A complete crush.
Disclaimer: None of the characters/ familiar storylines are mine.
A/N: My gratitude is boundless for the Reviewers! And thanks for your rant Historianc! I always enjoy reading what you thought :D
For a thick, adhesive second Betty stood with the phone to her ear, unmoving, her eyes locked in Daniel's blue depths.
"Betty?"
"Hi."
Her voice sounded surprisingly normal. It was impossible to tell that her boss and best friend had just declared his love for her.
"Hey, I just wanted to..." As Gio spoke, Betty lost herself again in those blue eyes. Daniel watched her watching him, clearly not listening to whoever was on the phone. He smiled. She looked so...was beautiful the word? She was beautiful. So Betty.
"I'm sorry, I kind of have to go."
"Oh, okay-"
"'Bye;" and she flipped her phone shut.
Daniel was still smiling at her, and she felt a mad kind of happiness inside her. She was just so happy it was frustrating. Daniel loved her. He loved her; she loved him.
Betty
Yes. I love him. This is absolutely certain. Every time he looks at me like that, I get this impossibly warm feeling. It used to be friendship, but now - it's a total cliche but it seems that glow has ripened, turned to a golden heat, so pleasant that I just cannot let go.
Do you love Gio? That little nagging thinking bit in my brain.
What does it matter? Daniel loves me. And I love Daniel.
What about Gio?
What about him? It doesn't matter.
You'll have to tell him.
Yes, I will. So I will.
He loves you so. He's not a player. He's not irresponsible.
Nonsense. Daniel is not a player.
Ha, ha! Yeah right!
No, really. He's not! He was, but now -
Don't be so cocky, Betty. You can't just change him, you know. Who do you think you are?
He has changed.
What proof do you have?
I don't need it. I trust him -
But you feel for Gio, too.
No, I don't.
Don't you?
I don't. Daniel -
is a player -
is not -
is too!
"Betty?"
Betty jumped and automatically took a step away from Daniel, who was standing before her. He flinched.
"Oh, Daniel," she said. "Can I just...think? I need to think...I..."
He nodded, slowly. "Betty...take your time. Just...know what I told you."
She nodded back and walked back toward the club, where Christina was standing just inside the entrance, holding their bags.
Daniel arrived early at the office, so early that he was practically the only one on his floor. Betty's desk was unoccupied, the computer screen strangely black. He needed distraction; he needed work.
He sat down in his chair and scooted forward to his desk.
His right ankle tingled; he frowned and reached down - something touched his leg and began to creep up, slowly.
"What the -?!" He shoved his desk, hard, sending his chair backwards until it hit the wall and stopped with a jolt. Under his desk was a grinning twenty-three year old.
"Hey, Daniel." A smirk.
"My God," Daniel said, standing up and offering her a hand. "Don't do that, Alba."
Alba crawled out and stretched, pouting slightly. "It's Al." She pushed back her hair, a very dark brown. "I've been waiting for hours to do that."
"How did you get in here, Alba?" Daniel asked. The last thing he needed when he was so stressed out already was his annoyingly young and upbeat cousin.
"Oh, Alexis was here early," Alba said, tying a ponytail. "Relax. You look totally freaked out."
"Well, considering there was a random person hiding under my desk at six thirty in the morning," Daniel said, dryly. He sat back down. "What brings you here?"
"Love," she said.
"Oh, really?"
"No, really. I'm just here for fun with my friends. Speaking of love, are you okay?" Her expression was completely serious now.
"I'm fine," Daniel said, thinking of Betty. "I think."
"You've moved on," Alba said, perching on his desk and surveying him with her piercing blue gaze.
Daniel flushed. "How did-"
"Can't explain, just do," she said, airily. "Who is it? And something serious, I hope."
"Oh, very," Daniel said, looking out of the window. "Very serious."
"Who?" Alba leaned forward eagerly.
"Somebody in this office." He paused. Heck, she was his cousin, and family, sooo... "Dinner if you get it right."
She laughed. "Great, that means I get to stay in the office to observe, right?"
Daniel groaned. "Just don't drive me nuts."
Betty had just spilled her guts to Christina in the Closet.
"Okay, Betty," Christina said, putting her hand over Betty's. "Let me tell you this. I cannot tell you how much Daniel has changed since you got here. He is not a playboy anymore."
"How can you be sure? I mean, he had Renee, yes, but after that -?"
"When he was with Renee, did he even look at other women?"
There was a short silence. "Well, yeah."
Christina rolled her eyes. "Apart from the models he's supposed to look at, Betty."
"No," Betty said, almost grudgingly. "I suppose not."
"So go for it!" Christina chivvied Betty out. "Get going, now!"
Alba, for a lack of things to do, sat flicking marbles over the floor of the office. It was funny how almost child-like she seemed, cross-legged on the floor.
A marble pinged off the leg of a lamp and spun under Daniel's desk; Alba went after it.
"Stop acting like a kid," Daniel grumbled, his fallen pen rolling under the table as well. Seriously. Alba was twenty three.
"Oh, a Meade fountain pen," came Alba's voice from under the table. "Which Christmas is this from?"
"Three years ago, actually," Daniel said.
"Wow. How-"
"Just a little more," Daniel said, leaning back in his chair to observe her efforts to unscrew the tricky cap. "Yeah-"
"Daniel?"
He looked up from the desk, already stricken at the sound of her voice. What had she decided? Had she decided yet? Would it be him or Gio she had chosen? "Betty."
Betty's POV
"Just a little more - yeah -" Daniel was sat in his chair, leaned back, speaking to the space below the desk.
"Daniel?" She asked, uncertain.
He looked up, looking something between shocked and startled. There was a long pause, then: "Betty."
His chair squeaked slightly, inching back slowly as somebody eased out from under the table. The somebody stretched and grew tall into a model-beautiful girl, very young.
The girl handed a pen to Daniel, smiled at Betty, and looked expectantly at the rather frozen Editor-in-Chief. There was a pause; he looked up to her, to Betty, back to the girl, and said, "This is-"
Daniel's POV
He was suspended in some thick liquid, some dream state, waiting for Betty to say something. Alba was waiting for her introduction. Hmmm. Alba or Al? Trivial really. But he had to think about something. One introduced a stranger by full name, not nickname, yes?
"This is Alba."
Alba grinned, went up to Betty, sticking out her hand. "Hi Betty!"
Betty stared from Alba to Daniel, and turned and left the room swiftly.
"What?" Alba turned on Daniel after the door shut behind Betty. "What was that about?"
He shook the last of that hazy feeling off. He didn't know what she'd decided. It seemed something had really gone wrong; but why - what -
"Was it her?" Alba said, presently, in a near-whisper. "Is it her? Your assistant? Betty?"
"Yes," Daniel said, knowing what she meant. He sounded almost angry. "What's wrong with that?"
"Absolutely nothing," Alba said. "Well, you have certainly grown in my eyes." She looked quite proud of him.
After a silence, Daniel said, "What happened?"
They turned to each other in a moment of dread. Had it been a film there would have been a deep-belly note playing, despair.
"Oh - God!" Daniel said, standing up; he kicked his chair aside and strode over to the window.
Meanwhile, ever the mature one, Alba said, "Yuck."
A/N: D'you think my fake parody of the Pilot was lame? Or did you even get that it was supposed to be? o.o