Author: Regency

Title: Animal Crackers

Pairing: Bridget Jones/Mark Darcy

Rating: G/Everyone

Warnings: None

Summary: (Set post-BJB.) Mark shares something he learned about in the States and now Bridget can't get it out of her head. This just might constitute a marital emergency.

Prompt: fluffy family Bridget/Mark fic

Author's Notes: Come flail with me on Tumblr at sententiousandbellicose. Inspired by that damn Shirley Temple My Little Darling Collection informercial. If you're American you know it! If not, check YouTube!

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, settings, or plot elements recognizable as being from any incarnation of the Bridget Jones series. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

Mark glanced away from his book to a freshly showered Bridget crawling into bed. He hadn't seen her since this morning when he'd left her sleeping to attend pre-trial motions in court.

"How were Magda's today?" Bridget had been on godmother duty while William was at daycare. When he asked why she didn't simply keep their son with her, he'd gotten a glare so poisonous he immediately dropped the matter. When it came to one-person childcare, the more (children) the merrier evidently did not apply.

"Lovely," she yawned. "Still obsessed with Pingu." She made a gagging noise. "I'm never going to the North Pole. I hate penguins. I've never even met any and I loathe them on a deeply personal level."

"Poor penguins."

She scooted to his side to cuddle under his arm. He was very glad to have here there.

"Poor me." She pouted.

He kissed her pout. "Better than ducks, trust me."

"What have ducks got to do with it?"

"They're worse than penguins."

"How?! Ducks are adorable. They just waddle around in lines, quacking to say hello. Nothing bad about that."

"I've heard worse than Pingu," Mark contended. He shuddered in memory. 'Oh my duck does a wonderful trick. My duck can lay an egg.' That damned video played in his head like an old-fashioned film set to a horror backing track.

"Darling, I'm not sure worse exists." Bridget went on to quote at least sixty seconds of simplistic, childish dialogue Mark would, he had to admit, never like to be subjected to again. But I've got an ace in the hole. Mark had seen things he could never un-see.

"When I was living in America, there was this godawful infomercial that would air at 3 in the morning. It was for this musical collection–a collector's edition of Shirley Temple musicals. Remastered and produced for the first time in color."

"You sound like an infomercial."

"I swear to god it's etched on the surface of my soul, Bridget. I could not forget it if I tried." He leaned over to retrieve his tablet from the night stand. "Watch this four times in a row and try not to have it stuck in your head."

Mark typed 'Shirley Temple infomercial' into the YouTube search bar, trusting that the internet wouldn't fail him now. We're all masochists.

"I don't know," Bridget waffled.

"Aren't you woman enough?"

"Chuh, I'm not a man, Mark. You can't trick me into watching by taking potshots at my ego."

"I'm glad to know that women are immune to ego-driven fuckwittage, darling. Go on, watch."

She took the tablet at his prodding. "If this is you rickrolling me…"

"I am definitely planning to do that someday but not now." He tapped the icon for play and sat back to watch Bridget watch the video.

First she looked puzzled. Then understanding colored her expression. She aww'd at the expected moments. Mark nodded appropriately. Yes, yes very cute. He was getting it in stereo, from memory and the tablet.

"That wasn't so bad."

Mark chuckled. "Just you wait." He tapped the Replay button and sat back.

Bridget pouted and sat back against his shoulder to rewatch the video. By the end she was humming along to the more well-known snippets of Shirley Temple's repertoire.

"I still don't see what all the fuss is about." She blinked up at him in sleepy, trusting confusion. He loved her for her willingness to go along with him on this.

Mark jabbed the Replay button again. Bridget's eyes started to gloss over.

"She's very cute, isn't she?"

"You said that."

"It's still true."

"You're right." He kissed his wife again. She put down the tablet to encircle his waist. "You're much cuter."

"I'd better be."

"Not as cute as the duck, I'm afraid."

She giggled against his lips. "Does your duck do a wonderful trick?"

"Oh, yes, my duck can lay an egg."

"What's so wonderful about that?"

"Well, can you lay an egg?"

"Why don't you fertilize one and find out?"

He made a face yet was still charmed. Only Bridget.

"I was just getting to that."

The next morning found Bridget dancing around the kitchen with William in her arms, singing, "Animal crackers in my soup. Lions and tigers, loop-da-loop."

William clapped and rocked, his smile wide enough to eclipse the sun and just as bright. Mark joined them in their sing-along as he poured coffee for Bridget and himself.

He hugged his family good morning and left for work late.

The next night found Bridget humming as she brushed her teeth for bed, head bobbing as Mark passed behind her. "If you're awound meh wheh i's dahk, I wawk awound like Nowah's Ark."

Mark pressed his lips to her hair. "Might want to spit it out before you sing next time." He wiped a few specks of toothpaste from the mirror. "Just for health reasons."

She stuck her tongue out at him, spilling a mouthful of toothpaste down her top in the process. "Shit."

He laughed out loud at her crestfallen expression. "I'll get you another."

She was making messy, fruitless attempts at whistling the tune by the time he returned. His kisses to her minty fresh lips to put a swift end to that.

She dressed the following morning, attention lost in the middle distance. Her toes were tapping a familiar beat on the carpet. He raised an eyebrow.

She groaned. "I've been cursed."

"Well, I guess we'll have to take care of that tonight." Mark checked his watch. He might just be early as planned if he left right now. "Don't contact any shamans or exorcists until I get home, please."

He kissed her goodbye. The sound of her whistling followed him out, and that dratted song stayed in his head all day, so much so that Jeremy eventually commented on it.

"What is that song you've been singing all day?"

Mark sighed a sigh full of despair. "A funeral dirge."

By the time he returned home that evening Bridget had been home for a few hours yet. William was trawling the living room floor, moving from toy to toy in his decidedly Bridget way. Mark kissed his wife hello and joined his son on the playmat. William perked up visibly on spotting his favorite toy, also known as his father the jungle gym. William crawled over the alphanumeric rug to reach Mark's crossed legs. It was all Mark could do not to lift his son into a bear hug. They were trying to give William the freedom to come to them so that he could practice his locomotion, his crawling that would all too soon become walking. Mark still found it difficult not to pick him up as soon as he saw him. Once William was in arm's reach Mark gave up any pretense of aloofness to cuddle his son.

William's excited babbling eased his nerves. The weight of his tiny body snuggled to Mark's chest slowed Mark's heartbeat to normal, resting levels. There was surely some evolutionary basis for how much Mark loved his son and wanted to keep him safe–something to do with the endurance of the species–but Mark didn't care about that. He cared about having this little person, this dear reflection of his wife, waiting from him at home each night.

Given their earlier difficulties conceiving, Mark had been prepared to go without children to save his relationship with Bridget. He didn't love her for her uterus, it was quite literally every other aspect of her person he adored. Nevertheless, had William not come along, he might not have gotten another chance to prove his love. For that alone William was cherished. For himself, for his tinkling laughter and sweet baby smell, for his mighty fist that held Mark's heart a happy hostage, he was beloved beyond hope of recovery.

Bridget watched them play, a loving smile playing on her lips.

"We did okay, didn't we? You and me?"

He didn't have to wonder from where the question had come. Motherhood had made Bridget, if possible, more contemplative and, he hoped, very happy. "Better than okay, my love."

She abandoned her tablet on the couch to join them on the floor.

They played peek-a-boo with William until he drifted to sleep on Mark's lap and Bridget nodded off on Mark's shoulder, wiped after a busy day of production meetings and location shoots. The loves of his life in his arms and not an animal cracker in sight. Not too bad at all, Mark thought, and fell asleep, too, for a while.

Mark woke from a deep, surprisingly restful sleep to find his son down for the evening and his wife tapping away at her tablet. While initially he assumed she was simply finishing off the day's diary entry, the reflection of the screen in her glasses told him it was something else.

"Tell me you aren't watching that ridiculous video again."

"Not intentionally. Not…look, I keep getting the words wrong so I wanted to check what they were and then I started watching it again and now I can't forget it. It's haunting me."

"Darling–"

"Don't." She opened another tab and began jabbing purposefully at the screen. Quite sure he wouldn't be getting anymore sleep at this juncture, and frankly sure he'd regret napping on the floor as it was, Mark retrieved his own glasses to look over her shoulder. She leaned against him.

"What are you doing?"

"Researching targeted lobotomization. How else am I to get this song out of my head?"

"There's no cure." He had researched earworms for an entire night to no avail.

"How about the sweet release of death?"

He brushed his lips under her ear just to feel her melt ever so slightly at the gesture. The expanse of skin stretching from her earlobe down the side of her neck to the dip of shoulder was one long, very convenient erogenous zone. Mark took terrible advantage of this knowledge.

"I'd miss you too much," he concluded. "No, you'll have to live in the company of Shirley Temple's dulcet tones until such time as you forget what you heard."

"So forever."

He confirmed, distractedly, "Forever" and sucked at the hinge of her jaw. "Welcome to hell."

She turned to meet his increasingly daring caresses head-on. "I hate you."

"No, you don't." He dotted her lips with kisses that were too light to satisfy but left her panting just the same. "You love me more than Shirley loves animal crackers."

She grimaced. "Don't mention them. They're banned from the house from now on."

"William–"

"Is not allowed near anything resembling them. He'll eat biscuits and Cheerios like the other babies and he'll like them."

"Whatever you say."

He pecked her lips. She puckered them in expectation of more and who was he to disappoint his wife? She slid her arms over his shoulders to tangle her fingers in his hair and tug at his shirt.

"I hate ducks," she said sometime later through kiss-swollen lips.

"And penguins?"

"Ruddy birds."

He sucked a heart-shaped love mark high on her neck.

"Thankfully," he said, "I am not a bird."

She blinked guilelessly down at him. "But can you do a wonderful trick?"

Mark didn't believe her innocent act for a minute; the smirk tucked at the corner of her mouth was very telling.

He grinned wickedly. "Why don't I show you?"

After pulling her up from the floor, Mark raced his wife to bed and showed her his enormous...bag of tricks. He thought he did quite well.

Or to quote his beloved Bridget Jones, "Ding-dong!"