I need more Austen icons

[anghraine]

A very short, vaguely cracky response to the fandom's fixation on Darcy's attractiveness. Not pointing fingers in this case (I am equally guilty! and it's not like there isn't some glorious female gazing going on in canon), but for some reason I felt it needed even more fic.

title: untitled (aka the fic all about Darcy being gorgeous)
verse: canon-compliant

Fitzwilliam is a beautiful child.

He doesn't mind that. He likes everything around him to be pretty, even his reflection, and people are always nicer to him and George and Phylly than to Jack and Anne.

He does mind that strangers keep congratulating his mother on her adorable little girl. He isn't adorable, and no matter how many times it happens, George and Jack act like it's the funniest thing they've ever heard.

Once, when he was very small, somebody even thought he was Anne's little sister, and now she mentions it every time he sees her. Fitzwilliam is darkly certain she'll still be telling people about it after they get married. (He doesn't know when that is going to happen, but he hopes it is a very, very long time away.)

Eventually, of course, it becomes obvious that he isn't a girl. The detested ringlets are cut off during a childhood fever and never come back – his skin draws tight over his cheekbones – his shoulders broaden – and at fifteen, he's almost six feet tall. He even manages to add three or four inches more by the time he finishes growing. If his father were still alive, his head would scarcely meet Darcy's shoulder.

Less than a year after Darcy's marriage, he and his cousin are given reason to speak with Wickham. It is the first time they have done so in years; the last time all three were under the same roof, Wickham had returned just long enough to hear the reading of the will, and then-Captain Fitzwilliam had not deigned to acknowledge his existence.

The last time all three actually spoke to one another was years before that, when they were still Jack and Fitzwilliam and George and the world was at their feet. An elderly gentleman had just suggested that the young lady should stop running around in her brother's clothes and Jack and George were all but screaming with laughter.

Now they are Colonel the Honourable John Fitzwilliam, and Mr Darcy of Pemberley, and that bastard Wickham. The latter is eyeing the Fitzwilliam cousins with an expression that suggests he might relieve himself at any moment. Fitzwilliam returns to the look with a glare, while Darcy contents himself with a smile.

Some small, petty, childish part of himself cannot help but relish the moment. After all, he is rich and married and happy, and he towers over them both.