We're now about two thirds of the way through, and we are going Live! A nice long post today too.

When I was first drafting this chapter, probably about November time, I wrote a postscript to it that was more of a cry of frustration, after yet another day with plenty of hits on On the Market, and zero on A Bee in her Bonnet. To this day I still can't understand why so many people read this story (awesomely fantastic though it is) and don't even try A Bee in her Bonnet. Me, when I like an author's book or story I want to read everything they've done. Somehow it doesn't seem to be happening here so much.

Karmically enough though, this week I finally got a couple of new Kudos on A Bee on AO3, as well as the most lovely review on Fanfic. I've decided to copy it in full here as it's possibly the best way to persuade at least a few of you to give it a go:

oh what a rollercoaster ride, you promised it would be fun in your other story, but my, I have used my kchief. I usually only read PnP, but you persuaded me to try in the gender reversed perspective, which I do not usually read. the charachters are so lovely, the language interesting, I felt like 'bee'ing there. never new there are so many types of smiles and laughterthank you so much for sharing your brillant stories.

OK, so that's enough gloating for one week but go on, give A Bee in her Bonnet a go. It's got it all, I promise: gravity defying kisses (starting in the first chapter), friends to lover stuff, women with serious jobs but seriouser issues to work through. Bees. A properly evil, properly charming French cad.

Paris by night?

But for now, enjoy this slice of Darcy and Elisabeth in their usual London-based gender configuration, and have a great weekend - and week, wherever you are.

All the best,

Mel

The next morning was predictably excruciating. He'd gone for a run, barely slept and got in early with a view to catching up on his Excel sums, but of course Elisabeth had also beaten him at getting in early. She greeted him with visibly forced enthusiasm as he handed her coffee over:

'Morning, Will! Thanks!'

'Good morning, Elisabeth,' he said, trying to smile like someone who wasn't mean, cold and arrogant. Emotionless he still wasn't, despite the long run.

He failed abysmally on all fronts and Elisabeth didn't loosen up one bit:

'Good news: I found the bug!' she said, all painful-to-watch over-egged chirpiness.

Right, so this was probably her trying to be nice, and though he didn't buy it for a second he also wasn't in any position to criticise her for achieving less than complete success. Plus it was indeed good news that she'd found her bug. He was pleased for her and made himself smile harder:

'Great! So we're back on track for Thursday?' he said, and saw her fight like hell to keep with the painful smiling, so that he had to fight like hell to keep smiling too.

'With tradePad we should be, yes,' she said and finally gave up, turned back to her screen and let her face relax.

'Great,' he said again, not half glad to do the same.

So he went back to his sums and she went back to her testing and before they knew it the big day was here. All he had to do was stay out of it, let Elisabeth work her magic, and let Neil shine.

He did come awfully close to another bruising towards the end of the day though, when all had gone well bar a confirmation email going missing on the broker side. But just as he was about to re-send it manually she made the broker check their spam folder, and came back from the Back Office desk punching the air like the absolute champ she was. Her triumphs, like her fury, were not to be measured on a British scale.

'No need to update the Board then,' Will said when she came back, 'I think they all heard you from the top floor.'

'Was that a loud yes?'

It was the kind of yes he knew he'd be up half the night fantasising about, but...

'Yes, yes it was. Well done, that was… magnificent,' he said while they both seemed in a good mood.

'Why, thank you!' she said with a thoroughly immodest and indeed very charming little nod and curtsey.

'Right, everyone done for day here? Time for a drink?' Will said to his crew.

'Five minutes!,' Andy barked, while the rest of them got their coats. While putting hers on Elisabeth also said:

'Will, I'm sorry but I'm gonna have to pass.'

'What? No, you can't pass. You just went live.'

'I know, but I've got a thing. It doesn't matter, you guys go ahead without me.'

'What? No, move your thing,' Neil said, who was almost as pleased with himself as she was with herself, but was doing a much better job of hiding it.

'It's not really a thing I can move.'

'Can we help move it for you, if we get together?' Newbie offered, flexing his gym-going arms.

'Thanks,' she said, smiling back at him, 'But I'm afraid not, I'm really sorry, we have this rota thing… it was planned ages ago, it's my night I can't…'

'Well unless you're talking about visiting a sick relative in hospital I'm afraid…' Will started, saw her face disintegrate, stopped, started again:

'I'm so sorry, Elisabeth. I had no idea. Really sorry.'

'Not your…'

'Go on, don't be late. Come and join us later though, what time will they kick you out of there?'

'Eightish, usually, is that too late?'

'What do you take us for, bloody fucking pansies?' Andy barked, and Will saw Elisabeth give Paul an apologetic wince.

'Oh you wish, Andy, you wish,' Paul said, with a wink that sent a visible shiver down Andy's spine, thereby making everyone else laugh.

'Eightish is fine,' Will said to Elisabeth, 'come whenever you can, but do come. Deal?'

'Deal,' she nodded.

'We'll be somewhere round Borough Market, call when you get to the tube, OK?'

She nodded again and started checking her coat pockets. Her book was peeking out of one of them. Nothing unusual there. Only tonight it was only half of a book because Elisabeth, ever the quant, had gone and optimised the process of reading Tolstoy on her daily commute by slicing War and Peace right down the middle.

Could Will possibly love her more?

'Off you go then,' he said before he dropped down on one knee.

x

One sip of beer later Will realised that he was exhausted, and a lot more relieved than he'd known himself to be anxious before. Well if he'd been anxious about tradePad going live, without having had to write a single line of code, and without the added bonus of a relative in hospital, then he could only imagine what Elisabeth's life must have been like.

Cold, mean, arrogant, emotionless, he thought for the umpteenth time. Two out of four he still didn't mind. Mean, though, he hoped he wasn't, but he could see why she'd have thought that of him. Emotionless – clearly she had no idea, probably some overlap in her mind with the "cold" thing.

But what he couldn't figure out was why she'd left out moron. Or perhaps complete effing moron? What else do you call someone who has a go at you two days before go live?

Maybe he'd just cut her off in time. Yes, that's probably what she'd meant to say: a cold, mean, arrogant emotionless moron. That had a certain ring to it, non?

Will sighed and texted Dean the address of the bar. Neil was busy telling Andy and Yoda all about the wonderful buttons they too would soon be pressing on tradePad, while Paul and Newbie swapped weight-training tips. They killed the next hour or so slagging off a few of their most offensive brokers and joshing Newbie, talked sports, then Raj called in his congratulations, which Will passed on to the team before Raj asked him to step out and gave him the good news about Neil's promotion.

When he got back Elisabeth was on the phone to Neil saying she was leaving St John's Wood, so he texted her to call him when she got to the other end, and got no reply.

He ordered another beer, deferring the wine order until her arrival, and made his drink last because he was too tired to get plastered tonight, and also too...

That is: tonight for once in his life he must not behave like a moron, because Elisabeth had earnt the right for this evening to be about her. For getting tradePad live, and for putting up with the lot of them. She'd be pleased about Neil though, it felt to Will that she'd earnt that too, and he looked forward to being the one to tell her.

He found her leaning back against the railings outside London Bridge, reading, and waited until she was turning a page to say:

'Enjoying it?'

She snapped the book shut.

'Complete genius,' she said, clearly still miles away in some Moscow drawing room.

'Can I have a look? Whereabouts are you?' he asked, mostly to give her a moment to get back to Y2K London, but also because he was a little jealous. Not of her attention, for once. No one could begrudge Tolstoy that. What Will did envy, though, was her reading this for the first time.

'Almost finished, don't spoil the ending!' she said, handing over the amputated book.

'Hate to, but Napoleon loses,' he replied while looking for her last cornered page. 'You don't really believe in keeping books neat now, do you?'

'It's not just books, I thought you might have noticed by now.'

He smiled, grateful for her good mood, then started reading the last page she'd cornered until he got to:

"But he had hardly entered the room before an instantaneous feeling of loss of freedom made him aware with his whole being of her presence."

That placed where she was: Pierre Bezukhov was only about to go and propose.

After seven-hundred-odd pages of thwarted devotion. Will suddenly felt a lot more sympathy towards bumbling old Pierre than he'd had on his last reading.

Yes, OK, whatever. Close the book, Will, close it now, before you do or say anything more than usually stupid.

Or mean, or arrogant or…

'Amazing stuff,' he went for in the end, handing the book back. 'Hate to tear you away from it but Tolstoy will still be there in the morning.'

'Ah but you were absolutely right about the military strategy,' she said, 'fabulous stuff, especially for insomnia.'

Grateful though he was for her trying to joke his own awkwardness away, Will wasn't entirely sure he managed to come across as entirely friendly or joking himself when he said:

'Philistine. You didn't like that?'

'I got the gist but it went on a bit.'

She was of course right about that too.

'Where are we going?'

'Over there,' he said, thumbing over his shoulder, 'Wanted to catch you first though, we had a call from Raj. He said well done, of course.'

'Of course,' she repeated, 'but surely what you mean is he praised our outstanding achievings, at the very least he mentioned thought-leadership and the stakeholders, right?'

She seemed in a great mood. Perhaps her relative was doing better, or perhaps it was the prospect of Pierre and Natasha getting it together at long last. Whatever it was, with a bit of luck he too was finally going to get to put a real, genuine smile on her face:

'Something like that, yes,' he said, 'And there's good news. The panel review's gone through and Neil's been promoted.'

'Oh the panel review, of course…'

What now? He'd been so looking forward to telling her and now…

'What's wrong, you OK?'

'Yes, yes, no, that's great! Fabulous news!' she said, but all of her lovely unselfconsciousness was gone. Already.

'I'll… carry on getting the coffees, if that's what you're worried about.'

'Will, you don't have to.'

'I know,' he said, and might even have smiled because come on, you had to see the funny side of this: Neil getting promoted, thanks in no small part to her efforts? That should have been a dead cert to cheer her up, but what do you know? Somehow he, Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcy, had through the sheer force of his animal magnetism managed turn a piece of excellent news into a fresh blow for her. And yet again, all he had to offer her in a crisis was:

Coffee!

Sodding effing coffees. Seriously, was that all he was good for?

'Well, in that case that'd be very nice, thanks,' he heard. Sure, whatever:

'Come on let's go, they're all waiting for you,' he said, and led her a short way to the tapas bar, where she cheered up again as soon as she got in and they all cheered her.

So Will got on with getting the wine, since that was the one thing she deemed him good for, other than shouting at brokers and serving coffees. It was good to see Elisabeth eat and drink, mind, and enjoy both. Soon Dean arrived and the two of them started swapping getting dumped stories and getting on like the proverbial house on fire, all over again.

Shame Will did not feel qualified to join in, since in order to get dumped you have to get in there in the first place. And since that didn't feel terribly likely tonight, or indeed any time soon, he stuck to what he did best, and bantered while making sure everyone had a drink to their liking. Including water for Elisabeth, of course. She truly was in excellent form, now that she wasn't alone with him anymore.

She made very sure he knew she was joking when she called over the back of her shoulder that she "loved him too", but it did nonetheless make him very happy. Whether it was her coming out with it in the first place, or the face he pulled behind her when she did, it made Dean laugh and that was worth almost anything these days.

Yes, Will thought on his umpteenth round of the team's glasses: let them drink and laugh at me and enjoy themselves. I was never that arrogant.

x

Nor could Will accuse Elisabeth of snobbishness tonight. About ten o'clock she enthusiastically agreed to Yoda and Andy's proposal that, since she was beginning to get the hang of spoof, they should introduce her to pools, plural. It meant walking back across the Thames to a complete dive off the Commercial Road where, according to local lore, the Kray twins had once been patrons. Elisabeth declared it to be "right up her street", but she was probably just being nice.

Here they switched back to beer, Dean gallantly teamed up with Elisabeth, and she remained in excellent spirits as she proceeded in classic quant style to lose against all the teams the two of them took it in turns to play.

'You weren't lying earlier, then, when you said you sucked at ball games,' Will said once she'd finished losing to Yoda and Paul. The latter was still making jokes about knocking balls together but, to be fair to him, he wasn't half bad at it.

Playing pools, that is.

'I wasn't lying, no, because I suck at lying even worse than I suck at ball games,' Elisabeth reminded him, 'I thought you'd worked that out by now.'

Will smiled. Indeed he had but:

'Hey, provided you're having fun… You're not too tired after the week you've had?'

'Naah, you know that point beyond tired and beyond exhausted?' she said, and he nodded, '...where you tip into mild hysteria?'

'Is that what this is then?' he checked, 'Should we get you a cab home?'

'What? No!'

'Oh, OK, so… You are going clubbing with them after all then?' Will said, thumbing at Andy, who was standing by the door with the rest of the boys, determined to lead them onwards and quite likely downwards from here.

'No, thank you...'

Well, that was a relief.

'…I was just going to take the tube home.'

'You can't…'

Will almost caught himself in time, but not quite:

'That is: why would you choose to do that, from here, at this hour?' he said.

'Because Archway is straight up the Northern Line?'

'It isn't a very nice walk to the tube, though.'

'You're still going to tube home though, aren't you?'

'Actually I might walk back, it'll do me good.'

'Why would you choose to do that, from here, at this hour?' she said, lowering her pitch and shaking her head. Had he shaken his head at her before?

'OK OK, point taken,' he smiled, 'I'd feel better if you didn't, but…'

'Besides, I can't read in a cab. I only get car sick, and I need to find out what happens next.'

'I told you, Napoleon loses,' he smiled, but just when he started to think he might be doing OK she looked down and tucked her hair and excused herself.

Well there you go, he must have managed almost a whole minute.

'Guys, are you walking via the tube?' he called to the clubbing party by the door. They were trying to decide whether to hit a seedy gay club in Soho, or a trashy straight one by Tottenham Court Road.

'Can do, why?' Andy shouted back.

'Someone should really walk her back to the tube.'

Just then Dean re-emerged from the gents', came to stand by Will and said in an angsty stage whisper:

'Will, what the hell are you doing?'

'I'm trying to make sure Elisabeth doesn't get raped mugged or murdered on her way home,' Will muttered back, 'She won't take a cab, I offered.'

'Then walk her to the tube yourself, you big oaf.'

'We're not good at one on ones at tube stations, we've established that.'

'Would that be because you're a complete idiot?'

'Almost certainly, yes.'

Dean was busy shaking his head when Elisabeth reappeared and Dean called to her, back at full volume:

'Turns out we're all walking via the tube!'

What.

'What the hell are you playing at?' Will muttered, but Dean ignored him and said to Elisabeth:

'So we can all walk you there together!'

'Oh that's very kind, thank you,' she said, yawning as she put her coat back on, and then that red hat of hers.

'Come on then, Will,' Dean said cheerfully as he led the way out.

Seriously, with friends like him…

Will stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and hung back, watching Dean talk to Elisabeth all the way. Round back was the best place for him, out of the conversation, so he couldn't go and spoil it. This meant Elisabeth was sounding happy, in a tired, end-of-evening kind of way. Will was actually happy for her too but seriously, what fresh form of torture was this? Dean was supposed to be his friend. Why couldn't this so-called-friend have walked home with him, i.e. in the exact opposite direction, since Dean knew Andy and the rest had agreed to walk Elisabeth to the tube anyway?

'Bye then, guys' she said, and Will had to watch her kiss Dean goodbye on both cheeks, like the excellent friend he was. To her. Seriously, what was Dean playing at? If he wanted the woman's number he only had to ask.

Will would have to kill him first, naturally, but...

'Hey hey hey, preferential treatment here,' Neil said, who'd had a few too many, and then a few more after that.

'What?' said Elisabeth.

'Dean gets two kisses and all we get is a bye then, guys?' Newbie said, who'd had exactly as many as Neil, but whose inhibitions had for lack of training sunk even lower.

Elisabeth raised her delightful eyebrows and pointed around at them:

'You want me to kiss you all good night?'

The guys looked at each other and nodded, except for Will, who turned furious eyes to the pavement. This? Was this Dean's idea of fun? How could he? Humiliating him was one thing, not a friendly thing at all, and humiliating him in front of his team was yet another. But why inflict this on Elisabeth? Hadn't the woman suffered enough?

To be fair to her, and though she'd stayed stone cold sober all evening, Elisabeth didn't seem phased. Ever the champ in a crisis she merely said, circling the group with her index finger again:

'You realise this is a team sport though, right? The rules are strict: friends kiss but colleagues don't, so if I kiss you guys goodbye it means for tonight we're all friends, hence you'd all be kissing each other good night too,' she said, looking from Andy to Paul and back again.

Will, thankfully, she did not look at. Out of the corner of his very angry eye he saw Dean beaming from ear to ear, which under any other circumstances would have been great news. On the other side of him, the rest of the guys were considering Elisabeth's terms.

'I'm game for it if you are,' she said with one of her classic little fuck-off shrugs. And since those still did things to him, Will kept his fists balled inside his pockets and his eyes onto the pavement.

'Even, Yoda?' Andy asked.

' 'course, not a problem,' she replied, shaking a smiling head at him, then a po-faced one at Andy.

'Even the Guv'nor?' Newbie checked, and Will found out what it's like to wish for the ground to open up and swallow you.

'Honestly, Elisabeth, don't. Just…'

'OK you're on,' Andy barked, and Will made a mental note to sack him at the earliest opportunity.

'Great! Can I start, boss?' Paul said, 'Oh please?'

Will made himself look up again with his poker face on. Working up the necessary internal fury had not proved much of a challenge. Paul went around the circle, kissing Elisabeth then Dean then himself, then Neil, then Yoda, and lingering once he got to Andy, who earnt himself a round of applause as a result. He finished with Newbie, saying:

'Your turn now, you start with Elisabeth and go around.'

'Jeeze, how many kisses are we gonna have to have?' Newbie said to hide his nerves.

'56,' Elisabeth said while Paul said 28.

'You forgot to times two,' she remarked after she was done wishing Newbie goodnight.

'It's lucky for them really,' Paul replied, 'Where I come from we do three.'

'Oh do you? Is that a thing down South then?' she was saying, like nothing was the matter.

'How do you guys make time for this?' Neil asked.

'Well look at us tonight: it doesn't stop anyone who's not kissing from chatting on.'

Anyone who's in the mood for chatting, Will thought. He certainly wasn't.

Newbie squared himself out when he finished his round, and Andy did the same before starting his. Elisabeth, Will noticed, stiffened when he got close, but she kept smiling. Poor thing. First Andy and then… but seriously, why the fuck had Dean gone and started this confounded idiocy? Why was he enjoying this? Why?

Instead of biting Andy's head off when he came and stood in front of him, Will merely leant not quite far enough down, so Andy had to tiptoe and very much resented it. Serve him right, the tosser.

Yoda stuck to air kisses, and fair enough.

By Neil's turn he only had to kiss Elisabeth, Dean and Will. Neil added a clap of the shoulder to each, which each recipient was happy to return.

That left Will with Dean and Elisabeth to… he didn't like to even think of the words "kiss" or "do", so he started with:

'Dean, you absolute…' and smacked him louder than was necessary on each cheek, while also squeezing Dean's trapezius until he saw him wince. Meanwhile out of the corner of his eye he saw Elisabeth stiffen right up again. She was quite possibly even more uncomfortable than he felt, and definitely worse at hiding it. Well, no point prolonging anyone's agony:

'Elisabeth, my apologies, and good night,' he said, acquitted himself as quickly as possible and walked back to his original spot to put a formal end to this insanity:

'Right, enough kissing for one night. Charming though it's been I say we keep this French thing for nights out, shall we? Or we'll never get any anything done during market hours. Now bugger off, the lot of you. Stay out all night for all I care but don't miss the open.'

Elisabeth stared at the pavement, the rest of them nodded, then they all vanished down into the station, leaving Will alone with:

'Dean, you absolute fucking tosser. Call yourself a friend?'

The absolute fucking tosser beamed on.

'I'm sure glad you had fun, Dean, means you'll die happy when I bloody kill you over this.'

'I just thought you should see her to the tube, Will, that's all. Watching you two kiss goodnight was quite the cherry on top though.'

'Fuck off, that really wasn't funny.'

'Oh, Will, you are such a pillock…' Dean said with a tenderness which, sincere though it may have been, Will couldn't help take the wrong way. Look at him: since when did watching his best friend suffer put Dean in such a great mood?

'I'm well aware I'm a pillock, thank you very much. She made sure of that,' Will replied.

'Oh no. No, Will, you literally have no idea.'

'Excuse me but I think I do, so fuck off. I don't want to walk home with you anymore.'

'Don't you? OK,' Dean said, nonetheless still keeping pace with him, 'Just a word to the wise before I leave you with your thoughts then…'

Will shook his head.

'…if you're still planning on pouncing, Will, just lose the tie.'

What.

Will pulled the offending accessory out of the trouser pocket he'd stuffed it in, half way through his game, when breathing while watching Elisabeth bent over a pool table had become too much of a challenge:

'She even hates my fucking tie? Why, Dean, why? Georgie bought me this tie when she first played Pleyel, it's Hermes. It's bloody French! Why would Elisabeth hate it? It's never fucking hurt anyone…'

'Hey, hey stop, there's nothing wrong with it,' Dean said, staying Will's hand inches away from the mouth of the nearest bin.

'Then what?' Will said, his head hurting from the humiliation, the incomprehension, the horrible memory of poor Elisabeth stiffening up in horror before being kissed by Andy, then again before he…

'So, you're not thinking of pouncing anymore then, Will?'

'Seriously, have you looked at us tonight? Oh, and you weren't there when I picked her up from the tube but believe me, that didn't end well either.'

'I bet. Shame though,'

'Quite,' Will said, and for the umpteenth time the words cold, mean, arrogant and emotionless echoed through his otherwise empty, worse-than-useless, brain.

'.. cos I'm starting to think she may, I'm not sure how to put this to you so it gets through that thick skull of yours, Will, but I think she may be objectifying you.'

'Say what?'

Dean left a pause. Or perhaps he talked on but Will was too stunned to hear him until:

'What do you call it when you lust after someone but you don't like them? You know, like you were with her to start with?'

'You mean fucked up?'

'I suppose you'd call it that.'

Will shook his head. This was idiotic. Typical well-meant wishful Dean idiocy, but complete and utter idiocy nonetheless:

'She doesn't lust after me, Dean. That's be great, that really would help me and I wish she did - but she just doesn't.'

'Based on what?'

'Based on the fact she tells me to piss off, goes rigid any time she has the misfortune of being near me, then she cheers up as soon as you or Neil turn up.'

'Very true. That's why I wanted us all to walk her to the tube together.'

'You wanker. I'm never giving you her number by the way. I'd rather die, is that clear?'

'Very clear, thank you and no thank you,' Dean laughed, 'But you see, I couldn't help notice another thing that discombobulated your lovely quant, and put her ill at ease: when you took your tie off.'

Will stared at the strip of silk in his hand. Absurdly his next thought was: good job I didn't throw it away, I always liked this tie, and Georgie would rightly have killed me.

'Which did annoy me, for the record,' Dean was saying, 'because she was actually starting to get the hang of the game until you went and did that. Not cricket, Will: poor thing didn't know where to look. Not only was it painful to watch, but her focus was gone, Will, she was all over the place.'

'Yeah, quants will do that when you take their computers away,' Will said absent-mindedly, but his brain was slowly starting to consider the implications of Dean's remark, other than for his neckwear collection. Where his head had felt both empty and achy not half a minute ago, memories now started flooding back, jostling each other for a chance at historical re-evaluation.

Elisabeth freezing up tonight when he'd come to stand in front of her, and just as she'd done in front of Andy? As Will knew all too well by now, desire for something you think is bad for you did look and feel an awful lot like revulsion. At first anyway. So yes, on a good day he might chalk that one up to his open collar because he knew the feeling: the necklines of Elisabeth's shirts had made him freeze often enough.

OK, so that was good. Very good even: he could work with that.

Then working backwards there was the awkward, silent walk from the tube to the bar, after he'd told her about Neil. Could thoughts of Pierre and Natasha have made things awkward for her too? No, no he was probably extrapolating there. Something had upset her about the panel reviews, but why should it be anything to do with him, with Pierre and Natasha, or even with Neil?

Plus, he'd definitely still been wearing his tie then.

Which left their fight from two nights ago, and although he'd rather have eaten his damn tie than admit so much to Dean, Will was pretty sure he'd probably taken it off then too, the better to dive into his after-hours spreadsheet session. If Dean was right then that might partly explain the look of pain on her face when they'd apologised to each other, and again before she left.

But did it explain her telling him to piss off in the first place?

In Dean's incurably romantic head it probably did. Hadn't Dean already tried to argue that her lashing out at him was only because she cared, because she somehow needed, wanted or even merely wished for him to be nicer to her? Will hadn't bought that argument then and he still didn't now. Far more likely: no one likes a cold mean arrogant moron, so why should Elisabeth Bennet? The lack of tie might have helped it come out a little stronger than it otherwise would have, but the underlying sentiment was true enough. Elisabeth might occasionally catch herself lusting after him, but she sure as hell had never liked him.

'Of course you wouldn't have noticed her trying not to stare, you were so very busy not looking at her,' Dean was saying.

What?

'Oh, yeah, well that's been a full-time job for a while now.'

And a bloody hard one when she's bent over a pool table, believe you me, he might have added. But Dean wouldn't have understood. The guy had happily and placidly stood right behind her for four games straight: he had no idea.

'On that front you truly outdid yourself tonight,' Dean said, 'Ten out of ten for cold and for emotionless.'

'Thanks,' Will said, after a while, and knowing that his friend would understand what he was, actually if belatedly, being thanked for. Also:

'You're right, Dean, I didn't half screw up tonight, did I?'

'Not at all! That is: not entirely. Clearly the tie move was inspired. I'm just thinking from here on perhaps you dial down the cold-slash-emotionless and you dial up the come-hither, see how you get on?'

'Yeah I'm not sure I can be trusted around the old come-hither dial,' Will said, consciously avoiding the word "knob", which he felt would have been an apt description of his cold mean arrogant person right now.

'Hey, she did say she loved you too,' Dean said, 'Honestly, I thought you guys did good at the bar. Came awfully close to flirting in fact...'

'Only around you, Dean. Only because you always bring out the best in people. I guess we were both trying hard. I know I was.'

'Then at least don't go thinking she didn't appreciate it.'

Will shrugged. Dean meant well, but at the end of the day he mustn't kid himself. Tie or not, if Elisabeth had had any fun tonight it was only because she too had been making an effort. And yes, he wasn't above appreciating that, of course not, but…

'Keep it up, Will, and who knows, maybe one day when I tell her that you like her she won't look at me like I'm mad.'

'You what?! You didn't? Please say you didn't.'

'Well it's true, isn't it?'

Of course it was. It was also the mother of all understatements. But that still didn't make it OK for Dean to go and blab.

But then:

'Bah, what does it matter? It's not like she believed you anyway, right?'

Dean shook his head, highly amused. It had been good to see him happy tonight. Very good.

Almost worth the heartache.

'Hell,' Will said, 'We might as well laugh about it, it's only what she would do.'

Dean nodded. Will could tell he was trying to look sympathetic but, incredibly, failing. It sure was a nice to see him overcome by laughter instead of self-pity, for a change:

'OK, so Elisabeth thinks I hate her? That must make me the grand master of dissimulation, Dean. I'm pulling off the bluff of the century here,' Will said, and joined his friend in laughing, albeit perhaps a little feebly.

'Of the Millennium, Will, don't undersell yourself.'

'So the only part of me she likes is my neck? So what? It's a start, I can work with that, right?'

'Hey, like I often say with you, Will, it's come for the amazing neck, but stay for the cold, mean, arrogance.'

'Why, thank you, Dean. Your neck ain't half bad either.'

'Why, thank you too.'

'And if I'm very lucky, by next Christmas she might like me all the way down to the elbows, right?'

'Wow, steady on, the elbows?'

'You're right, maybe just the general shoulder area.'

'So is the pounce back on then?'

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