So here's the last chapter. It's been so much fun to write and post this! I don't have any other long fics like this lined up yet, but I have a few one-shots and plenty of ideas for more. Thank you for all the reviews and follows - I hope you enjoy this massive helping of sugary fluff. This is what happens when you've watched Episode 98 waaaaay too many times.
98
"I need to film some kind of intro," Lizzie said on Wednesday.
"Do you really think they need an explanation? They've all seen the last video."
"Mmm. But I want to have a little fun with them.
He raised an eyebrow. "Are you planning on further torture?"
"Just a smidge."
He watched with his arms folded, mouth curled slightly upward, as Lizzie sat down in front the camera and tried to pretend this video would be about how her viewers were faring. She burst into helpless laughter before she could finish the first full sentence.
"Okay, okay," she said, gasping for breath, "I'll get this. I will. Just – stop it."
"Stop what?" he said in perfect innocence.
"You know. You're very distracting."
"I can leave," he said, making as if to head for the door.
"Don't you dare." She got up to make a minor adjustment to the frame. "We're editing this thing together, remember?"
"Editing isn't really my area of expertise."
"Yes, but I want you sitting next to me so I can kiss you for real when I kiss you onscreen." She came to him, steered him toward the sofa and sat him down. "Now stop smirking and let me get through this."
He was sure his mouth was perfectly straight this time, but she blamed him for ruining the next take as well. Finally, however, she filmed something satisfactory. "It's kind of giggly, but it'll have to do. Now let's put it all together."
"I don't think I need to cut anything," she said musingly as they watched the footage play out. "Do you mind if I keep it all in?"
"Not in the least." The last few days had made him so happy, so absurdly giddy, that he found everything agreeable. He had even teased Gigi's impatience today by liking, but not responding to, her desperate tweet begging him to call her. Lizzie had him behaving downright impishly.
"Running a personal video blog has certainly had its ups and downs," she went on, watching her decidedly non-verbal response to his confession of his feelings, "but it's kind of nice to have our first three kisses caught on camera, isn't it?"
"Four," he corrected absently, while onscreen Darcy returned the kiss with an ardent ferocity.
"What are you talking about? It's three. I kissed you, you kissed me, and then we kissed each other."
"I kissed you twice. Don't you remember?"
"I do remember, and we also have footage of it. Look." She rewound the video and let the second kiss play out again. One kiss."
"But we broke apart for a moment. That part at the end constitutes a new kiss."
"That is the strangest thing I ever heard. We didn't even break apart totally." She rewound again, found the moment and paused it. "Our lips are still touching, see?"
"It was a new kiss," he said stubbornly. "You even smiled in between the two."
"I can smile in the middle of a kiss."
"Would you care to prove it?"
By the time they were done experimenting, their argument seemed irrelevant.
"The look on your face," he said, somewhat out of breath as he glanced down at the laptop that had ended up on the floor.
"What about it?" Her eyes were closed, her mouth curved up in a dreamy smile.
"When I told you that my feelings hadn't changed. I couldn't see it properly at the time, but now I can see it from the camera's perspective. I – I love watching the alteration," he confessed. "From pain to hope in an instant."
"I love the way you look after I kissed you," she said, opening her eyes and looking – was it possible? – somehow bashful. "Like you think you're in the middle of a dream, and you're afraid to wake up."
"I love your middle-of and in-between kisses smiles."
"I love the way you say 'illumination' and give me goosebumps."
She was practically sitting in his lap at this point, and he glanced down at the computer again. "This may have been a mistake. Perhaps we should let Charlotte edit this one after all."
"No, no, we can handle it. We have self-control, right?"
They had no self-control. But they did have all day to edit the video, and that was just enough time to have it ready by Thursday morning.
Questions and Answers
"I'm afraid I'll need a few hours to catch up on work tomorrow," Darcy said after the video went up. "Without any distractions."
"You're accusing me of distracting you?" she said in pretended offense. At least, he hoped it was pretended.
"I'd say we have roughly an equal share of blame there."
"Fair enough." She kissed his nose. "Okay, I can spare you for a few hours. I've been thinking I should film another question and answer video anyway."
"That should work out well for both of us, then. Shall we meet at, say eleven o'clock?"
She nodded just as Darcy's phone rang. "Gigi," they both said at once.
"Do you want to get it?" Lizzie asked.
He let out a long-suffering sigh. "No sense in putting it off."
He answered the call and put it on speakerphone. "Good morning, Gigi."
"William!?" Even with the phone positioned on the arm of the sofa, the shriek was ear-piercing.
"Is everything all right?" he asked mildly.
"You and Lizzie! This is so perfect; I can't even be mad at you for hiding it and driving me crazy. Well, not that mad. You have to tell her I'm so excited and happy and –"
"Hi, Gigi," Lizzie said, barely containing her laughter.
"Lizzie?! Oh, you're right there with him, that's so amazing. I can just imagine it. Wait, no, I don't want to – okay, never mind. I'm so, so happy. And William, I told you so. He wouldn't believe me, Lizzie, he thought he should stay away, like an idiot –"
"I could hang up now," Darcy said.
"Fine. Sorry. Anyway, this is so exciting, I can't even sit still, seriously, and that video, I think I actually screamed –"
Darcy cleared his throat. "Please try not to frighten your co-workers."
"Haha. So, are you going to stay there a while? No rush!" she went on hurriedly. "Take your time. Just wondering."
Darcy exchanged glances with Lizzie. She gave him a wistful little smile. "A few more days, at least. But I'll certainly have to be back by April."
"April? Oh, wow. I was thinking like next week at the latest. Lizzie, you should know that William never stops working. Even on vacation, he's always glued to his computer."
"I know," Lizzie said. Now her smile had turned smug with just a promise of something else.
Darcy cleared his throat again. "It's been good hearing from you, Gigi, but we can't spare too much time at the moment. Lizzie's been busy with her thesis, you know." Right now she was very busy running her hand up and down the back of his neck.
"Right. Her thesis. I'll let you guys get back to that. Love you, William."
"I love you too, Gigi. We'll talk again soon."
As soon as the call ended, they found plenty to keep them busy.
The next morning, the incentive of spending the rest of the day with Lizzie brought Darcy's productivity to new levels. He was finished nearly a half hour earlier than he expected, and got her phone call just as he was showing up at her door.
He was pleased for the opportunity to ask a question of his own during her video. Irrational as it was, he couldn't help doubting until she assured him that she would, in fact, have gone to the theater with him. Her favorable response helped strengthen his resolve to ask her another, more important question sometime soon.
But just because he was pondering serious things didn't mean he couldn't also be playful.
That evening while they were going over the footage, Lizzie smirked and said, "You know this is going to kill my viewers, right?"
"That may have been a secondary goal," he acknowledged.
"What was the primary goal?"
"To make you smile."
99
My name is William Darcy, and Lizzie Bennet is amazing. That was all he really wanted to say; he had no plans beyond that. He should have realized he would need more of an introduction. But Lizzie filled in the holes as deftly as she always did. He became more at ease once he focused on her, the camera becoming a mere afterthought.
They probably should have had the camera a little more in mind at one point, but editing would fix that.
He hadn't necessarily planned on making his proposition right then in her video, but as the conversation progressed it seemed like the right time. And then she turned him down.
He was deflated but almost immediately recognized that she was right, and respected her all the more for it. Her own plans evinced a spirit of enterprise and boldness and everything he loved about her. The fact that she was setting up her company in San Francisco was, of course, a considerable factor in her plans' favor.
The future was bright, they were working to mend the mistakes of the past, and the present included a romantic candlelit dinner (that might or might not involve his aunt, and he had no intention of telling her until he had driven her to distraction with the suspense). A year ago Darcy thought that he was reasonably content with his life. He had no idea.
Late that evening they sat together, her head settled comfortably against his shoulder, while he caught up with his email and Lizzie tweaked the final edits of her video. She was in her pajamas, hair messily tied up behind her head, and he could not express how happy it made him to have her so comfortable, so uninhibited in his presence. She actually apologized for looking for sloppy, and he just slipped the straying strands of hair behind her ear and said, "Don't. You never need apologize for that."
"You never look sloppy," she said, and he raised his eyebrows. "Okay," she admitted, "but that's different. I'm usually the one loosening your tie and rumpling your hair."
"That makes it all the more enjoyable."
She returned his smoldering gaze with a teasing, "Don't you have email to check?"
They sat in companionable silence broken only by the dual keyboard clacks of their laptops, until Lizzie nudged him. "You know, I really think you should watch this."
"What is it?" he said absently as he scanned his personal email account, finding six messages from Gigi and four from Fitz. He slipped his eyes from his screen to hers only to be confronted with the unpleasant sight of his own scowling face from that horrible day back in the fall.
"Why on earth would I want to watch that?" he asked, horrified. "Why would you want me to?"
"Because I think it's worth seeing how far we've come. Really. Watch this, and then watch the newest video."
He assented, reluctantly. He could not help his entire body from stiffening as his past self blundered through a thoughtless, harsh confession and exchanged angry retorts with a wounded Lizzie. He flinched, frowned, and felt his chin pulling tighter and tighter into his neck.
Lizzie let out a ragged breath afterwards. She was as shaken as he was. "Yeah. But now, this." She played the finished cut of the new video.
Yes, they had come a long way. His tension eased, and he settled closer to Lizzie, putting his arm around her, while he watched the two of them share their space with a familiarity and ease that would have seemed impossible in October. He had come a long way, and though he would never be as natural on camera as Lizzie was, he felt natural around her. That was all he wanted.
100
He was troubled when Lizzie told him she had decided this would be her last video. "Is this because of our relationship?" he had to ask. "You shouldn't have to change anything in your life for my sake."
"First of all," she replied, taking his hand across the little table of the café where they had gone for brunch, "yes, I can change some things for your sake. You've certainly changed plenty for my sake. Change isn't all bad, and isn't a healthy relationship all about give and take? You're not demanding anything or manipulating me. Trust me, I know the difference."
"Yes….but these videos are so important to you. They're the foundation of your career. They give you an opportunity to display all your best talents. They –"
"Okay," Lizzie said, "I'm going to stop you before all these compliments swell up my head to the point of exploding. Not that I don't enjoy it." She gave a sly grin. "Believe it or not, there are other factors influencing my choices besides you."
He ducked his head, ashamed. "Of course. I shouldn't have assumed."
"It's fine. You're definitely a huge part of my life. No need to apologize about that." She squeezed his hand tighter. "100 is a nice even number to end on. And I can end on a high note. I'm starting a lot of new, exciting things. Our relationship, yes, but I'm also graduating, starting a company, moving to a new place – lots of beginnings." She nibbled reflectively on a sweet roll. "Which means lots of endings. So I'm ending these videos. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop making content. It's just not going to be quite as – personal or invasive. Does that make sense?"
"Absolutely."
"Not to mention," she added with a laugh, "how can I write up a report on my thesis project if it's incomplete?"
"Fair point."
They both agreed there would be a nice symmetry if her videos started as they began, with just her and Charlotte and maybe a little cameo from Lydia. While she was filming, he lingered at the café and finalized his flight plans for Friday.
Gigi and Fitz wanted to know the arrival time, since they insisted on meeting him at the airport and accompanying him home. They seemed to believe he would be utterly bereft upon his separation from Lizzie, needing constant company and attention. He appreciated their concern, absurd though it was. He would certainly feel low at the thought of six weeks apart from her, but the future was too bright to fall into despondency. Six weeks was nothing to half a year of hopeless pining.
He got a call from Lizzie an hour or so after she left to film. Her voice had a peculiar note of panic in it. "Is everything all right?" he asked. "Do you want me to come over?"
"I'm….not sure." She sounded distracted. He thought he could hear someone talking in the background. It didn't sound like Charlotte.
"Did something go wrong during the video?"
"No, no. The video's good. I'm happy with it."
"Then what is it?"
She cleared her throat. "My mom walked in at the very end of our filming."
"Oh."
The storm blew over with less havoc than they feared. Mrs. Bennet didn't have the slightest idea what a video blog was, though she was beginning to understand that Lizzie had some degree of prominence in certain circles of the Internet. This revelation, surprisingly, made her almost as proud as the fact that Lizzie had "snagged the richest and handsomest of rich, handsome single young men" (a statement Lizzie delighted in repeating around Darcy solely to make him blush a fiery red and wish for oblivion).
He decided to wait to watch the finished cut until it was uploaded on Thursday morning. "I might as well get used to it," he said. "Once your company starts producing content, I can't expect to enjoy any early private viewings. It would constitute a conflict of interest, after all."
Lizzie stood on her tiptoes and fingered his tie. "You make business jargon sound hot."
Thursday passed with alarming swiftness, but he could not have imagined a better way to spend their last full day together before his departure. In the morning they viewed the video and watched the comments and kind wishes pour in. Lizzie was in tears, but she insisted they were happy tears. Afterward, they took a long walk, talking about everything from digital media to Tolstoy to apartment hunting in San Francisco. In the evening they went out for dinner with Lydia and Charlotte, celebrating happy endings and new beginnings. Even a bizarre appearance from Collins could not completely mar Darcy's enjoyment of the day.
He did feel a pang, after he and Lizzie had shared a long goodbye at the airport, to think that there would be no new video on Monday. For months the videos had been his only connection to her. They had been a multitude of things for him. They had anchored him, taught him, rebuked him and improved him.
It was no small consolation to recall that he could call her any time he wanted, use the Domino app and see her face respond happily to his, hear intimate words for his ears alone. But he also looked forward to the start of her company and the creation of new videos. He couldn't wait to see what sort of illuminating content Lizzie would produce next.