On The Market Chapter 45: Will's POV15 - Cat and Mouse, a pride and prejudice fanfic

Happy Friday everyone, sorry I'm a bit late posting - mad day. Anyway...

Couple of shout-outs to start: kudos back to The_fourth_C for reading and kudos'ing A Bee in her Bonnet this week. Glad you liked it, and you letting me know really made my day (and that was a hard day's beekeeping too, so I needed it). And congrats to wanttosmile on being the 200th person to Kudos this story - thank you, and to all the 199 others before you too! Fanfic readers: don't feel left out, you continue to amaze me. I can see what you're up to using the chapters reading stats, but I love your reviews even better - thanks, in short, to everyone who's taken time to interact.

Now, on the plus side this week, you get another nice long chapter. On the down side, E & D are still dancing around rather than with each other but patience, that's coming next week.

Happy reading and all the best

Mel

'Hey! Thanks so much for coming over,' Will said, releasing dB from a side hug.

'Hey, where's Clara then?' she said, her eyes searching the floor as he closed the door behind her.

'Hiding under the spare room wardrobe,' he sighed. Clara had been there all week.

'Hmm, why?'

'Because she hates me, obviously. Only comes out if I'm out or asleep…'

'Hmm, why?' dB asked again.

'What can I say: I'm that lovable,' Will sighed again.

dB, by contrast, smiled that new relaxed, confident smile she'd had since Oli. Whatever Will still thought of the guy's sartorial taste, or his life choices in general, he couldn't but like him for giving dB that brand new smile.

'So how long do you have Clara for?' she asked, dropping into Will's sofa.

He switched the kettle on at the kitchen end of the room, where his eyes took in the cat's food bowl - untouched.

'Another week,' he remembered then, looking back at dB: 'Anyway, you look well.'

'I'm fine, how about you though? Was your US trip good? Was your quant pleased to have you back?'

'Not really, no.'

'No to which?'

'No to both. The MD off-site was complete bullshit - obviously. And I missed Elisabeth. A lot. Kept thinking of how we'd have joked about all that nonsense together if only she'd been there as well. I mean all that crap about some integrated investment platform strategy? She'd have been in stitches.'

'Hmm...'

'Quants, trust me she would.'

'Right,' dB said, indulgently.

That was the other thing about her since Oli: treasure troves of patience. For Will anyway. She'd always been a great friend, of course, but of late she'd arguably been a better one than Dean, because unlike him she'd not given him any "I told you so", "too fast too soon" talk over his great doorstep snog debacle.

As it was, Will had had just about enough of hearing what he shouldn't have done, and that he should just be nice. He was trying, for God's sake.

Very trying even, according to some. But dB, for one, was still putting up with him with her usual excellent grace.

'I'm sure she must have missed you too,' she said when he handed her her cup of tea. No milk, she had now given up even the skinniest of dairy, and good for her, because what could be the point of skimmed milk anyway?

'The truth is,' Will said, 'Elisabeth just breathed a lot easier while I was gone. But hey, on the plus side, I don't think she had time to get off with anyone meaningful while I was away, and I still get paid to sit next to her all day. Win-win, right?'

dB, being dB, immediately picked up on the gallows humour.

'It's still hard then?'

'Naah, only when I think about it... And sometimes it's still utterly delightful. I went for a run the day I got back, and she sat there, staring at my face for a bit before either of us spoke and well, I swear, those were some pretty perfect seconds...'

His voice trailed off, and then dB said, in a tone of solid, neutral expertise, the kind of tone Elisabeth would have used to talk data vendors:

'You do look nice after a run and a shower.'

'Why, thank you.'

'I'm glad your quant thinks so too, she's clearly a woman of taste,' dB said, again with that easy smile she never used to smile before Oli.

'So then,' Will said, 'I smiled at her, and I said I was glad to be back - remember we agreed we should both smile more, right? Well nowadays I look at her, and half the time I can't jolly well help it that I'm smiling. So I'm back in London finally, and I've got her a coffee, and I'm smiling at her so what does she do? She goes and chucks it untouched into the bin and takes off in a huff. I tell you, I can't win.'

'Hmm.'

'The cat hates me, the quant hates me, I do try, with both of them. I do actually like Clara too, what I've seen of her at Georgie's. She just…'

'Maybe she's just freaking out.'

'Yeah, I guess this is one move too many for her. I put her basket and litter tray into the guest room so she has her own space... and she does come and eat in here, mind - provided I'm well away.'

dB laughed:

'I meant Elisabeth?'

Will answered with a dismissive shrug and a sip of his tea. What else was there to say?

'The opposite of love's indifference, Will, it's not freaking out every time you catch a glimpse of someone's neck.'

He shook his head but dB carried on:

'Look at it that way: in my book if she's still freaking out, then that means you've still got it.'

'Very kind, dB, but I'm really not sure what it is I got. Or that I want her to like me for my blooming neck, actually.'

'But it's a start,' dB said.

Of course, but:

'…in my book freaking out's also the opposite of being happy. And I've seen Elisabeth Bennet happy: it's an awesome sight. I swear, it's the best,' Will said, thinking of the terrace, and of the old Golf, and... 'But the fact is I've not made her anything other than mortified and miserable ever since I went and…'

'Hey, hey, don't kick yourself over it.'

'I'm not! It's no one's fault she hates herself for fancying me. I did what had to be done for us both to find out, and now we know. And I guess if I got to make her happy before that, even for a few minutes of that dreadful weekend, then I'm a really lucky guy, right?'

'That's awfully generous of you.'

'It's not, it's just realistic,' Will said, shaking his head at his mug.

He did believe what he'd just said though: he was indeed a lucky guy. He was lucky to have dB for a friend, still, after all these years of arsing about with each other. He was lucky that she seemed to have found someone that made her truly happy, and he was incredibly lucky to have snatched those few moments of shared happiness with Elisabeth too. He was lucky to have known her and he was thankful for how happy she'd made him, that one night.

No one can ever have it all, but some people got nothing at all from life. Whereas he'd had that one silly night of bliss, thinking himself loved back. It wasn't much, but to him it was infinitely better than nothing at all. Elisabeth would probably have questioned the maths of dividing anything by nothing at all, but...

'I mean it, Will: you are a very generous guy,' he heard, and looked back at dB.

'If you say so,' he said, trying not to shrug off dB's own, very real, generosity. It was kind of her to try and make him feel better about himself, very generous indeed to take time away from…

'Anyway, how was your ashram thingy with Oli?'

'Good, great… very… cleansing,' she said with a faraway smile.

'Cleansing? I'd have thought you already had all the lotions for that.'

The joke brought dB's smile back to the here and now:

'Yeah, well it turns out Oli was right: the right yoga reaches parts other lotions don't.'

'Are we talking horizontal tantric yoga?'

She scoffed:

'That too, but we talked a lot. In between the yoga and the sex, it was nice to have time to talk - about something other than the studios. Thanks for your help going over that business plan, by the way.'

'No problem. So what do you two you talk about then? Chakras? Marriage and babies?'

'Again: that too, but we also talked about you, Will. A surprising amount. You see, Oli still couldn't figure you out.'

'I'm sorry. If it's awkward for him that you and I hang out on our own tell him he can tag along, I'm sure I don't mind. Hell, if he'll put up with me and my moaning... I bet he's great with a rescue cat too, right?'

'Of course,' she shrugged, 'and he will tag along. If that's still OK with you, in the future. He'd love to get to know you better. But we thought first, maybe, just I should thank you.'

'Thank me? For what?'

'For last Christmas.'

Last Christmas? Will tried to think of what he might have got her. Probably lotions, actually. Maybe some sort of his and hers lotion?

'You know I don't mean the candles, right?' dB said with a searching look at him. He frowned, then remembered:

'Oh, the candles! Sorry, you didn't like them? I think it was your mum told my mum for me to get them for you. Sorry, dB, won't happen again.'

'Will…'

'What?'

'I know you talked to Oli.'

'Oh, you mean that?'

Why would she want to thank him for that?

'Yes, that was one of the things we talked about,' she said, 'A lot. Once he did tell me, that is. Finally.'

'Tell you what?'

'That you'd… prodded him along, in your own unique way.'

'Did I? I think I just told him I had your back - from memory.'

'And to man up?'

'Sorry, yeah I probably said that too,' Will winced. But then the guy still had a pony tail and a goatee, for God's sake, how old was he?

'Sorry about that, dB. And don't worry I'll be nice to him next time, I promise. I'll be good.'

'No no, you were very good, Will, that's my point.'

'Was I? Sorry about that too then, I don't think I meant to.'

'Didn't you?'

'I think it was just annoying the crap out of me to see you miserable over him, that's all.'

'I see. So you didn't set out to tell Oli that it was him who was freaking me out, not you?'

Will shook an increasingly puzzled head:

'You didn't set out to clarify this,' she went on, 'so that Oli would work up the courage to tell me how he felt? You didn't, in other words, set out to help make Oli and I happy, even though that meant things would have to change between you and I?'

Will thought about it but no, he really hadn't. Plus:

'Yeah, well things between us had already changed quite a bit by then anyway, right?'

'Aha. And a lot of guys would have resented that.'

Will shook his head. Why? Why would anyone resent anyone else being happy? Should he have been jealous, was that what she meant? Perhaps it was the boisterous size of the Kingsley side of his family, or else it was the boarding-school upbringing, but Will had never understood the point of jealousy, especially over human beings. Other people didn't owe you your happiness in this world, only you did, to yourself. dB, for one, had never owed him anything, which was why it was so bloody gracious of her to have been such a pillar all these years, as well as an occasional, if fairly bony, pillow.

Why would he resent her that great new smile of hers? Why, for that matter, would he resent Oli, for making her happier than he ever could?

'Is it bad that I didn't mind things… changing?' Will asked in the end.

'Oh no, no. It was brilliant! It was what Oli needed to hear, so he could stop me freaking out.'

'Eh? So you really were freaking out? Over him?' Will said, then realised belatedly that his incredulity was also incredibly rude.

'Well yes, Will. Precisely,' she said, with a lot better grace than he deserved, 'I was freaking out over Oli from 6th form. I was having amazing sex with Oli from 6th form. I was having random, uninvited thoughts about Oli from 6th form, wondering when Oli from 6th form would call. Remember Oli from 6th form, Will? Remember the endless anti-whaling campaigns and how we used to make fun of his ponytail?'

'I might have occasionally made fun of his chin fluff too, sorry…'

'Oh me, too, of course! So imagine finding myself falling in love with him? And wondering whether he's feeling the same way, or whether this is all an elaborate plot to avenge himself for the time I vandalised his CND posters?'

'Wait, that was you?'

She nodded.

'Brilliant stuff, dB. I had no idea. Brilliant stuff - and great bluffing too. Didn't the football captain go down for that one?'

Another gracious, playful head wiggle.

'Cherry on top, that couldn't have happened to a better bloke: brilliant move, dB, just brilliant,' Will laughed.

He couldn't remember the name of the football captain because the guy was in the year above them and didn't play rugby. But Will did remember that the guy was a complete prick and a first class bully, so in that instant he realised how lucky he was, not only that his world should count such women as dB, Georgie and Elisabeth, but that any of them should freely choose to associate with him, when they could have sabotaged him with such flair instead? That, surely, must be something to be grateful for.

'Apparently Oli knew all along it was me,' dB was saying, 'but my point is yes, Will, I was very much freaking out. It didn't make sense that I should like Oli. Not over you anyway.'

Will pouted and shrugged. Made perfect sense to him. In hindsight, of course, but yeah, if Oli made dB happy then he was the right guy for her, period.

'Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcy, you do know that you're quite a catch, right?' she was saying. He looked back up at her:

'Your mother only thinks so because she likes my mother. Or possibly just my mother's title…'

'Nonsense,' dB said, shaking her head.

As for his father's cash, Will was thinking, if Elisabeth cared about that then she wouldn't live where she lived, or prefer fifteen-year-old Volkswagens over new Jags. But of course this wasn't about Elisabeth. Not everything was, for other people.

Just for him.

So going back to Oli:

'I'm glad it's all worked out for you, dB. You do deserve to be this obscenely happy.'

'Thanks, so do you.'

Will shrugged. "Deserve" was the wrong word here, because he didn't believe anyone deserved anything from life. What he'd meant was that a lot of the time you got out of it what you put in, that was all. And while the wider world may not have looked at Anne de Burgh that way, she'd given him a hell of a lot over the years, and he wasn't sure what he'd ever given her back, other than by-the-book orgasms and a shoulder to sleep on, if she was tired afterwards.

'I wish I could meet her and explain,' dB was saying.

'What?'

'Your Elisabeth: I wish I could meet her and tell her that it's OK, to like a guy you didn't think you should, or could. That it's OK to like you, Will, even though you're so insufferably posh and handsome and rich, because you're also a much nicer guy than you think.'

What?

'But if she's as smart as you think she is, then she'll soon work that out too, right?' dB concluded with a smug little shake of the head.

Will smiled into the bottom of his now empty mug:

'Well that's awfully kind of you…' he was saying, when he saw Clara's head appear in the doorframe, so he hushed and hand-signalled at dB to do the same.

'Will, what are you doing?' she asked at full volume, regardless.

'Shhh, she'll hear you.'

'And?'

'She'll get scared.'

'What? Why? We're not scary. Are we scary, Clara?'

'Shhh!'

'See? She doesn't mind. Clara, you OK, Sweetie? Hungry, much? This is Will, he's been feeding you, and neither of us bites. Talk to her, Will!'

'I have!' he angry-whispered, 'She doesn't like me.'

'She doesn't seem to mind: look.'

'Well of course she doesn't mind you.'

'That's just a coincidence. She's starting to get used to your place, that's all. Do you think perhaps she's used to more noise than you've been making on your own? Ever thought of putting one of Georgie's CD's on?'

'No, but that's a good thought.'

'There you go, look, she's eating!'

'Well done, Clara.'

Who knew one could feel so grateful to watch a cat eat?

As to quants though:

'Do you mind moving that latte back over to your desk?' Elisabeth was saying a few weeks later as they pored over her latest printout, 'I'm sorry, Will, I've never been great with the smell of warm milk on an empty stomach.'

Raj had tasked her with reconciling the trading volumes reported by Pimms, with those she was producing as part of her transaction cost reports. Officially Raj had tasked them both with this, but she was doing all the heavy lifting as usual, seeing as she was the only one qualified to operate the big-data-digger. Every day she earthed up a list of the previous day's discrepancies, and every morning instead of chatting over coffee they pored over it together, and then she re-wrote her code to exclude whatever they'd been able to explain away to that point, so that the printouts were getting shorter every day.

The idea was to enable Raj's team in New York to take over her code and run it on the US trades too. But first Raj had to get everyone agreed that Elisabeth's figures were right and Pimm's was full of proverbial. This should have been obvious enough to anyone with half a brain cell but instead, Will had wasted his precious pre-open coffee time every day of this week talking Japanese warrants and scrip dividends.

'No problem,' he lied as he moved his cup. He very much needed this latte, amongst other things to distract him from whatever enchanting French scent it was that she sprayed on in the mornings, and which made it so very hard to focus on scrip dividends in the first place.

'And you're sure you're not pregnant?' he asked, reluctantly snapping the lid back onto his cup.

'Very sure, Will, thank you for checking,' she smiled. She still did that occasionally, which was lovely.

'Then perhaps I should get us both croissants tomorrow, so you don't have to do this on an empty stomach?'

Also, eating breakfast with her was another of his enduring fantasies. But:

'Croissants, you kidding? I'd not be able to find my keyboard for crumbs, let alone read this tosh,' she said, pointing at her printout.

'True,' he nodded, smiling back at her and counting his blessings. Literally counting them in nano-seconds, because they were smiling at each other and he was loving it, ergo something bad was about to happen.

Sure enough she looked down, took in the shirt collar that he'd meant to finish doing up at the coffee shop – and he could have sworn that he had - and then she frowned and tucked her hair, which should have been his cue to stop smiling and say something about how stupid Pimms was. Instead he grinned at her like the blissed-out, inane moron that he was, but knew he had no right to be, so she cleared her throat and looked back up with daggers in her eyes and said:

'Well, with any luck there won't be anything to check tomorrow anyway, perhaps we're finally getting to the end of this whole idiocy.'

By which they both knew she didn't mean Pimm's.

Will's smile finished evaporating as he turned back to his screen. Another of Raj's epistles was waiting in his Inbox. Its subject header was Rheinland, probably about that do they were putting on, and at which he was to officialise a reconciliation. It had all been agreed offline and in advance, as these things are, so Will was surprised that Raj should be raising it again, and on email too.

Oh crap.

Oh fuck, no.

He looked sideways at Elisabeth. She sighed, gave him daggers, then looked back at her screens. He read the email again.

"It has struck me that in light of Elisabeth's material contribution to the original uncovering of R's activities … and in view of the suitability of raising her profile as we prepare to adopt her methodologies on a broader geographical basis… blah blah, more nonsense about the bank's unique quant trading approach… blah blah… and while I realise that you might have hoped or even planned for a meaningful non-colleague to join you for what should be an excellent evening, I have explicitly requested that R extend their second invitation to Elisabeth personally, and trust that you will both leverage this opportunity to introduce her to more of the desk's external stakeholders… blah blah … won't need to remind you to settle the evening's travel arrangements for the safety of … blah blah trust the reconciliation exercise is meanwhile nearing a happy conclusion."

Will sank back against the backrest of his chair, crossed his arms, and tried to think of how on earth this latest of Raj's perverted schemes might ever lead to any sort of reconciliation, let alone a happy conclusion.

Will's "meaningful non-colleagues", however, all begged to differ. Apparently this was a perfect second chance for him, and the gang weren't shy of proffering advice about how to make it go right, this time.

Dean's was that Will keep his shirt's top button done up at all times (easy enough in black tie), carry a cigar in case of emergency (probably a good idea), be nice (no, really?), keep his hands and mouth well away from her this time (potentially easier said than done), leave early and ask her out nicely, only once outside the venue again, and only should things have gone well.

So probably not worth booking a table anywhere just yet, then.

Georgie reckoned he'd be absolutely fine (unlikely) because he looked amazing in black tie (if she said so), strongly advised him to lose the bowtie as soon as practical (just: no), be himself (as opposed to being nice?), ignore the band (gladly), and pack a condom in case of emergency (he should be so lucky and also: did anyone still not carry any condom in their wallet in this day and age?).

As for dB, she correctly predicted that Elisabeth would freak out when presented with the invitation, but would have to agree for Raj's sake, and that this should be taken as an excellent sign that Will still had "it", whatever "it" was. Her advice was for Will to introduce Elisabeth to as many people as possible, but not leave her alone with any of them as they'd probably all be wankers (a fair guess), and that if things got more than usually awkward (another fair bet), to remember that this was why Granny Darcy and Granny Cat (de Burgh) had inflicted those awful formal dancing lessons on both of them. If he could remember his basic footwork he'd be fine, apparently. Also to breathe and remember his happy place, which as he pointed out was unlikely to help him calm down, given that his happy place was still Elisabeth's doorstep.

However, their collective faith in him did go some way towards increasing his own.

As did Elisabeth's opening line when he pulled her into 3.11, the day the official invitations arrived in the post:

'Will, stop it,' she spat.

He'd come to accept it as normal that if he smiled at her for no reason (other than that he remained hopelessly in love with her, obviously), then there'd be coffees flying into bins and huffs and sighs and daggers. But this was the first time she'd explicitly asked him to stop and it did make him stop.

Sharpish.

It did also make him think: the obvious thing to do would have been to put his arsehole head-trader game back on for her benefit, but he either couldn't, or wouldn't. Instead Will sold her the outing using dispassionate and even some numerical arguments, steering well clear of the fact that he was presently as terrified of asking her to spend next Friday night out with him, as she clearly was, of having to spend next Friday night out with him.

So yes, this party was a big deal - for Rheinland and for its clients. Making up with Rheinland, that was also a big deal. Even ticking off Raj's bullshit bingo card was a big deal, in its own way. But spending next Friday evening with him?

No biggie.

He'd just managed to get her used to the idea, but he went and offered her a lift, which got him right back to square one and she left in a brand-new huff, all of his own making.

So far, so normal.

For them.

But then she did another thing that she'd never done before: after they got back to their respective desks he caught her looking his way a couple of times, but without daggers in her eyes. He figured it'd be like with Clara: if he so much as looked her way she'd stop, so he pretended not to notice, but he did. He noticed that she'd looked at him and she hadn't got angry.

That was unexpected, but also very very nice, so he didn't question it.

Then later on, they were all bantering with Neil, who was going about things the boring normal way with some boring normal woman from marketing he'd met at the offsite. He was asking Elisabeth about French places to take the woman on a date and Will suggested sticking somewhere along the river. To which with her back to him Elisabeth said that yes, that would be lovely.

She said it in her happy quiet voice from the hotel terrace and Will was busy thinking: if only, when again she turned around to look at him, but she didn't get pissed off.

Unfortunately this time he couldn't very well pretend that he hadn't noticed. In fact he may also have raised an eyebrow at her, with the kind of look they'd traded around the pool table at the offsite, but they both knew they shouldn't around the dealerboards, so that she got into a right huff again, and fair enough.

But again, after they'd all sat back down he caught her looking his way and it finally hit him: this was the look she'd had on her way out after their bust up too, the week they'd gone live with tradePad.

And with that the penny dropped, at long last: Elisabeth wasn't enjoying blowing up at him, any more than he was.

And that, in turn, changed everything.

Thus far, what dB termed Will's "still having got it" with Elisabeth had seemed to consist of her fancying his neck, and that making her angry. And as he'd told dB, while anger may not be the exact opposite of love, it was definitely one of the opposites of happiness.

But anger, as it happened, was also common currency in Will's line of work. It was how traders and brokers kept each other in check, day in day out. You screw me, I shout at you, you screw me more, I shout louder, and then I cut your line. Hence up to this point Will had taken Elisabeth's anger as a just and proportionate response to his persistence in trying to flirt with her against her express wishes. It did work too, in that it did keep him in check.

Just about.

But if Will's "it" now consisted of her fancying his neck and that making her miserable, well, then wasn't that awfully close to how he felt about her? And if that was the case then yes, the meaningful-non-colleague-collective had a point: Will had better make the most of next Friday night to try and sort out this "it" thing, once and for all.