Hello again!
So one of you asked me to write Will's POV and what do you know: I've had quite a lot of fun doing so.
I think maybe I should publish it as a separate story, but I'm not at all sure it stands on its own if you haven't read On the Market first and also I'm completely stumped for a title. So for now posts will appear under this story on a Friday. But if you think I should publish this separately, then DM or review with your suggestions for a new story title, and I will be happy to oblige.
Health warning: brace yourself for a lot more swearing and some more sexually explicit language than you've had so far but, well, that's been part of the fun.
Happy reading!
Mel

'What are you pissed-off about now?' Dean asked.

'Why, am I too fast for you?'

'Yes, this is definitely your pissed-off-about-something pace, and I never liked it, much,' Dean said, or rather panted, several strides behind Will.

'Tough,'

'Slow down. And tell me all about it. You're not still mad at that hot quant girl, are you?'

Dean was now having to pant-shout from five yards behind, so Will took pity on him and jogged on the spot until he caught up:

'You'd be mad at her too, trust me,' Will said, accelerating again at the mere thought of her.

'Really?' Dean asked, straining to catch up again, 'How hot can a woman be? Should the lady de Bourgh worry?'

'The lady dB has nothing to worry about, Dean, because the lady dB doesn't do jealousy. That is the whole point of sleeping with a lady,' Will replied smugly.

'That and keeping your mums happy. So what's the point of letting some quant get under your skin then?'

'Lord help me, Dean, I sure don't know.'

Will had to run ahead so they could pass some pedestrians single file around a narrower part of St Katherine's docks. As soon as Dean had caught him up again he said:

'I don't know what the point of her is, full stop. How's she supposed to build me a trading system, when she can't even carry a coffee?'

'Different skills,' Dean replied with impeccable, infuriating logic. Or perhaps it wasn't Dean's logic which was infuriating, just that damn French quant. Will decided to shut up and let Dean set the pace.

x

'Super-hot, then,' Will heard after a while, and realised he must have shot ahead again.

'I'm OK if you are,' he said, but slowed down, taking pity on poor Dean, who'd never done well in the heat. What with that thin pale skin of his, he got a scary shade of red on a hot run.

'No, I meant your French quant,' Dean said when he'd caught up again, 'just how hot is she?'

'Please don't call her my quant, mate, she's the boss's idea of fun.'

'Clearly she's your idea of dirty fun.'

Will toyed with accelerating on purpose, but if anything he slowed down as he said:

'She's not even that pretty.'

'Really?'

'No of course she is but, you know, she's not, like, beautiful or anything.'

'Well then?'

'Ah, maybe she is, I don't even fucking know, Dean. All I know is no one's supposed to look this fuckable in trousers and glasses, and then she goes and spills coffee all over her boobs and gives me that fucking routine with the hangers…'

'And then then you fall for it and she rubs your face in it,'

'Precisely.'

'You could of course have apologised, Will. Have you considered that, perhaps, she didn't like being mistaken for client-bait-slash-coffee-and-coat-maid?'

'Have you considered that, perhaps, she took one look at me and didn't like me?' Will said, aping his friend's delivery down to the timing of each panting breath.

'One does wonder why…' Dean said, with another pant and a meaningful glance at Will's skull fuzz.

'No but,' Will said, accelerating again as the realisation hit him. They'd just passed Shadwell basin, just over a mile in, which was usually when his brain began to clear, 'I'll tell you what it is about her that gets to me, it's that air she gives herself, that she doesn't give a shit. Of course she gives a shit! Everyone, however hot they are, gives a shit,' he said, beginning to feel a strain in his chest. In a good way. A good running-induced clearing of lungs and brains, both.

'Perhaps you and she just care about different things, and please slow down,' Dean said.

'Sorry,'

'Sounds like all that's getting to you, really, is that she doesn't care about you.'

He made it sound petty but well, yes, the way she'd not even bothered to pretend to give a crap about his CV in that interview room… who did she think she was? It had taken all his powers of dissembling to act like he didn't care about her either but seriously, why wouldn't he be vexed about that? Who the hell did she think she was?

Raj's pet quant, was who, who didn't waste her precious time or brains on mere traders.

'So have you explained about your ridiculous hair yet?' Dean asked when Will didn't reply.

'What? Naa, she won't give a crap about that either. Don't think she's even noticed, probably thinks I shave my head all the time, to look more like the knucklehead she thinks I am.'

'We're making a lot of assumptions here…' Dean said as they exited the King Edward Memorial park and picked up the Thames path again.

'Yeah, well she's making a lot of assumptions too, and she's the one who's supposed to work based on facts, not market rumours.'

'Be that as it may, you could have apologised,'

Yes, Will thought, Dean was right, as usual, he could have apologised about making her hang his coat. He should have, even. But why bother? Clearly, the woman enjoyed rubbing his face in it far more than she'd ever have enjoyed any kind of apology from him. Besides:

'I did apologise to her, this morning, by email,'

'Oh good,'

'Not about that though, turns out Pet Quant's weaseled her way onto the desk's mailing list already. She saw that email I sent the Queen,'

'No, Will, no!'

Dean wasn't referring to the fact that Will had, quite unconsciously, accelerated again as they crossed the estuary of Limehouse Basin.

'Shame on you, Will, that was not a good email!'

'Yeah well, she's with you on that. Smartarse took it upon herself to slap my wrist – in writing, of course,'

'Good for her, Will. You can't make fun of people for being gay. For God's sake, your own sister is gay.'

'And she too would have laughed at my email because (a), it was funny, I mean I saw her smile when she finally worked it out.'

'Who, Georgie?'

'Duh, no, the pet quant!' Will said, remembering that smile with a chest strain which he couldn't put down to running, and was therefore altogether much less pleasurable. He slowed down a fraction, and pushed out of his mind the picture of Elisabeth smiling not at him, but at his words on her screen. The pest would rather die than ever willingly smile straight at him of course, so in effect he'd stolen that smile from her, and God damn her if it wasn't even hotter than her boobs doused in coffee.

Damn, now he had to push another picture out of his mind.

'And (b),' he said, 'That email was even funnier because only people who think badly of gay people would be offended by being called gay, and the Queen does, very much, despise gay people, and he'd been a Class A arsehole with Andy that whole day, hence I couldn't think of a more worthy recipient for that particular page of the Profanosaurus.'

Dean said nothing, but shook his head as they u-turned at their usual spot. Now it was Will's turn to run by the side of the Thames. What with the low tide and approaching equinox the air was warm but unsettled, and the water so low, it seemed to be hiding away from him, far over a wide mud bank.

'God, and that French thing she puts on!'

'Does she? Maybe that's just the way she talks,' Dean replied.

'Pure affectation. She's as British as you and I.'

'If you or I had grown up in France.'

Will shook his head and looked for the water again, and again the water hid away. You just couldn't get a grip on some people. Oh but, he thought, the tide would rise again, as tides do, and he would get to the pet quant in the end:

'I'll get her at the off-site.'

'Will, is that wise?'

'Not sure, but it'll be fun. I've got her slides and a whole week to poke holes in them - while blanking her. Blanking her is the best fun,' Will remembered almost fondly.

'Excuse me, Will, how old are you?'

'Seriously, whenever she shows up to talk about her damn offsite presentation, I pick up the most mundane piece of crap on any of my three screens and pretend that's more important than her. Works a treat, you should see her face. It's almost too easy.'

'No, Will, it's definitely too easy, and mean, and it helps neither you nor her in the long term.'

'Yeah, well, she deserves it.'

'Why, because she's hot?'

'Because she's a pain, and yeah, only reason I can see for Raj raving about her must be that she's hot.'

'Shame, I thought you rated Raj?'

'I used to. That's why I joined. Not so sure now, frankly.'

'Well don't give him any reasons to regret this either, Will. Behave yourself, and let her be.'

'OK, OK…' Will said, knowing full well he'd do nothing of the sort.

But Dean seemed worked up about it and OK, maybe it was a little childish but it was true: the woman was a smartarse. And a self-important pain in the bum, who'd just landed on the desk and didn't have the first clue about trading or traders. Not only did she deserve to be taken down a peg or three, it was his God-given duty to do so, and it would do her, and the desk, a power of good in the end.

'Piece of advice, if I may,' Dean said as they approached the office again.

'Of course you may,'

'Please pay the lady dB a call before that off-site, Will.'

'Ah, but with pleasure.'

'You don't just need a shag, mate, you need to get over yourself,'

'Yeah yeah…'

'…else I'll start to think you're in love with the pet quant,' Dean said, stopping at a respectable distance from the building's loading bay.

'Very funny, Dean.'

'I wasn't being funny. Go on then, see you next week.'

'See you next week.'

On the Market is Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved.

And if you can't wait for next week's fix of Will and Elisabeth, a reminder that A Bee in her Bonnet is also available on this excellent website.
You can think of that as a MAU retelling of Emma (with bees), but then Emma has always struck me as Jane Austen's answer to the question "What if Darcy was a woman?". Anyway, it's very good fun too, judging by how quickly people race through it once they get started: do give it a go.