Tell Me A Story
By S. Faith, © 2007

Words: 789
Rating: T / PG-13
Summary: Bedtime stories for grownups.
Disclaimer: Helen Fielding would still kick my ass if she ever got her hands on me.
Notes: Inspired by the master supplier of plotbunnies, Carly, who wondered what kind of bedtime story Mark might tell Bridget.

"Tell me a story."

He opens his eyes, turns his head and looks to her, tiredly blinking, thinking surely he must have misheard her, or dreamed the words she'd said.

But she's propped up on one elbow, looking straight at him with brilliantly shining eyes, and adds, "Please?"

"Tell you a what?"

"A story."

"Darling," he sighs, "it's nearly three a.m., I've had a hell of a day, and in case you have gone momentarily amnesiac, you have quite worn me out."

She pouts, sinking back down onto her pillow. He feels something inside beginning to cave, and he curses to himself, because he never had a weakness before he knew her.

He turns on his side to face her. "What do you want to hear? Because I must say after today's depositions, Icelandic eddas are right out."

She smiles smugly, knowing she's gotten her way. "Oh, I don't know," she begins in that way she has that tells him she knows exactly what she wants to hear. "Maybe something sweet. With a happy ending."

"Ah." He slips his hand across the sheet covering her waist. "Do you mean like…" He pretends to think. "…the Ugly Duckling?"

She makes a face at him.

"Or Sleeping Beauty? Hm. Sleeping. There's a concept." He rests his head on his pillow again, tightens his arm about her and though he's wide awake now, he feigns a return to sleep.

"Mark…" she says after a moment, in a tone that's part impatience, part disappointment.

He cracks an eye open, fixes it on her, fighting the smirk hovering on his lips. "Once upon a time," he begins, stretching his fingers out to completely encompass her right hip, "there was a girl who, despite all evidence to the contrary, never thought she was good enough for anyone just as she was."

She lifts her chin, intently listening. "Really?"

"Yes. She studied and memorised lists upon lists of rules that dictated what she thought was the right way to do things, and followed these rules almost like they were some kind of religion. While this seemed to work for many years, everything always seemed to end badly, leaving her not only feeling lonely and deserted, but convinced she was doing something wrong to drive these men away."

He brings his hand up to her shoulder, slipping under the sheet and sweeping along her ribcage. She rests her head beside his, her blue eyes engaging his.

"Then one day," he continues, his fingers playing along her waist, "she meets someone she thinks is snooty and self-righteous, an odious man who's the opposite of what she wants—"

"I never thought you were odious," she interrupts.

"Who's telling the story, here?" he asks gently, sliding his fingers around her bare back, pulling her close, burying his nose in her hair. "So. She meets this man, and when she tries to make conversation, he completely blows her off. It's a double horror because this time it's not only a man she's not even interested in but one dressed in the most appalling jumper ever made." He plants featherlike kisses along the soft skin of her cheek, raking his nails along the small of her back. "But what she doesn't know is that something about her has caught his eye, and with every meeting they have afterwards, he falls a little bit more in love with her.

"So then one night, many months after their first meeting, and after she's had her heart broken once again, he tells her," he says, his lips trailing down to her jaw, running his fingers across her back again and down over her rear. "He finally tells her how he feels, how he likes her the way she is, not according to some arbitrary set of rules; there's no pretense involved at all. She seems stunned, and watches him walk away. Time passes, almost a month and a half, and she realises she has grown to have feelings for him too, but she doesn't say a word—and then when she does, she is convinced it might be too late."

"Oh." It's hard to tell at first if she's responding to the story or to his attentions—her eyes have drifted closed, and she's arched her head back as he moves his lips down to her throat—but then she asks, "So then what happened?"

He says her name like a wish or a prayer as he trails back up to her chin. "I think you already know how this story ends," he says in a low voice before ardently kissing her.

Later, she confides to him that it was the best story she'd ever heard, one she wouldn't mind hearing again.

The end.