Chapter Text
Some time around 2 a.m., Lizzie tiptoes out of her room and wanders to the kitchen.
The lights are still on in the apartment, and she passes a giant bouquet of red roses on the coffee table that she hadn’t noticed the night before.
At least she can’t smell any cinnamon.
Jane is asleep at the table, head buried in her arms, and surrounded by several half-finished mugs of cold tea. She stirs as Lizzie drapes a blanket over her and blinks with bleary, swollen eyes.
“Oh, were you just getting up? Is it morning already?”
“Hardly. I couldn’t sleep.”
Jane hums and gets up to clear away the mugs.
Lizzie pokes her head in the fridge. “There’s still leftover cupcakes from last night,” she reports. “I’m not sure if you had dinner before I got home.”
“I did. Before Bing showed up.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Jane is silent at first, and Lizzie thinks she’s going to change the subject or go do the dishes and pretend she didn’t hear.
But then she returns to the table with a glass of water.
“Caroline told him that she went to your office last night and it got ugly, so he came over here right away. Lizzie, what did she say to you?”
Lizzie shrugs helplessly. “Honestly, nothing that made any sense. She accused me of somehow manipulating Bing into donating $500 for Mom, and then said something about me scheming with…with Will, to get him back together with you. And how our family isn’t good enough for them.”
“He said he loves me.”
Ah. The roses in the living room suddenly make more sense.
“He said he was willing to cut ties with his entire family if they didn’t support us.”
“That does sound serious,” Lizzie agrees carefully. “But you don’t seem happy about it.”
“I’ve been thinking about what Lydia said about my past relationships. And Lizzie, I’m going to tell you something that even Lydia hasn’t guessed. No one else knows, except Bing.”
Lizzie tenses, wondering what horrible thing Jane is about to confess. For all their closeness, she’s usually the one who goes to Jane to share confidences, not the other way around. Unless there was a murder and Lizzie’s help is needed with the cleanup and subsequent coverup. That she can handle no problem.
“A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Bing and I started sleeping together. I didn’t want to tell anyone because…well, please don’t think too badly of me, Lizzie, but I didn’t want to invite any opinions from Mom, or Lydia, or you about it.”
“Oh,” Lizzie says. Was that all?
But then it hits her. “…So when Mom was in the ED and making those comments…about you needing to put out to secure him, it put the idea in his head—”
“I couldn’t even blame Mom for that. How could she know if I didn’t tell her? And in all fairness, she did make that comment right after asking how much money Bing is going to make after residency, so it did sound really bad. But for him to just disappear like that, without so much as a breakup text, like I meant nothing to him… Despite what people thought of me, I was never planning on waiting until marriage anyway. I didn’t want to build it up in my head, or think of sex as some kind of ultimate act of love that will change you as a person afterwards. And it didn’t feel wrong to do it—I thought, even if it didn’t work out, at least my time with him would always be a happy memory, and not a painful one.”
“And then Bing just took Will’s word for it that you didn’t care for him, or you were trying to trap him, even though you were willing to take that step in your relationship,” Lizzie realizes. “He should have known you better than that, or at least talked to you. It made you feel used and discarded.”
Jane nods miserably.
“And now he’s back. And he wants to act like it never happened?”
“N-no, not exactly. He did apologize for it. And I can understand that he must have felt so hurt and betrayed by what Will told him. About me only being with him for his money, I mean. His feelings have never changed, and he wants to go back to the way things were, before it happened. But, Lizzie, the fact is that he did leave. And if we go back to where we left off, that doesn’t change the fact that he got to leave and come back when it was convenient for him, without having an actual conversation with me.”
“The anger and disrespect you feel aside, do you still love him?”
“I don’t think it matters anymore,” Jane sighs, tracing the rim of her glass with her finger. “The problem is that…as I am right now, I don’t think I’d be a particularly good girlfriend for anybody but Bing.”
“And that’s a problem because…?”
“People look at me, and they see my face, and my degree, and my volunteer commitments, and my piano recital awards, and my ‘positive outlook’ and ‘boundless optimism.’”
“Why would Bing be the only person who would want someone who’s practically perfect in every way, who’s kind and caring despite growing up with Mom for a mom, and practically raised her two younger sisters and got herself through college and med school?”
“That’s just it, Lizzie. I’ve had to be perfect my whole entire life. So that people wouldn’t compare me to Mom. So that people wouldn’t judge me by Mom’s actions. So that I wouldn’t end up like Mom, or in a marriage like hers. I had to step up and teach myself how to cook because Mom wasn’t going to do it. I had to control my temper and develop conflict resolution skills when you and Lydia fought because Mom wasn’t going to do it. One thing that’s become clear to me since Mom had her…incident is just how much she rules my life—not in a controlling way, but in the way her actions have impacted all of my decisions and my entire sense of identity. I would be more than happy—like you and Lydia—to cut ties with her altogether. I wish I could just say what I’m really thinking, like you. I would love to be able to travel to Vegas or visit New York on a whim, like Lydia. But then I’d have to worry about how our community would react to me ‘letting myself run wild,’ and how hurt Mom would be if I spoke my mind, and what kind of trouble she’s going to get herself into next if no one is there for her. Because Jane Bennet has to worry about those things, since no one else will.”
“Oh, Jane—”
“The fact is, Bing wouldn’t make a good boyfriend to anybody but me. Or, rather, the Jane Bennet of 8 months ago. He’s so dependent on other people to make his decisions for him that the only breakup conversation he had was with his best friend, instead of the girlfriend being dumped, and the same friend had to be the one to tell him to seek me out again. If he cut ties with his family to be with me, can you imagine how horribly codependent we would be? I can’t tell if he thinks of me as a replacement mother figure, or the perfect Disney princess for his perfectly romantic happily ever after, where we never have to disagree over anything or put in any effort because problems will just work themselves out through the power of True Love. And I don’t want to be seen as that Disney princess. I’m tired of feeling like my whole life is an act. And I don’t know if he’d still feel the same way about me if I stopped being her.”
Lizzie studies her sister carefully.
Jane always looks professional and carefully put together. Even at the end of a 12-hour shift, with her hospital scrubs wrinkled and a few flyaways starting to escape her carefully plaited milkmaid braids, she still gets children on the pediatrics unit running up to her to give her a hug because they think she’s Ariel the little mermaid. Even after a particularly difficult night in the PICU when she lost a patient, or in the early weeks after Bing left, Jane has rarely shed a tear for Lizzie to see, and never neglected to shower or parked herself on the couch in a ratty old sweatshirt to drown her sorrows in melted ice cream.
The Jane who sits across from her now is…disheveled. Her hair is tousled from her night sleeping at the table. There’s a pink imprint on her cheek from where her head had been resting on her arms. Her makeup is smudged, and there’s still a faint line where her mascara had run. She looks human, and tired, and vulnerable. Lizzie has rarely, if ever, seen her sister like this—this Jane who has yet to don her armor and her mask before she faces the world.
“So you’ve identified the problem. What are you going to do now?” she finally asks quietly.
“I told Bing I need to find a therapist. And figure out what I want. And he should do the same. But separately. Not together.”
Eventually, Lizzie coaxes Jane into going to bed and turning off her phone alarm.
Lizzie herself does try to lie down for a while, but as sleep still eludes her, she gives up on it entirely and sets about cleaning her room
She sorts her laundry.
She makes her bed.
She does the dishes.
She scrubs the mildew off the shower curtain like she’s been meaning to for weeks.
She logs into all her social media and makes sure that her privacy settings are up so that there are no juicy tidbits of gossip for those curious news organizations or nosy Merytonites to latch onto. Then she makes a mental note to text Lydia later and remind her to scrub all traces of George Wickham from her Instagram if she hasn’t already.
She still needs to clear her head after all that, so she decides to grab her jacket and go for a walk.
It’s 6 a.m., still dark out, but there’s just the slightest trace of color on the horizon, so she’ll be able to greet the sunrise from the park.
It’s a foggy morning, and as she trudges through the dewy grass, ignoring the early risers who are already out walking their dogs or jogging, she can’t help but imagine that if her life were a movie, this would be the part where the love interest (looking deliciously rumpled in a billowy linen shirt with his chest hair on full display) would be walking across the misty field toward our plucky heroine (hair artfully mussed and makeup somehow flawless). And then they’d meet in the middle of the field and confess their feelings and share a kiss while the sun rises behind them to dispel the fog, and the supportive sister(s) watch from a distance and sigh dreamily about how romantic it all is, and then the screen cuts to black and everyone lives happily ever after.
Of course, in real life, Lizzie doesn’t run into anybody she knows because she’s walking alone in the park at freaking 6 a.m. on a Saturday when any sane person should be sleeping in.
Back home, her older sister is either tossing and turning in her sleep or nursing a bruised and freshly re-broken heart, while the younger sister is most definitely sleeping in at their father’s house and will wake up many hours later to pack for a trip to the city that could define her entire future career.
And there is no love interest to meet her in the park because it’s 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and she’s not even sure he’ll so much as call her back when he wakes up at a reasonable time.
She considers texting Charlotte to ask if she wants to go for brunch later today, but then she remembers Charlotte is visiting her parents for the weekend.
And her other co-residents probably have plans with their partners.
Having completed one lap around the perimeter of the park, Lizzie decides she needs to pull herself together and focus on work. Elizabeth Bennet, D.O. is studious, and capable, and self-sufficient, and she doesn’t have time to pine over a man, even if he is the best man she’s ever known. She’s going to go home and pack her laptop and start camping out at the hospital library like she used to at the beginning of her intern year. It’s never too early to start preparing for her board exam, right?
She’s walking up the stairwell of her apartment building when her phone rings.
It’s Will.
She’s so startled she almost drops the phone, but she manages to answer with some degree of calm.
“Um…hello?”
He cuts straight to the chase. “Where are you?”
Well, he doesn’t sound half-asleep. This doesn’t seem like a casual call either. Honestly, he actually sounds kind of worried and tense.
“Uh…walking back up to my apartment? Why—? Oh.”
She rounds the corner and there he is, waiting outside her door with his phone pressed to his ear.
The moment he spots her, he’s hurrying over. She barely has time to press “end call” and shove her phone back into her pocket before he’s enveloping her in a quick hug. “Lizzie,” he breathes, pulling away slightly to look at her. “Are you okay?”
She blinks. She’s not complaining about being back in his arms or anything, but… “Am I not supposed to be?”
He releases her entirely after that (she commands herself to stay where she is and not reach for him). “I just saw Bing,” he says breathlessly, running his hands through his hair. “I heard what happened with Caroline yesterday. Oh—I got your call, but I didn’t get a chance to answer and then Bing showed up and told me—I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to call you back right away, they had me working the 6 to 6 shift—”
“Oh gosh, I didn’t think—I thought you would just call me back.” She realizes belatedly that he’s still wearing his scrubs, along with his hospital employee badge and stethoscope. “You didn’t have to run all the way over here straight from work.”
“You wanted to talk.”
Well, chat was the work she’d used (eurgh), but talk works too.
“Yes. I…”
Wanted to thank you for paying for my mom’s idiotic decisions?
Wanted to thank you for helping Lydia figure her life out?
Wanted to thank you for helping them catch George Wickham?
Wanted to know why you did all that without ever breathing a word about it?
Wanted to know where we stand because you asked me on a date but we got interrupted before I could answer and now it’s been over a month and I miss you and I think you’ve said fewer words to me in that time than to either of my sisters and I don’t know what to think about you blowing hot and cold?
Wanted to tell you I’ve realized that I love you?
“…I’m not sure where to begin,” she admits finally.
Why the fuck didn’t she account for this as a possible outcome? Why didn’t she spend the last six hours actually coming up with something coherent to say to him instead of scrubbing the shower curtain?
They’re standing in the same spot where Jane had told Bing to get lost not even 12 hours ago. Lizzie hopes that isn’t a portent of things to come for her. (At least she hopes the neighbors have been enjoying the soap opera playing out in the hallway.)
Will notes her discomfort and begins conversationally, “I also got a text from Lydia last night. Happy belated birthday?”
Lizzie rolls her eyes. “Lydia needs to mind her own business and focus on New York. Speaking of which, I have a feeling that you had something to do with her newfound interest in law.”
He ducks his head modestly (it’s kind of adorable). “She’s a smart kid, and it was her idea to go looking for shadowing opportunities.”
“She’s making a stop in Pemberley. And she’s going to be staying with your sister in New York.”
“Okay, I will admit that I did help arrange some of the…logistics to get her there. But I stand by my assertion that this was mostly Lydia’s doing. All I did was ask her what she plans to do after college, and she worked out the rest on her own. And it was no hardship to ask Gigi to host her. As I’ve gotten to know Lydia better, I’ve discovered that she and Gigi are a lot more alike than I initially expected.”
Well, Lizzie supposes, there’s a lot of room for Lydia to improve in Will’s eyes if the one and only time he’d seen her prior to Fran Bennet’s overdose…was the time Lydia was flirting with Wickham’s buddies from EMS while Fran Bennet faked a heart attack. Nowhere to go from there but up. And speaking of that night, Lydia and Gigi have more than their exuberant and loyal personalities in common. For one, there’s the sentient pile of human excrement that is their mutual ex. Which reminds her…
“Will,” she begins hesitantly. “The night Mom went into the ICU…” (The night you asked me out.) “Did you…” (Did you want to take it back?) “…Did you recognize that nurse?”
“Carole Younge.”
“Yes.”
“I did.”
“She was supplying him with the Ativan, wasn’t she?”
“That was what I’d guessed. The last time I saw her was at Ramsgate, two years ago, with Gigi. I couldn’t think of any other reason why she and Wickham would turn up again together in the same city, and on the other side of the country this time, unless they were up to something. Why do you ask?”
“Oh. I just…saw it in the news that she’d been arrested, and I wondered. You left so suddenly, I’d thought it was something I did, or said—”
“No.” He grasps her hands, then realizes what he’s done and immediately drops them like she’s burned him. Turning away, he starts pacing across the hall and runs his hand through his hair again. The gesture has become achingly familiar to Lizzie from their three weeks together in the ED—she’s learned it means he’s tired, or distracted, or frustrated with a difficult patient.
She’s also seen him do it when they’d had their fight in January. And again when he’d handed her his letter.
“Will,” she says when he doesn’t stop his agitated pacing. “Talk to me.”
He starts towards her. Then stops. Then moves as if he’s going to reach for her hands again. Then doesn’t.
“It’s complicated,” he says finally. “Lizzie, I’ve always striven to be honest with you, but there are things that I’ve done recently—things that are even more underhanded than when I broke up Jane and Bing—that I cannot tell you about.”
Oh.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “All right. All cards on the table.”
If this is the last time she gets to talk, really talk, to him… If he doesn’t want her anymore, or if he insists that this horrible secret he’s keeping from her (she has a feeling she already knows where this is going) means that there’s no more possibility of a them, then there’s only one more thing she needs to say.
“I know what you did for my mom, when we found out she didn’t have insurance. And I just wanted to thank you. On behalf of me and my sisters.”
He freezes at that, and then he sighs, looking away, but not before she catches the flash of pain in his eyes. “This is what I was afraid of,” he mutters. “I’m sorry you had to find out. I’d thought better of Jane’s ability to keep a secret—”
“Jane has a very good poker face, but she is a terrible liar.”
The corner of his mouth twitches despite himself. “Or you are a very good interrogator.”
She shrugs. “It comes with being a primary care physician. You have to get people to trust you, and you have to know the right questions to ask to get the information you need.”
“I’ve found you are bad at taking compliments.”
“And you,” she retorts, “are bad at taking credit where credit is due. And we’re getting off the subject. My point is, you have no idea how much we appreciate what you did. Her debts are hers, and you didn’t need to go through the trouble—”
“Yes, I did. She is your mother. Whatever else she may have done to you, however else you may have felt about your relationship with her, I knew you weren’t going to leave her to fend for herself.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I—I didn’t want you to feel like a charity case. Or like I was taking advantage of a crisis. I didn’t even consider that my actions might give that impression, until Jane tried to refuse the money when I offered. Lizzie, I swear I never meant to sneak around or go behind your back. But I didn’t see any way I could tell you without making you feel I was pressuring you—”
“But what you did for my mom was huge. Unrepayable. I can’t thank you enough—”
He shakes his head vehemently. “Lizzie, I don’t want you to feel indebted to me. I just—I wasn’t thinking of anything besides you—you were so distraught, I was willing to do anything because I couldn’t stand to see you hurt. Not when I could fix it.”
For once, Lizzie ignores the impulse to play it safe, to cling to the old familiarity of the cynicism and the sarcasm. She deliberately holds his gaze as she crosses the distance between them.
“Lizzie.” He swallows visibly.
They’re so close that she has to tip her head back to look up at him.
He puts out a hand to steady her—just the slightest pressure on her lower back. “Lizzie,” he tries again, “I meant what I said. You are an incredible person. I thought I loved you back in the winter, but my feelings are even stronger now than they were before—”
She reaches up a hand and gently touches his jaw (hmm, this is giving her déjà vu for some reason…). His cheek is rough—no surprise as he did just finish a 12-hour shift—and his pulse jumps rapidly beneath her fingertips.
“—So as badly as I want this, Lizzie, I can’t have you go through with it just because you feel like you owe me—”
She grabs both ends of his stethoscope and yanks him down to her.
His response is immediate. She feels him let out a shuddering breath, feels his hands against her back as he pulls her close and returns her kiss. His lips are soft and gentle against hers, in contrast to the stubble on his cheeks and upper lip, and one of his hands comes up to cradle her face while the other splays open across her upper back and pulls her even closer still. I can’t believe you’re real, he seems to be saying. Are you really letting me do this? And—well, Lizzie doesn’t exactly have that many previous experiences for comparison, but this is easily the sweetest kiss she’s ever had.
When she pulls away, he unconsciously chases after her, before he opens his eyes and blinks dazedly down at her.
“Just so we can put this matter to rest,” she begins, slowly unclenching her fists to release his stethoscope—she pulls back just far enough to look him in the eye and finds his pupils are blown wide open, with her own shock, and relief, and awe, and elation reflected in them. “I did not do that out of gratitude. In fact, I’d been wanting to do that for weeks before any of this went down. You might even say my feelings are very much the opposite of what they were in the winter—mmph.”
If their first kiss was gentle and sweet, like coming home in a snowstorm to be greeted with a tender hug and a warm, scented, luxurious bubble bath, then their second kiss is jumping headlong into a raging inferno. His mouth is hot and insistent against hers, his hands cup her cheeks, tangle in her hair, sear and brand her as they sweep across her shoulders, down her back, around her waist, his fingers already under her jacket, toying just at the hem of her shirt.
She hears her needy mewls and whimpers over the pounding of blood in her ears—feels his answering groan rumbling in his chest—feels her knees go weak.
He presses her firmly to the wall behind her, his chest flush with hers, and she’s as high up on her tiptoes as she can go, but she can’t get close enough to him. She feels like a wire that’s been pulled as tightly as it can possibly go, one end bound to the floor by gravity and the other inexorably drawn up to him, her fingers digging into his neck and shoulders, trying to pull him closer, and yet it’s still not tight enough. Then his hand is pulling her thigh around his hip—she wraps the other one around him too—and then he hoists her up higher, presses her even harder against the wall now that the height difference has been remedied. A hand has found its way under her shirt, his calloused fingertips rubbing circles into the flesh of her side, skirting just below the band of her bra, focusing the months of yearning and unresolved tension between them into something molten—
A door slams somewhere down the hall, and they spring apart.
He’s panting, chest heaving, hands running through his hair, an expression of guilt overtaking his face as clarity starts to replace the haze in his eyes.
“Don’t,” she whispers as he opens his mouth to apologize.
She catches his hand before it can rake through his hair again. He immediately flips his palm up to interlace their fingers, running his thumb across her knuckles.
When he finally meets her eyes again, she nods toward her apartment door and fishes her keys from her pocket.
“Would you like to take this somewhere we won’t be giving the neighbors a free show?”
Lizzie wakes up in her room a few hours later—around midday, she would guess, judging from the amount of sunlight spilling through the curtains—to the sensation of Will pressing kisses to the back of her neck and bare shoulders.
“Lizzie,” he murmurs as she stirs.
She smiles and burrows deeper into the covers.
“Lizzie…” She feels his weight shift on the bed behind her as he sits up. “Wake up, darling.”
His voice is slightly husky from sleep. His lips graze the shell of her ear—an erogenous zone, he’d discovered within only a few minutes—and she shivers involuntarily.
“Oh good, she’s still alive.”
She flails out an arm, halfheartedly smacking his chest. “Don’t be so smug. For your information, I didn’t sleep at all last night. I was too busy scrubbing my existence off the internet so the news wouldn’t find me because of my mom—”
“I’m relieved. I wasn’t sure whether to feel offended by how quickly you fell asleep after we—”
Her phone rings at that exact moment. He’s closer, so he goes to dig it out of the pocket of her jacket, which was unceremoniously flung to the floor almost the second they arrived in her room.
“It’s Lydia.”
And before Lizzie can react, he answers.
“Hello? …Yes, this is Lizzie’s phone… I am aware of that… Yes, we did notice…” (A snort.) “I am not dignifying that with a response… I hope you have a safe journey tomorrow and enjoy your time in New York… Again, not dignifying that with a response… All right, will do.”
“Did you have to do that?” Lizzie complains when he hangs up and crawls back under the covers with her.
He shrugs, looking quite pleased with himself. “She already suspected,” he points out, “if the note on your door was any indication.”
Lizzie buries her face in his shoulder.
Hey crazy kids- I left a box of condoms in your nightstand, just in case. Enjoy! xoxo was the exact text of the note that her little sister had apparently taped to the inside of Lizzie’s bedroom door before she’d left last night, and which Lizzie hadn’t noticed despite staying up all night, until Will had her physically pressed against it.
“By the way,” Will continues, playing with the ends of her hair that are sprawled across her pillow, “Lydia says if you’re going to tell your dad about his model trains, to wait until after she gets to New York to do it. She said you would know what she means by that.”
She cuts him off with a kiss. “Stop talking about Lydia.”
He’s more than happy to oblige her.
They would have taken it further, except they hear Jane’s door open down the hall—Lizzie blushes furiously, not sure when Jane woke up or how much she’d heard of their activities earlier this morning because they were not trying to be quiet—and there’s some muffled conversation as she seems to be on the phone with someone, before they hear her leave and the front door lock click in place.
“Want to make ourselves scarce before she comes back?”
He steals another kiss. “What do you suggest, Dr. Bennet?”
“We could go back to your place and order lunch. I’m free for the rest of the weekend if you are.”
“Mmm, as tempting as that sounds,” he says, turning fully toward her and propping his head up on one hand, “I do feel a little bad for rushing things, and I want to take you on a real date. To make up for the one we missed.”
“I mean. You didn’t hear me complaining about rushing things.”
“Still, let me be a gentleman and take you somewhere nice. How do you feel about dinner at Sir Lewis’s tonight?”
His tone is light, but Lizzie doesn’t miss the significance of the choice. Sir Lewis’s was where they would have gone that night in January, for the celebratory dinner with Fitz and Charlotte, if Lizzie hadn’t inadvertently discovered the truth about Bing and Jane’s breakup, if Will hadn’t come looking for her and they hadn’t had that knock-down drag-out fight in the family medicine resident workroom.
The Will who is lying beside her now, brushing the hair out of her face while wearing an utterly besotted look on his own—was this the outcome he had been hoping for that night? Had he been planning to confess his feelings to her after that dinner? Before it all went horribly wrong?
She turns her face and kisses his palm. “Okay,” she acquiesces. “But you’re going to have to stop by your place to change before dinner anyway, and when we get there, I’d like to continue this where we left off before Jane interrupted.”
“Deal. Only, there’s one more thing we need to take care of beforehand.”
No amount of kisses will coax that information out of him, though. He just steers her toward her closet and tells her to get dressed and also pick out a change of clothes that’s date-appropriate, while he gathers up their clothing that’s currently strewn about her room.
She puts on clean matching underwear, then picks out a plain office-appropriate dress that he’s seen her wear at least a dozen times before and is about to put it on when he returns, fully clothed in his scrubs again.
“Let me,” he whispers.
He zips her into the dress slowly, deliberately, gathering her hair and sweeping it over her shoulder and out of the way, planting soft kisses on the nape of her neck as his fingertips run up the length of her spine.
Then he notices one of the dresses hanging in the closet. “Will you wear this one to dinner tonight?”
It’s a gray dress with an orange and yellow print that she doesn’t wear all that often—owing to the large diamond-shaped cutout in the lower back that’s definitely not office-appropriate—and even more revealing than the little black dress that Gigi had picked out for her when they’d gone to the theater. She’s not even sure Will has ever seen her in it, but considering it’s most likely going to end up on the floor of his bedroom tonight anyway, who is she to deny him?
His car is parked outside her building, so she stows her date outfit in the trunk, but then he guides her away from the car, his hand never leaving the small of her back, as she finds him leading them to the park across the street from the hospital.
“Will,” she says when she can no longer contain her curiosity, “why are we stopped in the middle of a dirt patch?”
There’s a stream and a bridge nearby that would be much more romantic. There are even a few cherry blossom trees still in bloom—she would know, considering this was the same park she had coincidentally been wandering through about six hours earlier, trudging over the wet grass as she’d tried and failed to forget about him.
He takes her hand. “This is where we first met. Do you remember, Lizzie?”
Of course, she forgets nothing. But she hadn’t realized that he still remembered, considering he wasn’t exactly impressed the first time he saw her, and then he’d been even less enthused when she’d called him out on his “D.O. from family med” comment.
“I remember we had intern orientation here,” she acknowledges slowly. “There was a meet-and-greet.”
“And Bing offered to introduce us, and I initially refused, and then you put me in my place.”
“Where are we going with this? I thought we were done blaming ourselves for our pasts.”
He shakes his head. “I wanted to do this the right way. I got caught off-guard this morning—I’d been too busy to return your missed call all night, and then Bing showed up and I learned what happened with Caroline, and I needed to get to you as soon as possible, and then I was blurting out my feelings without giving you a choice about it and then I, uh…”
“Ravished me?” she supplies with a grin.
He kisses her once, twice, then pulls away before he can get sidetracked. “My point is, you, Lizzie Bennet, are beautiful, and brilliant, and an amazing person, and way too good for me—”
“I take issue with that last part—”
He cuts her off with another kiss. “You are way too good for me, and you’ve taught me that I needed to actually put in the work to be worthy of you. I wish I could take back those words I said the first day we met, and again in January, because I was an idiot, and you’ve proven them wrong every day since. I couldn’t even pinpoint the moment I started changing my mind about you, but I found myself in love with you before I even knew I had begun. And I know—I hope—this is going to sound like an obvious question. But I don’t want to presume again, and I need to hear you say it. Lizzie, will you be my girlfriend?”
The tears spring to her eyes (really, what is up with all the crying?) and she waves away his concern. “Happy tears. Of course I will. I love you, too.”
(No verbal reply found.)
“I didn’t want to think about it at the time,” she mumbles into his chest, after he’s finished peppering her face with kisses and pulled her tightly to him, “but in January, when I said those horrible things to you—after I read your letter, especially after you were so nice to me when I was on EM…I realized I probably really hurt you. I’m so sorry, Will.”
“You thought I was an unfeeling monster who broke your sister’s heart and got you in trouble with your boss,” he points out. “Which I did. You didn’t say anything that I didn’t deserve, and I didn’t give you any reason to think otherwise up to then. It was difficult to hear, but I needed to hear it.”
He’s so earnest, and loyal, and good. She can’t help but think on her parting words to him—I would not date you if you were the last man on earth—of how angry and heartbroken he must have been, when he’d salvaged the last remaining scraps of his dignity and composed his letter to her, and she can almost feel the physical ache in her own chest at the thought of hurting him.
So this is what it’s like to be in love.
“Besides,” he says, pulling away as his hand returns to its place on her lower back, “what was it you were saying about not blaming ourselves for the past? If it makes you feel better, we could ritually burn that letter together—”
“Don’t even dare suggest it! I re-read that letter so many times when I was changing my mind about you. It’s too important to get rid of.”
“Then I’ll write you a proper love letter. One that’s full of pet names and isn’t written out of bitterness and doesn’t remind you of our fight from the opening line.”
She hides her smile in his shoulder. “Just take me home.”
They tell Gigi their news when Will facetimes her Friday night, with Lizzie comfortably settled in his lap. Lydia is still in New York and bursts into the room when she hears Gigi’s scream, flashing them a thumbs up in the background. (She does try to ask again whether they appreciated the gift she left for them in Lizzie’s nightstand, and Will again refuses to dignify her question with an answer.)
Jane, angel that she is, doesn’t bat an eye the first time she catches them having clearly come out of the shower together and it’s obvious he’s planning to stay the night. She just offers to find him a spare toothbrush from the hallway closet (which they decline because he came prepared) and then informs them that she’ll set out an extra placemat for breakfast in the morning.
Lydia is less subtle. The first night she returns from New York and Will happens to be staying over, she slides a note under Lizzie’s door informing them that she brought noise-canceling headphones so they can “feel free to go to town.”
After that, Lizzie decides that maybe having four adults living on top of each other in the same apartment isn’t all that conducive to privacy, so she and Will start spending most of their nights at his place. He clears out a space in his closet for her clothes, and even builds her a new desk and bookshelf to sit opposite his in his (their) bedroom, and before long, most of her stuff has migrated over to his apartment.
He brings her to his get-togethers with his EM co-residents as his girlfriend, practically bursting with pride at the word and at how easily she charms his classmates, who all seem to exude protective big sister vibes.
They’ve all heard so much about her, they exclaim. He’s only been slipping her name into casual conversation for the better part of the last academic year.
Becca Reynolds is there, too, with her 20-month-old in tow. Lizzie wonders if she’s going to “vet” her like she had jokingly threatened to once, especially since she and Will had only started spending more time together after he’d replaced Becca as her senior on EM.
But Becca just hugs her fiercely in congratulations. “I’d suspected Will liked you way back during interview season when he couldn’t take his eyes off you. And anyone who can make Will this happy is good enough in my book.”
In July, the new interns start, and Lizzie officially becomes a PGY-2.
A senior, she emphasizes to Will.
“I’m going to have an intern to train. And I’ll need to know enough to be able to teach them, and catch all their mistakes, and be responsible for any of their decisions that backfire—”
“And you will do it admirably. And you will impress your attendings even more than you did as their star intern.” He kisses the top of her head and sets down her hairbrush. “Now are you coming to bed or not?”
“How are you not the one freaking out?”
Will, now a third year, had been chosen to be chief of the EM residents. Lizzie was a little miffed on his behalf because he hadn’t even wanted the position. Her program’s residents elect their chiefs from among willing candidates, but apparently the emergency medicine program directors just choose two of the PGY-3’s to be co-chiefs and that’s just how it is. Why couldn’t EM at least be like internal medicine, where the chiefs are already graduated but get chosen to stay behind for an extra year purely to serve as chief? At least that way, Will could have finished his chief year at the same time Lizzie’s due to finish her third year of residency.
Plus, he’s already busy with everything else he has to worry about: applying for his professional license, studying for the board exam, looking for jobs to apply to, making sure the hospital daycare is operating smoothly, running the Darcy Foundation.
Making time for his girlfriend.
Now he’ll have to settle squabbles between the EM residents and deal with bullshit like coordinating schedules, and faculty development, and trying to talk the hospital administration out of making dumb decisions like cutting everyone’s vacation time.
They both get voluntold to attend the new intern orientation picnic this year. She sticks by his side the whole time, and he does an admirable job of at least being civil as they make their rounds.
They’ve worked out a pretty good system. Lizzie coaxes the shy new interns out of their shells, and then they get comfortable enough to ask logistical questions like “Who do I talk to if I’m having computer problems?” or “Where are the call rooms?” which Will is more than happy to answer in favor of making small talk.
Lizzie’s lease with Jane comes up for renewal in September, so Will asks her to move in with him.
It’s not really a surprise. She’s already been staying over at his place most nights for months—except when she’s on a night rotation while he’s working days and they’d be sleeping alone and won’t see each other anyway—and most of her things have already made their home at his place.
Lydia, now a college senior and seriously studying for the LSAT, takes over Lizzie’s old room on the lease she’d shared with Jane for 9 years.
They still have family dinner most nights at her sisters’ apartment—Jane and Will have taken up a hobby of trying new recipes together when they have free time on the weekends that Lizzie is on call—before Will and Lizzie go home for the evening.
Bing Lee drops by Will and Lizzie’s place sporadically for dinner, usually when Fitz and Brandon are invited, too. After graduating from the orthopedics residency, Fitz had decided to stay on as faculty at MCMC. He’s even bought a house in Meryton, now that he’s being paid an attending salary.
Now a PGY-2 in EM, Bing does seem surer of his decisions—both medical and personal—but he never comes to their afterwork gatherings when Jane is present unless there is a large enough party that they’re not the only other person around to talk to. And Lizzie has noticed that the frequency of his visits has dropped altogether since she and Will have given up their pretense of not already living together, probably because her presence serves as a painful reminder of Jane to Bing.
Jane is still going to therapy, and trying to convince Lydia to start, too. Lizzie has seen her and Bing conversing civilly on occasion, but whether either of them has broached the subject of trying again, Lizzie hasn’t asked Jane, and Bing hasn’t volunteered that information to Will.
Of Caroline Lee they see even less. Last they heard from her brother, she’s trying to apply to medical school again for the fourth straight cycle, but she needs to study for and retake the MCAT first because scores are only usable for three years.
A few months later, Fran Bennet relapses and gets a DUI.
Lizzie is pacing in circles around the living room.
“So you’re telling me that Jane just happened to have $3000 to post bail?”
“I never said that.”
“But the $3000 just magically turned up? I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Lizzie—”
“Are we going to keep doing this? When her liver is shot, is it going to be a TIPS next? When she gets alcoholic cardiomyopathy, is she going to make you pay for her heart transplant?”
“Lizzie—”
“You’re not responsible for her fuck-ups, dammit! None of us are, you least of all.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I didn’t want you to be upset—”
“I’m upset because you didn’t tell me!” She whirls on him. “We have to be able to trust each other and work things out together, Will! If she keeps fucking up like this, she’s going to learn that Jane is somehow able to magically bail her out every single time, and her demands are going to get worse and worse. I appreciate that you want to help—I really do. But keeping secrets this big from each other could make or break us, and if we don’t figure out a strategy to deal with things like this now, then what are we supposed to do when—when…” she trails off, blushing furiously.
He softens at that and crosses the room to stand before her. “When what, Lizzie?”
She wills the floor to swallow her whole (stupid, stupid slip of the tongue), but doesn’t pull away from him, so he tips her chin up with two fingers so that she’ll look at him.
“When I marry you, you mean?” he asks quietly.
She blushes even redder and stammers, “I mean—marriage isn’t, um—I didn’t mean to imply—less than a year in—”
“Don’t do that.”
He kisses her, gently at first, then cups her face and deepens the kiss, and she forgets all about Fran, and her anger, and everything else except Will, Will, Will.
When he pulls away, her heart is thudding so hard she wonders if there’s a palpable thrill—she can feel his pounding in sync with hers.
“I’ve known since our first kiss,” he admits. “Actually, if I’m being honest with myself, it might even have been long before that. Before I’d had any reason to hope.”
They’ve discussed the future before, of course. But in the abstract. What they wanted to do after residency. How he planned to find an ED position in Pemberley next year with a schedule that would allow him to spent two uninterrupted weeks every month in Meryton, to see her as often as possible while they waited for her to finish residency. Whether she would want to get involved with the Darcy Foundation…after. Whether they wanted kids—not now of course, but…someday.
She’s even seen the ring he plans to use. It had been an heirloom from his grandmother—Gigi had gotten their mother’s ring—and she’d noted the gleam in his eye as he’d watched her reaction carefully that day when he’d shown it to her as part of the collection at the Darcy estate in Pemberley.
But this is the first time they’ve stated it in plain, concrete terms.
“Does…does that frighten you?” he asks tentatively.
Now Lizzie looks up at him, and she can see it all—their careers, a wedding, children, an entire future reflected in Will’s eyes.
“It’s you,” she says. “It’s always been you. What do I have to be scared of?”
He’s not proposing—not yet. But for now, it’s enough to know that they have intentions. To know if, if not when or how.
The rest they can figure out together.