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Just realized I never actually posted this lmao at @ramonadecember’s insistence, I’m doing it now lol
I still looooove how the boys turned out. So Much.
Silas looks SO done with being flustered by Eli 😂
Commission is by the awesome @moncuries 😗
Eli Bennett
EXCELLENT EMMA
Headcanon A: realistic
At some point he’s published. He downplays his excitement but deep down he’s so proud. Darcy, Bing, and James can barely contain their joy and pride and honestly ? he’s happier than he ever thought he would be.
Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious
He’s really good at rapping????? But he never does it for his students to make classic works of literature more relevant because that’s pandering. (Easy A) Or is this filed under unrealistic because he WOULD.
Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends
Hmmm. It takes him a lot more time and heartache than it should for him to get over his belief that he doesn’t deserve Darcy and that #loveisnotaboutdeserve. He’s cocky and good looking and smooooooth but his self-esteem issues run deep.
Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.
He has a good mother who loves him the way she should and doesn’t try to drag them all down into her poisonous web. (Storywise I definitely appreciate the conflict that provides though.) <3
#whatwouldEliBennettdo
Fixing on the Hour--Memorial Day Weekend
At the head of the footpath she picked a few early roses and cradled them in her hands. They smelled like summer. She looked down at them and smiled; she looked up and saw Eli Bennett.
It had not been a year. But if it had been ten, she didn’t think it would have mattered. You had a heartbeat until you died, didn’t you? And there was an embarrassingly sentimental comparison.
She was blushing. She, who prided herself on not blushing, could feel the heat rising in her face.
But what was odd was that he was blushing too. It was reaching to his ears. He had nice ears. She’d noticed before.
“Oh,” Darcy said, inanely. “Eli.”
“Darcy,” he said. He seemed equally lost.
There was nothing else to be done—that was what she told herself, but another part of her wanted this, wanted to run to him, and it was all she could do to keep her steps measured and calm. She came to face him.
There was a reason she always wore heels. He was a lot taller than her when she wasn’t wearing heels.
“I thought you were in Meryton,” she said.
“I…am not.”
“Oh.”
He pursed his lips and rubbed the back of his neck and then put his hands in his pockets—all of which was attractive, without effort—and said, “I mean, uh, my aunt and uncle and I are on a sort of vacation.”
“For the holiday weekend,” Darcy supplied, as helpfully as she could. It was like her whole being had missed him, without any right. All of a moment, she realized, he doesn’t hate me. Or at least he didn’t seem to, and her heart rang in her ears.
Hiya! :) 3, 11, and 12 for the muse asks!
I’m going to do this for Eli. :)
3. What is something that was never addressed at all in the canon material that you have independently developed for your muse?
Eli, unlike Elizabeth, is a writer. I mean, Elizabeth is a letter-writer–but Eli aspires to be a writer and English teacher and basically just takes his love of language to the page as well as sassing everyone in his vicinity.
11. For book muses, what is a scene with your muse that you hate? Why? Can you provide a short excerpt?
I love AND hate the Hunsford scene. I mean, I don’t really hate it! It’s just so cringey for Elizabeth to call Darcy out on his mistreatment of Wickham when ACTUALLY it couldn’t farther from the truth!
Let’s experience it:
EEK! It’s amazing but also you know how terrible she must have felt when she found out the truth. Similarly:
Eli caught a particularly nasty epithet before it left his lips, and said, instead, “The only thing in which you’ve been generous is giving me more than enough reasons to hate you. Can it be possible that you’ve forgotten about Gemma?”
That caused a change. He hadn’t thought it possible for her to be paler. Her face worked; twisted. With difficulty, she controlled herself, and somehow, he’d thought it would be more satisfying, watching her crumble.
“Gemma Wickham,” she said, with marked bitterness. “Yes, please do tell me more about Gemma Wickham.”
“You screwed her over out of spite,” Eli spat. “You couldn’t stand that she might compete with you in anything, and so you put her through hell. You blackmailed her and—”
“Blackmailed her? Oh, yes. I blackmailed her.”
He ignored the inflection. “If you hadn’t done this—even if you hadn’t done what you did to James—I don’t need your sins to hate you; your personality is quite enough. Arrogance. Vanity. Entitlement. To me, obviously, and anything else that crosses your fancy.” He folded his arms and leaned back, grinning with a recklessness he was almost too sick to feel.
Darcy met his eyes with a smile of her own. It wasn’t sneering, though. If he could have attributed any natural feeling to her, he would have thought that she looked on the verge of tears. But Darcy, surely, didn’t cry.
Oh, Eli. You’re going to regret this in a few chapters.
12. For book muses, what other character from a book or book series has a lot in common with your muse?
It’s funny, because there’s a rakish tilt to Eli that brings to mind various faves of mine…Eugenides from the Queen’s Thief series; Sheftu from Mara, Daughter of the Nile, Benedict “Fish” Denniston from the Fairytale Novels, and that one rakish guy who I’m pretty sure died in They Loved to Laugh. Or what about the Reb from Reb and the Redcoats? WILL SOMEONE WRITE A SEQUEL WHERE HE AND CHARLOTTE GET TOGETHER. AHEm. Ok, anyway, I really like Eli because he combines a number of tropes but turns a few on their heads. He’s sarcastic and dangerous and flirty as far as Darcy’s concerned, but he also dislikes her so that makes him relatively hard to read. He can be aloof; he can be playful, but he’s also very burdened by family responsibilities and is actually one of the better-behaved ones in his own family. So I must say, he feels like his own person to me.
2, 17, 19, 22! For the otp ask!
CAN I DO THIS ABOUT ELI AND DARCY? YES I SHALL
2: Who sleeps in the other’s lap?
I feel like they both do. Eli loves to gaze up at her while she plays with his hair and gives him that Darcy smirk until he melts.
And then sometimes Darcy’s had a really long day and Eli just scoops her up and carries her to the couch and makes her stay there for a little while and she falls asleep with her head in his lap while he reads. (With sexy reading glasses because WHY NOT).
17: Who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling?
Well, James wouldn’t threaten a fly and he knows they’re meant to be so he’s super positive. And we all know that George just worships Eli up and down so, yeah. No threats.
Fitz might playfully threaten. Fitz WOULD. Like Darcy catches a cold from Eli and Fitz is like, “HA! YOU BETRAYED US ALL!” and Darcy’s just all sniffly and peevish and tells Fitz to shut up and Fitz just cackles maniacally and makes soup.
19: How good would your OTP be at parenting?
Oh, they are both so much better than they think they are!!! They both have major insecurities but they are both intelligent and principled and caring. They’re going to be great parents. Darcy is so much more sympathetic and caring than she lets herself believe. Eli is so much gentler and kinder than he thinks. I love them so much and they hold each other up and it’s all going to be OK and their kids will be freaking fantastic. (And have great cousins from the Lee-Bennett alliance).
22: Who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun?
Eli is really good at puns, English major and all that, but he makes bad ones just because Darcy rolling her eyes and being all aloof is kind of a turn-on. He teases her INCESSANTLY, basically. I think we all knew this. And then–*screen fades to black because this is a child-friendly space*
2, 4, 13, 16 Darcy & Eli!
*SCREAMING*
2: (I just answered this one below) (it involved sexy reading glasses)
4: Which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway?
They both do. She’s a lawyer and he’s a writer. And they have a fake-fight where they tell the other one to go to bed but obviously neither one is going to go first, because they’re both idiots like that. So basically Darcy is hunched over her laptop in bed and Eli’s got his laptop and finally they both just fall asleep with their laptops and after a couple laptops get broken that way Darcy makes a no laptops in bed rule but nobody follows it and it becomes a running joke.
They don’t get a lot of sleep. For a lot of reasons. ;) OMG I NEED TO STOP AND GO TO BED.
13: Which one likes to surprise the other with a lot of small random gifts?
Eli. Darcy gets caught up in stuff and she forgets to eat and forgets to self-care and all that and Eli is just…always pulling her back, not to *reality* but to something more beautiful. And one of the ways he does that is by leaving her little notes and presents and such. And he would never admit it, and she never spills, but he writes her little poems. <3
16: Which one gives the other their jacket?
My girl Darcy is pretty oblivious about weather. She’s always in her head. And then it’s December and she’s freezing and Eli is wrapping his coat around her and she’s scolding him, she’s fine, and he just zips it up and does the eyebrow thing, like, yeah ok you say so but I’m still doing this.
“Darcy. It was Darcy. Unmistakably, absolutely, Darcy. Probably seventeen, a senior portrait, but one for the fantastically rich, so it was very John Singer Sargent.”
- Fixing on the Hour
(Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler, by John Singer Sargent, is probably what Eli was thinking of)
