Fitzwilliam, It Was Really Nothing

Part Two

"Fitzwilliam, what are you thinking about?"

As insane as it were, for a moment, Darcy was compelled to answer that question with complete and total honesty. That's not to say he usually specialized in being dishonest; he'd merely had enough experiences with women in his lifetime to know that when asked that particular question, absolute truth did not have his best interest at heart.

In fact, absolute truth was only interested in getting him castrated.

And yet, he wanted to tell her anyway. Wanted to tell her instead of sweet and dirty nothings to whisper in her ear, his brain was frantically thinking of exit strategies:

Sneak phone to bathroom. Text Charlie to call. Make up excuse on way to door.

Wait till she falls asleep. Use fire escape as getaway.

Hit her over head with alarm clock. Use fire escape as getaway.

He wanted to tell her instead of dinner plans his brain was frantically thinking of ways to explain what a cad he had been. That, he knew this was wrong, but he had done it out of fear (after all she knew when afraid he was apt to do something incredibly fucking stupid), and honestly he'd had no intentions to hurt her despite their past.

He wanted to tell her all about Lizzie – everything about Lizzie, and he should have done so that day at the cemetery, but it had felt so good to see her; unfortunately blocking her calls and emails because he was angry hadn't turned off his feelings. The whole scene would be infinitely easier if he could find a way to be cold and indifferent.

Eva shifted under the covers and wrapped a slender leg around his thigh, snuggling closer.

Darcy sighed and fought his crisis of conscience. "Nothing; I'm not thinking about a single thing."

One Month Previous

Dramamine: Check.

Scopolamine patch(es): Check.

Gravol: Check.

Crackers: Check.

He checked and rechecked his carry-on – obsessively; making sure everything he needed was there and everything was in its place. Not three minutes would go by before he was feverishly unzipping the black bag, hands diving back inside.

Lizzie looked on from behind the big lenses of her trendy sunglasses casually sipping her milkshake and used her free hand to pop out one of her iPod earbuds.

"Forget something?" she asked sardonically.

"No," was Darcy's gruff reply as he zipped the bag up once again and sat back against the hard plastic of the terminal seat.

Lizzie rolled her brown eyes heavenward counting under her breath, "3…2…1…," and like clockwork, Darcy's hands were scrambling for the carryon.

He was like the Old Faithful of OCD.

"Okay…" she snatched the bag away from him, "you're driving me crazy."

"Uh, what the hell do you think you're doing?" he snapped.

"What is so essential that you insist on checking every five seconds to see if it's still there?"

Darcy frowned. "I'm not…it's not…it's really none of your business." He made a grab for his luggage, but she easily maneuvered it out of reach.

Lizzie pursed her lips. "Did you switch bags with David Copperfield? Is there some wily luggage gnome out there who steals the contents of carryons? Trust me, Darcy, your…" Undoing the zipper, she peered inside and quickly gazed up at him in askance, "pharmacy won't disappear."

Visibly irritated, Darcy snatched his bag out of her mitts and set it beside his chair. "I have plane phobia," he grumbled. "It's one of the many banes of my existence and I'm going to kindly ask you to drop the subject completely though I know this is like asking Tom Cruise to stop being insane."

Lizzie giggled and actually smiled at him with warmth. "I swear I won't tease you."

Darcy shook his head. "I swear I asked you to drop the subject," he told her shortly.

She managed to ignore his attitude. "I'm pretty sure you've got enough to kill ten horses in that bag and it's not gonna help you." With a grin, Lizzie removed her sunglasses and perched them on top of her head. "The trick is to pick a focal point and spend all your time concentrating on it. If one thing is occupying your mind then your brain doesn't have time to come up with all of those nasty thoughts about being 35,000 feet in the air."

His complexion greened at the mere mention of 35,000 feet and he swallowed the rush of saliva that filled his mouth.

"Personally, I like to focus on Morrissey," Lizzie continued.

"Lizzie, can we not…" a pause and a puzzled tilt of his head, "Morrissey?"

She shrugged. "He's got a kind face – pleasant to think about. Plus, Hatful of Hollow is one of the greatest albums in existence." Off of Darcy's look she added, "I'm not saying you have to think about Morrissey."

"Thank you, Dr. Bennet," he scoffed. "I'll keep that in mind."

Darcy's heart beat a mile a minute as he and Lizzie made their way toward the comfortable leather of their assigned first class seats. He had always harbored a particularly deep-seeded hatred for airplanes; while admiring man's ability to overcome his own wingless existence by developing a faster, efficient method of air travel that included peanuts and a movie (the likes of which a mangy bird never dreamt of), flying made him absolutely sick to his stomach and therefore man and all of his progress could go fuck himself.

Lizzie slid into the window seat and immediately removed a book from her purse. He envied her calmness, for at the moment his mind was locked in a fierce battle of wits with his stomach; he sat down and his stomach did violent summersaults – practically slamming against the rest of his poor insides.

Lizzie didn't bother to look in his direction. "Stop thinking about it, Darcy, and focus on something else for Christ sake."

Darcy's head snapped in her direction, a dirty look etched on his features, an insult locked and loaded on his tongue and he suddenly, he stopped,

Lizzie's nose was buried in the pages of Love in the Time of Cholera, a lock of wavy, auburn hair had escaped the chokehold of her ponytail holder and curled slightly around her ear, and the sunlight hit her creamy skin at a faultless angle revealing the dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

In that instant, Fitzwilliam Darcy found Elizabeth Bennet to be the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

He was virtually mesmerized when she slowly tucked that errant strand of hair behind her ear, and when she smiled to herself (obviously amused by something she'd read), he smiled, too. Lizzie casually tilted her head and Darcy desperately fought the urge to run his finger along the expanse of her neck while trying to remember what it felt like to have done so on that fateful night.

By the time she uttered, "Feeling any better?" the plane was in the middle of taxiing down the runway and rapidly gaining speed.

Snapping out of his reverie, Darcy quickly directed his attentions to the back of the seat in front of him and prayed he wasn't blushing. "I don't feel the need to curl up in the fetal position and wish for my death, so I suppose your technique does work after all."

"I told you Morrissey has an oddly soothing face."

He chuckled. "He does indeed. Thank you, Lizzie."

Lizzie shrugged and shot him a grin. "Fitzwilliam, it was really nothing."

"I don't think this is a good idea…"

That got a stern, "Why not?"

"I'm meeting the guy for the first time – first impressions are everything. What the hell is he gonna think when he sees me with this?"

"He's gonna think you have a fine appreciation for comedy."

A scoff, "I strongly doubt that."

"Okay, he's gonna think you're incredibly whipped." A beat, "Which, you are; so, it's all good as the kids like to say."

"You only like to believe I'm whipped, and which kids would these be?"

"You only like to believe that you aren't and these would be the really lily white and tragically un-hip kids, now shut up and watch the gate."

When he stepped off of the plane (never so happy in his life to see the ground of Portsmouth, New Hampshire), the very first thing Darcy's eyes set upon was a crudely marker-d sign.

In rather large, rather pink, bubble letters the name:

FITZIE

shone like a beacon; a beacon of impossibly stupid and much hated childhood nicknames.

Next to that sign was another, equally as bubble-lettered:

FITZIE'S LADY FRIEND

Darcy figured there would always be time to ring her scrawny neck later, for now he was simply happy to see his baby sister standing in front of him. Georgiana squealed when she spotted him and waved her sign. Darcy couldn't help himself and dropping his bag, he swept her up into his arms, spinning her around, much to Georgie's embarrassment.

"Holy crap, Will, you're completely killing my cool!" Georgie told him laughing. "Put me down!"

Smiling, Darcy said, "You deserve it, you little bastard." Gesturing toward the sign in her hand he added, "Fitzie? Do you really wanna start advertising embarrassing nicknames, Georgie, cause you have a few I'd be happy to share."

She grinned. "I don't think you've got the brass to go there, Fitzie."

Darcy cocked an eyebrow. "Is that right, Poops McGe…" Georgie cut him off with a shriek and covered his mouth.

"Not in front of my friend, you loser!" she laughed, thoroughly embarrassed and motioned toward the gangly, shaggy-haired boy standing to her right.

In an instant, the protective big-brother mask slipped into place and Darcy gave the kid a decidedly cold once-over with his eyes. He didn't much care for the idea of his little sister hanging out with teenage members of the opposite sex – especially lip-ringed, tight-pants wearing, teenage members of the opposite sex.

The kid smiled brightly and stuck his hand out. "Nice to meet you, Fitzie, I'm Jonah."

Darcy stared at the boy's hand as if it were a cobra ready to strike him and offered him a slight nod of his head.

Georgie smiled apologetically at Jonah. "You'll have to excuse my brother unfortunately he was raised by howler monkeys; our parents did all they could, but sometimes he can't help his subhuman manners."

"At least he doesn't fling his poo," Jonah laughed nervously and Darcy not-so discreetly rolled his eyes.

"Good to see you're keeping fine company at Exeter," he mumbled arrogantly.

"While we're on the subject of 'company'," Georgiana glared, "Will, where's this new girlfriend of your's?"

"Oh, uh, Lizzie, she's…" Darcy's head whipped from side to side frantically before turning back to Georgie. "She – she was right behind me," he finished, puzzled. Spinning around again this time he spotted her heading toward them from the opposite end of the terminal; Lizzie casually made her way through the rush of people somehow managing to drag her suitcase with one hand and hold a massive Nathan's hotdog with the other (even taking the occasional bite).

Darcy fought the urge to smile once she joined the group. "Nice to see you could make it," he teased.

"Sorry," Lizzie apologized with a mouth full of Nathan's finest and Darcy grimaced,

Georgiana giggled. "You can swallow, you know. Really, we don't mind waiting."

Blushing, Lizzie managed to down the rest of the hotdog and staved off the desire to swallow the rest of it whole. This was the first, official craving of anything food like in her pregnancy; up until now ninety-nine percent of the time she'd felt more like puking than eating (and unfortunately did).

"I feel like I haven't ate in years." Lizzie put a hand on her stomach and sent a sly smirk in Darcy's direction. "I'm probably incubating a tapeworm."

Georgiana made a mental note of the slight bulging of her brother's eyes as she extended a hand to Lizzie. "Hi, I'm…"

"Georgiana," Lizzie finished for the teen, ditching her suitcase handle to shake Georgie's hand. "I'm…" spotting Jonah's sign out of the corner of her eye, she said with a snicker, "Fitzie's lady friend."

Charlotte pouted.

Usually this would be enough to persuade her unsuspecting victim to bend to her every whim – this pout, carried so much power that it had once earned her a stellar pair of Manolo's and a Honda Civic – but, Jane (killer!pout's intended target for the night) merely glanced up from the mountain of paperwork laid out before her and shook her head,

"No."

"Oh come on, Jane!" Charlotte huffed. "With Lizzie gone, I've got no one to keep me company…"

Jane smirked. "You mean, with Lizzie gone you've got no one to be your 'wingman'."

Charlotte practically whined as she paced back and forth, "Do you have any idea how long it's been since my ass was accidentally brushed up against in a club? Or how long it's been since I came home with a pocket full of phone numbers from sleazy guys? I need sleazy guys, Janie!"

"I'm sorry…?" Jane's voice was low and cautious as if she were speaking to a mental patient.

A sigh, "You're killing me, Bennet."

"Charlotte, I would go out with you, I really would, but I've got a ton of work to do. These depositions have to be read by Friday and you know I'm on call to talk Lizzie out of killing Darcy if need be." she smiled sympathetically. "I'm afraid I'm doomed to a boring night in."

A knock at the door put halt to any further begging (and pouting) on Charlotte's end and with slumped shoulders and the promise of another tiresome, pathetic night at home she flung it open.

Standing in the entry way was a rather rumpled Charlie Bingley with an armful of Chinese takeout and a sheepish look creeping across his features. "Um…am I early?"

Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at blushing Jane without missing a beat. "I hope he bores the fuck out of you."

The unrelenting need for one of Nathan's finest, calorie-filled, ass-expanding hot dogs had unwittingly opened a floodgate in Lizzie's womb; her little 'tapeworm' was currently in the mood to taste every food that had ever been invented and she was more than happy to oblige.

Lazily splayed out on the massive king bed in her hotel suite, she flipped through the room service menu practically drooling with each description.

"Oh, hi there, mister jumbo size banana split. You want to spend the night in my tummy, don't ya? Don't pretend you're all shy…" Lizzie cooed as she reached for the phone on the nightstand.

"Am I interrupting something?" Darcy stood in the doorway noticeably amused.

Lizzie frowned. "Clearly you've never heard of knocking."

His reply was spot on, deadpan, "Clearly."

Awkwardly, Darcy stepped further into the room, making sure to keep himself as close to the wall as humanly possible. Five whole minutes of silence actually ticked by – with Darcy uneasily keeping his distance and Lizzie unsuccessfully pretending to be engrossed in the hotel's description for their award-winning flan, until finally she couldn't take it anymore!

If he didn't stop staring at her like that, she'd snap his neck.

"Can I help you with something?" Lizzie asked, obviously annoyed.

"Oh, um…"Darcy began, nervously raking a hand through his dark hair, "I was thinking this weekend would be perfect for us to stage the engagement. Proposing in front of Georgie will definitely shut up any critics and make this seem more legit."

She nodded and replied disinterestedly, "Okay."

"Okay?"

Lizzie raised a brow. "What?"

Darcy chuckled. "Nothing, I actually expected more of an objection on your part; possibly some shouting and definitely some threats against my life."

"We can do it over if it'll make you feel better." She smiled. "I have a talent for pissing and moaning."

"Nah." He shrugged. "I'm sure you'll make up for it some other time."

The conversation died and Darcy remained clinging awkwardly to the wall much to the dismay of Lizzie. She could literally feel his eyes on her practically boring holes through her skin; if he was aiming to make her feel inadequate and self conscious then he was succeeding, with fucking flying colors.

Suddenly, no longer in the mood for that massive banana split, Lizzie shut the room service booklet and pulled herself upright. "Was there something else you needed?"

He loudly cleared his throat. "Maybe, whenever you're feeling up to it, we should rehearse. I've got a few rings for you to take a look at, just pick whichever you like best…"

"No," she told him so sharply that Darcy did a double take.

"No?!"

Lizzie nodded. "No."

Darcy snorted. "See, I knew you'd make up for it in no time."

"Darcy, I'm not going to rehearse my proposal," Lizzie said her eyes narrowing. "I may be your fake, contractually-bound girlfriend, but I'm your fake, contractually-bound girlfriend whose never in her life been proposed to. Surprise me."

He blinked and dared to take a step away from the comfort of the wall. "Surprise you?"

"You do know the definition of surprise?"

"I'm vaguely familiar."

"Look," Lizzie began with a sigh, "you pick the ring you think I'd like, you pick the moment to ask me and the way you want to ask me. Pretend you love me." She paused, a smile forming on her lips. "Hell, at least pretend you like me a little."

Brows forming a neat, little crease in the middle of his head, Darcy stared at Lizzie in confusion. "I don't think Jane said what your favorite ring type was in your folder."

"Then maybe you should try getting to know the living, breathing me instead of the me on paper. You've got an entire week start."

Silently, Darcy regarded for a moment longer and then abruptly turned on his heels and left the room.

Flopping back onto the bed, Lizzie sighed heavily.

"A long, long week."

Author's Note:

A few things:

The opening scene for this chapter takes place in the same time frame as the opening scene in part one. Don't be confused. And yes, you'll find out what the hell's going on eventually (hopefully in the next chapter). I know I said this would be a two-parter, but I got to ten pages (with 9 more scenes to write) and decided it would be best to stop here and give you guys an update.

Working on getting back to a regular update schedule. This chapter was delayed time and time again because I needed to concentrate on school, but now I'm out until the fall and although work is sucking out my soul, I hope to be a bit more speedy with the updates. Hey, you get a ridiculously long chapter to chew on for your troubles. That's gotta count for something, amirite?

I somehow managed to mention poop more than once in this chapter. I dunno why I'm telling you this, guess I'm just proud.

Reviews are loved. Leave one if you're feeling up to it.