Rules for Hookups · A Pride and Prejudice Adaptation

They were in college for heaven's sake. Heaven help it if you caught feelings. Hookups were permitted, even encouraged, lest you become desperate, but dating and relationships, no way! College was the time for you.

Lizzie Bennet is a part-time barista, full-time student, and devoted sister. She has no time for relationships, almost no time for hookups. She is focused on getting through school while living at home with her single mother and three sisters. Each sister inevitably had some need that distracts Lizzie from school, though with her older sister Jenna it often means attending parties with her (only to be forever abandoned).

But Lizzie runs into the new student, Will Darcy, at a party and goes home with him. He has always been surly in the mornings when he orders coffee (and so what if her co-worker lusts after him), it was just sex. And they are going to follow The Rules.

Will Darcy changed schools to look after his sister Giana since it is just the two of them. His mother is a distant figure. His father is a businessman whose business is more of a family to him than his children. But the eccentric barista in the school’s Memorial Union catches his eye. He can’t always be studying, and besides, a little sex helps him to focus again on his studies.

But can you keep playing by The Rules and keep it casual? How do two people keep each other at a distance without getting to know the other as a person with a past and with common interests? Could their relationship be building into more than a hookup, say, dating partners? What if they grow into being girlfriend and boyfriend? Are there rules for that?