Anonymous asked: [fic prompt] headcannon for how caroline fell in love with darcy?
It happens in Paris.
And, yes, it's completely ridiculous and embarrassing and cliché that the "City of Love" is where she realizes she has feelings for William Darcy, but Caroline doesn't believe in fate. It's free will that she agrees when Bing suggests they spend winter break in Paris. It's free will that makes Darcy decide to come along. It's free will that, when they've been in the city for all of three hours, Bing meets and falls in love with a girl with whom he has no languages in common.
(Because obviously.)
He abandons Caroline and Darcy in the 7th arrondissement, promising to meet up with them later. "Later" turns into very late, though, and it's past ten at their hotel when, halfway through their second bottle of Pinot noir, Caroline and Darcy give up and have dinner without him.
Darcy makes grilled cheese with black truffles, because it seems like a good idea when they're slightly drunk and they spent the afternoon buying enough food to, as he jokes, feed Gigi's entire swim team. (Périgord truffles from Truffes Folies, bread from a nearby bakery, and some sort of cave-ripened fontina he'd personally selected from among what seemed like thousands of cheeses.) He's a decent cook—and that's important. It's one of the few things he doesn't excel at, and, foolishly, she thinks the fact that he shares this merely decent skill with her makes it somehow more intimate.
When Bing finally gets back after midnight, he has to borrow cash for the cab waiting downstairs—his wallet is gone; something about a "misunderstanding" with the girl he'd gone off with—and Caroline isn't even annoyed. She just knows when she goes to bed that something has shifted, with Darcy; that she feels restless and bored most of the time, but not around him.
She doesn't believe in fate. But she still watches helplessly as events coincide and choices lead up to Darcy falling in love with someone else. Her heart feels like the glossy façade of a magazine, and it crumples just as easily.