"Is this really necessary?" Mark asks for the fifth time that hour alone.
"Yes, you're meant to look dead," Bridget says and tilts his chin back to swipe white face paint along Mark's jawline, "or, to be precise, 'un-dead'."
"A living corpse?"
"Exactly."
"Charming," Mark mutters and tightens his hold on William, who follows his mother with dazed awe. He has to agree with his son on that point: Bridget, however ridiculous at times, is the light of their lives.
He can't imagine doing this with anyone else. The domestication, her hiding his hair dryer so he's left with his mop of natural curls that match William's, going out in public in a cape and face paint. Mark Darcy has never done Halloween. In Grafton Underwood, his family didn't live on one of the quaint village streets that saw children running around as witches and mummies. He spent the Halloweens of his childhood gorging himself on candy over old horror films he'd watch with baited breath on the box TV downstairs. Later, in London, he was far too serious a man to ever imagine dressing up. Twenty five years down the line and Bridget Jones - soon-to-be-Darcy - insists he do it anyway. There has never been anything Mark wouldn't do for her.
"So," he says, once she's satisfied with the pallor of his face, "if I am the irresistibly sexy, if ever so slightly homicidal Count Dracula, who are you?"
"I've told you, I'm going as Miss Lucy Westenra, the girl he prayed on when he arrived in England, which you would know, if you had read the book." She sticks her nose up and does her best impression of an offended Victorian maiden.
"I do apologise profoundly for my lack of acquaintance with vampire literature."
Bridget considers him for a moment, clearly trying to repress a smile, and says, "I suppose I can pardon you this once."
"How very gracious of you, Madam."
"Will you hold still? This is impossible."
Mark puts on his best grievous barrister face, its effect diminished slightly by the fact that he is holding a baby determined to fit his entire hand in its mouth. So far William has managed four fingers. Out of the two of them, he would make a far better vampire now that he's teething.
"Is that lipstick?" Mark asks, eyes snapping up from the top of Will's head to Bridget inches away from his face with new paint.
"Yes," she says and applies it before he can protest.
Unsurprisingly t's crimson, and Mark looks rather horrified catching a glance of himself in the mirror. "Bridget, why are you putting lipstick on me?"
"Relax," she says, "It's going to turn into blood. Trust me and shut up."
He does, lets her dab at the corners of his mouth and draw on him with a darker pencil and even more, burgundy lipstick. The next time he looks, his mouth appears blood smeared, a stray drop running down his chin. "Where on earth do you learn these things?"
"The internet mostly, and Cathy, whom William adores, by the way."
"William adores everyone. He has as big a heart as his mum, after all," Mark says and William beams up at her with all of his three teeth. "See, he agrees."
"No one ever told me you're such a sodding romantic," Bridget sighs.
"You've had sixteen years to figure that out for yourself."
"You never cease to surprise me."
In that moment Mark thinks he loves her, maddeningly, still - always has, always will - and leans forward to kiss her with the same ardent desperation of their first new year's eve.
"You're going to smudge your makeup," Bridget says and dodges him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head instead. She draws herself back up to her full height and leaves him sitting there on the toilet seat cover, rejected with a full face of makeup.
"That's not a sentence I ever expected to hear."
"No? I'm rather surprised you haven't heard it before. Daniel really didn't make a good enough job of trying to embarrass you at Cambridge."
"It wasn't for a lack of trying. He passed out on the college steps in his own piss one year, fishnets around his ankles and the dress he nicked from his sister failing miserably at covering his bare arse." It's not the sort of story he likes to tell people, but he can't resist with Bridget. The way her face lights up with a burst of laughter is magnetising.
William seems to agree, because he squeals and Mark can't help but grin even at the destruction of his eardrums for the upteenth time since the arrival of their child. William's always been vocal and expressive, different from him in the best of ways. It's so far from the composed children he'd imagined himself having in his youth.
Years ago he would have insisted on sending his son to a private school; now he can't imagine ever giving anything so precious away for a whole term, not when it's the best of him and Bridget put into one. These days he spends his days at work looking forward to coming home to this: Bridget giggling as she wipes William's face down with a cloth.
She extends the courtesy to Mark's slobbery hands and says: "Time for the teeth."
They're the cheapest white plastic Mark could imagine, downright vile to put in one's mouth. He swallows around the awful dentures, saliva pooling everywhere, and asks, "How am I shuppofed to shpfeak in fese?"
William's confused look is all it takes for Bridget to dissolve in another bout of laughter.
"Weally Bwidget, I'm ashking you," Mark repeats, barely keeping his own voice from quivering now, "how the phuck am I shuppofed to shay anyfin'?"
"Don't curse in front of the baby! And hurry up. We're going to be late."
"Wouldn't whant fhat, would whe?"
"Christ, go get Will dressed. The bat costume is in the living room with the gloves your mother sent him. There's a teething ring in the freezer and a new pack of dummies on the kitchen counter. I won't be a minute."
"You have twenty," Mark says, popping the teeth out of his mouth. He gets William out of her hair without a fuss and she mouths a 'thank you' at him as he slips out of the doorway, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. It's nothing like waiting for her to get ready for dinner a decade ago, and yet they haven't changed at all. Mark Darcy and Bridget Jones, they could spend an eternity together, he thinks.
What they get is far more them. Bridget emerges from the bath fifteen minutes later running around the flat in a white nightgown with her hair in a bun the size of her head. "Bridget," Mark says, hoisting William in full bat arsenal further up on his hip.
"Where are those damn keys?"
"Bridget."
"What?" She whirls around to see him standing by the door dangling the keys. "You are a bad, bad man."
"Positively blasphemous."
He hovers over Bridget as she steadies herself on his arm to put her shoes on. She rights herself and noses at William's head, inhaling the baby scent Mark is guilty of seeking out after a long day at work for comfort. He loves her immensely for all she's given him, William in particular. I should've devoted my life to you much sooner, he thinks, tipping dangerously toward her.
And she's almost there, but they still have awful timing, and so they end up frozen an inch apart with the sound of Jude banging on the front door, yelling, "Come the fuck on, Bridget! It's arse cold out here."
Mark holds his breath, a sense of déjà vu rolling over him as Bridget stifles a smile. "Friend of yours?" he asks innocently.
She shakes her head minutely. "Friend of ours." At the door she shouts, "Coming!" and is off in a flurry.
Slipping the fake teeth into his mouth again, Mark Darcy doesn't think he'd want to share his life with anyone less catastrophic.