Author: Regency
Title: Impossible You
Rating: G/Everyone
Pairing: Mark Darcy/Bridget Jones
Warnings: None
Summary: (Spoilers for BJB.) Mark and Bridget are really, truly happy. It still takes them both by surprise.
Prompt: Bridget/Mark with 'There's a leaf in your hair' please ^^'
Author's Note: So, I am aware that in that book we don't discuss that William is called Billy but I just am not doing it. William is what we have and I'm shortening it to Will. Come flail with me on Tumblr at sententiousandbellicose. You can prompt me things!
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters 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.
They're still sort of figuring this whole thing out. You'd think ten years together would be enough, but it was a decade filled with stops and starts, silences screaming louder than wedding proposals could, loneliness and uncertainty where security should have been. For all that Mark and Bridget know each other very well, this is like starting over, except with three.
"Do you want to push or should I?" Mark's got the pram packed and he's carrying a baby bag over his shoulder. It clashes with his heavy coat, thrown over what passes for casual in Mark Darcy's wardrobe: cashmere jumper, tailored trousers, both a bit wrinkled. He doesn't even seem to notice he's softening up.
Bridget hugs Will close. He shifts against her chest and sighs in his sleep. "I don't mind either way."
She isn't ready to buckle him in for the walk to the park just yet. She still can't believe he's home, that he's real and finally here. Not that he lets her forget any of that. William Jones-Darcy has the lungs to make himself heard and he's keeping both of his parents up at night.
"Shall we go?"
"Sure."
Mark maneuvers every little thing they need down the stairs and out the front door with so much ease Bridget wonders if he's been practicing while she sleeps. It sounds like something he would do. Has done, actually. Mark doesn't know how to be anything but the best at things; it's how he was raised. So if he does anything he pours his heart into it (even when it's not enough). Being a father is no exception. He's trying his best to be exceptional at it.
He locks up behind them and they begin their stroll to the park, just the three of them. Just their little family. Bridget's eyes well up at how impossible this all seemed a year ago–Mark married to Candice (all right, Camilla), Bridget content in her singlehood, their story relegated to a rather lengthy footnote of her heretofore unwritten autobiography. The ballad of Mark and Bridget done, but not for long.
"Are you all right?" Mark catches her about the elbow to stop her in her tracks, peering down at her and Will in bewildered concern. "You're crying." He brushes his thumbs under her eyes to catch her tears before they fall. His hands are chilly. He's forgotten his gloves. She has her coat, her scarf, a hat, and the most expensive gloves known to Bridget Jones to keep her warm, all thanks to him, and he's gone and left his own at home.
"Don't worry. Happy tears."
"Happy tears," he echoes, an alarmed blankness momentarily widening his eyes. "Oh, lovely. There are happy ones, now." Mark's finding her lingering emotional outbursts somewhat trying, but as ever these days, he rises to the occasion. "Well, I hope we can make for more, less troubling, expressions of joy in the future."
Will yawns in his sleep and Mark's consternation instantly melts into an aching tenderness that fills her heart to bursting. How easily she could have missed this. He lays a gentle hand on Will's back to feel him breathe through blanket, coat, and onesie. The only person in the world as enamored she is by something so small as a baby drawing breath.
"Look what you did," he murmurs, propping his temple against hers. They're in the middle of the sidewalk, surely blocking foot traffic, and Mark Darcy wants to have a moment.
Bridget is more than happy to oblige.
"Look what we did."
They grin at each other. God, what idiots they must look like, all blinding teeth and red cheeks and dark circles under their eyes. Could anybody look madder than they do right now? Could anybody be happier?
He sweeps a tendril of hair out of her face when a crisp breeze blows it in her eyes.
"Look at that," he chuckles a bit. "You've a leaf in your hair."
She goggles. "In January?"
He shows it to her. It's robust green thing, probably escaped from someone's potted plant in one of the flats above. In January?
He looks at her in fond exasperation. "Only you could do the impossible in the dead of winter, Bridget."
"A bit ridiculous," she acknowledges sans offense. Her life in a nutshell.
"I love it," Mark counters, suddenly fervent where he might have been slightly off-put before. "I couldn't imagine my life any other way, or with anyone else."
She doesn't have to ask for these little declarations anymore. They're just there, a part of their normal lives. In the morning when she's exhausted, at night when he's carding his fingers through her hair and probably thinks her asleep. And right now, on the sidewalk on an afternoon adventure with their newborn son.
She swallows another deluge of happy tears. "Very well said, Mr. Darcy." She hugs Will close with one arm so she can grab hold of Mark and kiss him as soundly as she dares. "I love you, too, by the way. Just the way you are."
Mark's eyes are as red as his nose. He holds them both tight. His stiff upper lip cracks and he laughs a bit even as his eyes go all misty. That happiness isn't just for their son. It isn't even just for them. It's for the future.
The one they're going to share is looking astonishingly bright.