switch places with Daniel. She was now the Editor in Chief of Mode, a job that, while stressful, was considerably less so than running the entire company.
Betty nuzzled his graying temples with her lips. He was as devastatingly handsome as ever, which made the endeavor to sleep with him as often as possible as much a pleasure-seeking motivation as sheer ambitious bitchdom. Judging from Alexis's slow, pained, measured tread of late, the aging tranny wouldn't last long in her new position.
And in the meantime, Betty mused, running a possessive hand over Daniel's chest, she was having fun.
"So, how's the view from the top, boss?" she murmured, her voice muffled from the string of kisses she was planting down his body.
Without warning, Daniel flipped her over, straddling her and sliding his hands under her ass. "Mesmerizing," he smirked.
God, he didn't want to be putty in her skilled, hot little hands, but he was as much a fool for her as he ever was. It was the little traces of a twenty-three year old assistant named Betty Suarez that occasionally shone through—they were what got him.
Twisting her hair around her finger in an unguarded moment, chewing on her lush bottom lip as she wrote down notes in a meeting…those were sweetly devastating.
The ones she calculated were infinitely worse.
Tonight she'd walked in his office with her hair in wild black tresses around her face, no straightening iron applied that day. The red glasses were back and she'd pushed them up on her nose when she'd asked if he needed company, and the freshly installed carpet wasn't so fresh anymore.
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Daniel lay flat on his back on the altar in St. Patrick's Cathedral and wondered why everyone looked so shocked.
Surely everyone knew years ago that he was going to marry Betty eventually. And that it was going to kill him.
He wished that he could tell Alexis to stop with the CPR…it wasn't doing a damn bit of good…
…and, ah, yes, there was Betty then, that dear face, my sweetest love…
Hi, I'm Betty Suarez…I'm your new assistant…
…shoving Alexis roughly out of the way… "DON'T YOU DARE DIE, DAMN YOU! DON'T…YOU…DARE…DIE!"…
…oh, sweetheart, all that beating on my chest isn't doing any good, either…
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Daniel sat bolt upright in bed, sweat pouring down his body and a soundless scream on his lips.
Beside him, Betty stirred softly. At first he thought she wasn't going to wake up, but after a moment, she propped some pillows on the headboard behind her and reclined, pulling Daniel firmly down with her.
"You're all sweaty." She mouthed the words against his shoulder. "And not for a fun reason. Bad dream?"
Daniel buried his face in her wild hair and let her hold him and rub soothing circles on his back until his breathing quieted and his heart rate slowed to normal.
"You were…basically Wilhelmina, and I was…damn, I was a schmuck." He quirked an eyebrow at her.
Betty put a finger to his lips and he responded by sucking gently on it. "No, sir," she said firmly, although there was a warm smile trying to force its way through. "You don't get to bitch and moan about having funky dreams, when I told you not to eat Papi's bean dip any time past one in the morning."
Daniel's lips plumped out in a perfect, delectable pout. "Can we at least talk about it in couple's therapy?"
Betty sighed and rolled over on her side, Daniel spooning with her from behind. "You mean, talk about how you subconsciously think I'm an evil harpy bent on world domination and you're basically a pantywaist helpless to stop me? Yeah, why not."
Daniel's tongue traced the outline of her ear. "Well, when you put it like that, it does sound batshit insane. But, hey, I'm a Meade, we carry the loss of our marbles well. I hear it's "in" this season…"
"Hey, Daniel?"
"Yes, baby?"
Betty's face grew beseeching and she turned within the circle of his arms, one hand splayed on his chest like a starfish. "Your adorable, witty assistant-soon-to-be feature-writer would like a raise…"
Well, how'd you like it? I got thoroughly depressed writing it, which was kind of cathartic. It's supposed to be waaaay AU, so I didn't feel too guilty about Betty going evil, especially with regards to the end. And I had to make it a happy/creepy/however you want to interpret it ending, it's D/B, for pete's sake ;)
Please reviewie!