Bridget Jones | Bridget Jones' Diary (singletonjones) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-02-27 11:56:00 |
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Mark Darcy had been living in alternate reality New York City for a month now, and though he couldn’t call it ideal, he was managing. In part, that was thanks to finding a kindred spirit in Benjamin Stone. Mark had found Ben every bit as clever and stuffy as any English barrister, and therefore they made friends instantly. They had set straight to catching themselves up on the past twenty years in law, preparing to sit the bar and get back to work. If one could not change one’s circumstances, after all, one must simply make the best of them. For attorneys, that of course must mean getting about the business of being attorneys. And for a man housed with Bridget Jones, it meant learning to step over high-heeled shoes left scattered like caltrops, washing dishes because otherwise they would be left in the sink until the mold upon the pasta developed its own religion and system of writing, learning the lyrics to Madonna songs quite against one’s will, and making the long and arduous journey from ignoring RuPaul’s Drag Race to being aghast at RuPaul’s Drag Race to having a genuine (if disguised by dry mockery) interest in the dramatic twists and turns of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The entire business should have been infuriating, or at the very least devilishly awkward, but Mark found that while it was very easy to become annoyed with Bridget Jones, it was nearly impossible to stay annoyed at Bridget Jones. She had a tendency to do something ridiculous that Mark thought would charm nearly anyone out of a snit. They’d fallen into an odd sort of domesticity, and he enjoyed it. The only way he could enjoy it more, really, would be if he could finally just drag her back to his bed and shag her senseless. He was fairly certain, though, that she didn’t like him nearly so much as he liked her. Not that he could blame her for that; he’d started off their acquaintance by being unbelievably awful about her, and he’d yet to apologize for it. Or at least, he had in this universe. He’d just been about to do so when he landed here, and now finding the right time for it had gotten very difficult. If he started talking about apologies and feelings and all that, he’d like as not never stop; he was nearly as bad at speaking on feelings as Bridget was with speaking in public. And then he would undoubtedly let slip something he oughtn’t, and their pleasant little existence here would be utterly wrecked. No, he absolutely couldn’t say anything at least until he moved into a different apartment, so she would have someplace to run away to if she liked. Tonight, though, they appeared to be running away together: from Valentine’s Day. A dreadful holiday, Mark had always thought. Painfully high pressure, whether one had a lover or not, and he would be just as happy to see the whole thing go to the devil. It seemed that to not acknowledge it would be more awkward than to do so, however, so upon his return from the day’s studying, he ordered a pizza and went to the store for a bottle of cabernet and two pints of Ben & Jerry’s. That was what sad people with no Valentines were to do on the 14th, wasn’t it? Might as well make a joke of it, then. Whatever excitement Bridget had felt earlier in the week at being asked to wear clothing on the front row of a Vera Wang show at the New York Fashion Week (!!!) had diminished in the face of Valentine’s Day following quickly upon Vera Wang’s heels. She felt a bit as if she’d been on a roller coaster, flying up high on the very delightful feeling of being important enough to merit an invitation, not just to attend, and then thudding back to earth when she realized that no matter if Vera Wang thought she was important, no one else here seemed to think so. She had spoke with several men across the networks, and had even had drinks with a few of them, and while none of them had been the sort of emotional fuckwits that she and Jude and Shasta swore to abandon, they had possibly just been not emotionally involved enough to engage in any fuckwittery. So while she had half hoped that one of them that felt sad and alone would be interested in asking her out for Valentine’s Day, she found herself instead facing an evening alone, or perhaps worse, an evening with Mark Darcy. Well, it was possibly unfair to consider that worse than an evening alone. Mark was attractive, and he had a sort of calm niceness, that was pleasant in a very stuffy sort of way. He was clearly intelligent, and so far he had complained very little about her inability to keep the flat spotless - she was trying, but it had been so long since she’d had to share a space with anybody that she just forgot, and so she did her best to keep the truly embarrassing items out of the public spaces, and to at least take dirty dishes to the kitchen - which she thought she’d been doing very well at until she’d discovered the growth under the edge of the sofa the night before and she had tiptoed it to the kitchen and dumped it straight in the trash, hoping that nobody would actually notice it there - and over-all he’d hardly said a word about it, even though he was clearly also much neater than she was. No. Mark Darcy was frustratingly attractive, and there had been more than once in the past few weeks where she’d found himself staring at some aspect of his body - the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck, or his hand while he was watching television - and she’d had to remind herself that he was a bit stuck-up, and would certainly not be interested in her. It was entirely possible that he disliked her, considering the rudeness he’d illustrated in the past, and beyond that, she was certain the he was dreading spending his Valentine’s Day with her - even if it was sort of by default. As she returned to the flat she stood outside the door for a few moments. If it hadn’t been so likely that going out would have just been an endless abyss of reminders of the fact she was a singleton, she would have turned around right then and gone to Sam’s Bar & Grill for dinner and a drink: A lot of drinks. It was right now that she really, truly missed Jude and Shasta and Tom. One of them would have been free and they could have comiserated upon the stupid pointlessness of such a commercialized holiday, and the daft notion that love could be displayed with pink hearts and red roses. She sighed. There had been a bucket of roses being delivered when she’d come through the lobby downstairs. She was reasonably certain they weren’t for her. She pulled her shoulders up and pushed open the door and entered the apartment calling out as she did so: “Hello?” “Hello!” Mark called back. He was in the kitchen, just popping the cork from the wine. “I hope you like cabernet. I thought it stood the best chance of complementing a pepperoni pizza.” Pizza and wine and ice cream was hardly his usual evening, but he thought it was funny enough to overcome any awkwardness that could ensue from the two of them spending a quiet evening in on Valentine’s Day. Despite reports to the contrary, he actually was capable of having fun now and then - and Bridget rather seemed to inspire it in him. Bridget blinked at his pronouncement and made her way to the kitchen where she found Mark with what appeared to be a takeaway pizza and a bottle of wine. The fact that he’d said that he hoped she liked cabernet seemed to suggest that he was intent upon her sharing those two things with him, which was bewildering, if not entirely unwelcome. She realized that not saying one way or another was probably rude so she opened her mouth: “I’ve rarely met a wine I didn’t like,” she laughed. It wounded nervous and a bit off, she thought, and she cursed her inability to just behave normally around this man. There was no reason for it, but it seemed to be an ailment she was stricken with. She shut her mouth and started over again. “You got pizza? And cabernet? Well aren’t you rather full of surprises.” “And ice cream,” he added, deadpan as ever. “I am a veritable piñata.” Mark poured a glass of wine for her, and handed it over before pouring one for himself as well. “I thought that if we were going to sit at home on Valentine’s Day, we might as well look properly pathetic about it. So...pizza, wine, and ice cream: the universal foods of sad sacks throughout all first world nations.” Bridget couldn’t help a small smile. What was this almost charming Mark Darcy? She certainly had not been expecting this. She had been expecting awkward or possibly being ignored in favor of the telly or one of his law books, but not pizza, wine, and ice cream. She bit her lip, and moved into the kitchen, her arms crossed over her chest as she looked at him for a moment before taking the glass of wine. “Well done, sir, well done,” she said somewhat dryly. She took a drink of the wine and nodded. “This is excellent.” “I have my moments on occasion,” Mark replied, and one corner of his mouth turned up. It was what passed for a smile from him, most of the time. He raised his glass in salute, and started to carry both glass and bottle to the kitchen table before he remembered that they were being glum and changed course to set both on the coffee table instead. “May as well go all in,” he explained. “Grab the pizza?” And so he did, Bridget couldn’t help thinking to herself as she echoed the salute with her glass and then headed for the pizza box. This was completely a surprise, but a pleasant one. She picked up the box and followed Mark to the coffee table, where she sat the pizza box down, then her wine glass, and then herself in a chair nearby. “This is quite lovely, Mark, thank you.” She said looking at the pizza and the wine glass and then over at him. After a moment she looked back at the pizza and reached over to pick a piece up and take a bite. “Oh this is brilliant, isn’t it? I suppose they do say New York Style pizza is quite good.” “I’m developing a taste for it,” Mark conceded. It was huge and greasy and by all rights ought to have been disgusting, but it was in fact all that was delicious. He would really have to find a place like this in London, once he got around to going back there. If he went back there. He wasn’t sure about that one yet. “And I’m...glad you’re enjoying it,” he added, unsure of how to respond appropriately to being thanked. Was that a good lead-in for the apology he’d been meaning to make? Or would saying it now just wreck what was turning into a quite pleasant evening? “I confess I rather thought tonight might not be so enjoyable, after all it is Valentine’s Day, or, a way to torture single, unloved people everywhere, so why should it be enjoyable? But between the pepperoni and the cabernet, I might just forget Valentine’s Day.” She laughed slightly and took another bite of the pizza. “So did you have other plans or is it simply eat until we are full and then drink until we’ve finished the bottle, and waddle off to bed?” There was a beat, and Bridget realized that might not have been the best turn of phrase to use, but there was no taking it back now. She wrinkled her forehead slightly and hurried on in a rush to cover it. “I suppose we could see if there was any truly horrid telly that we could mock quite seriously.” “I do enjoy mocking,” Mark had to admit. Delivering a proper mocking to that which richly deserved it was one of those sweet little pleasures in life, like clear blue skies or a perfect cup of tea. Taking Bridget Jones off to bed would be a pleasure as well, but he had a feeling that wasn’t what she’d meant - if she had, she probably wouldn’t have used the word “waddle.” There was nothing sexy about waddling. “See what there is,” he suggested. “Maybe we can pop popcorn to throw at it, as well.” "Oooh!" Bridget gave him an amused look. "That would be going all out." She sat the pizza down and reached for the remote, which to her credit, she had put back on the coffee table that morning and not in the icebox. She started flipping through the channels hoping for one of the all too numerous and fabulously ridiculous reality shows that seemed to be so prevalent in this time period. She finally found one that appeared to be about weddings, which seemed to be an appropriate sort of thing for Valentine's. “I'm pretty certain I watched this before you got here once, and it would be highly mockable." she say back and reached for the wine glass again. “Excellent,” Mark declared, settling in with his glass as well. “Let’s watch idiots squabble over the colours of napkins and judge them for using fake flowers.” It made him think rather uncomfortably of the wedding Natasha had been determinedly pushing him toward at home. If there was one thing he could be glad of in coming through the Tesseract, it was escaping that. After a month now spent living with the madness of Bridget Jones, Mark had been thoroughly shaken out of the complacency that had left him ready to move to New York with Natasha for lack of any better ideas. It was like he’d been sleepwalking through life, and Bridget was a sudden splash of cold water right in the face - startling and somewhat annoying but so very welcome and refreshing once he realized where he was and what he’d been doing. He should tell her that sometime, Mark thought. He just wasn’t really very good at talking. Having received his approval, Bridget gave him a pleased smile that might almost qualify as a smirk and settled back on the sofa, setting the remote to the side, and thinking rather quickly through the events of the evening as she took another bite of pizza to keep her from having to mock anything straightway. Certainly this evening had been one of the last things that she’d expected and having Mark Darcy sit next to her on a sofa on Valentine’s evening watching absurd reality shows on the telly, had to be one of the most absurd things ever. In her head she composed a phone-call to Shasta ‘and then he said he had ice cream’, but the stream of thought was interrupted as the bride on the telly started throwing a fit about wanting turquoise flowers on her cake that had to match the turquoise bridesmaid gowns - which were, in a word, the epitome of every horrid bridesmaid dress. “I don’t think I would be nearly so insistent that the cake match those dresses,” she said wryly, taking another bite of pizza. “One should do one’s best not to make the entire wedding look as if it is something Rainbow Brite rejected.” Mark didn’t laugh out loud, but she did get a grin out of him. Contrary to popular belief, he was not entirely without a sense of humor. He was just so painfully awkward in social situations that he tended to freeze up - when he didn’t, he laughed much too loudly and made everybody look at him like he was crazy. “What I wonder is why anyone would be interested in marrying a woman who attaches so much importance to frosting colours that she’ll shriek and rant about them,” Mark added. “Or how such a person even has any friends to wear those dreadful dresses.” Bridget couldn’t help but giggle slightly. “There really is just no accounting for taste. I feel a bit as if it’s something my mother might have picked out for me, which is not to say she’s a dreadful person, but the outfits she puts me in every Christmas,” she picked up her wine glass and tilted it at Mark with a ‘well you know what I mean’ look in his direction. “Oh!” She wrinkled up her nose at the pink neon shoes one of the bridesmaids was discussing in some (rather less than favourable) detail. “Oh, that really is unfortunate. Why would anyone think those two colours were a good idea?” She took another sip of the wine and another bite of the pizza. It really was lovely of Mark to do this thing, she thought. Whatever conversations she might have with Shasta and Jude (if they were here to have such conversations with) she was finding the offering of his company on Valentine’s to be very practically as nice as a Valentine’s Date itself. Mark indeed knew what she meant about being dressed in terrible things - usually jumpers. Christmas was the worst, but his mother thought virtually any holiday was a good excuse for a festive new jumper. “Time traveler from 1986, perhaps?” he suggested. “That would add quite the interesting twist to the programme. Perhaps she’s come to spread the gospel of Cyndi Lauper and Hypercolor t-shirts.” He took a look over at Bridget, reminded once again of how really quite attractive she was when she relaxed. She did that a bit more often around him now than when she had when he first arrived. They had been rather stiff in each other’s company at first. Familiarity, however, seemed to breed more comfort than contempt. "We can only hope the musical selections improve upon the attire and bear your theory out," Bridget said dryly and with a look of appreciation. He was actually quite good at this mocking thing: Cyndi Lauer and hyper color tshirts indeed! She picked up the wine glass once more and finished it off and considered the show, although in reality she was considering the man next to her. She had expected absolute horros from sharing a flat with Mark Darcy, but in all realities, it hadn't been so dreadful as she might have thought. Oh it had been awkward, and there were moments she had been as certain as ever of his dislike or at least disapproval of her, but right now he was proving himself a perfectly lovely flat mate. "You are the most confusing man," she said aloud. "On the one hand you are incredibly, well, stiff and proper like. And then the next thing I know you are watching proper trash Telly and revealing a knowledge of eighties culture leading me to wonder a bit, I admit, what you have done with the real Mark Darcy?" “Left him in London in the mid-1990s, I suppose,” he dryly replied. Sarcasm was a good response to being uncomfortable, when retreating into being just as stiff and proper as she suggested wasn’t possible. He did owe her some explanation, though, and he knew it. This was as good an opening as he would ever get to apologize for how he’d acted when they first met, and if he didn’t take it, that would be just as awful. “Bridget, I...” Mark grimaced. He was so terrible at things like this, and he knew he was terrible at things like this. Knowing he was terrible at them and therefore avoiding them was all that separated him from the public humiliation that Bridget seemed so devil-may-care about courting. He owed it to her, though, and Mark had always been conscious of paying his debts. “I realize I was unforgivably rude when we met at the turkey curry buffet, and wearing a reindeer jumper,” he haltingly replied. “The truth is that I’m terrible at talking to strangers, I’m a failure at catching the tone of conversation, and I...” Mark stopped and shook his head, realizing that he was drifting off into the wrong territory. “I’m sorry. I’ve been meaning to say it for a while. And I know I haven’t really shown it much, but...I like you.” Bridget’s initial response to his dry quip was a smile, but then he started talking more and as he continued she found herself completely caught off guard and, she realized belatedly as she realized that he had now stopped talking altogether and was in fact in need of a response, with her mouth hanging open. She closed it, went to open it again to talk, and then closed it again. Mark Darcy liked her. Mark Darcy liked her? Of all the things that he might have said, this was perhaps the least expected. Mark was stiff and he frequently bordered on rude, and yes, he was quite handsome, but... the pizza, the wine, the ice cream, and the not hiding in his room all Valentine’s Eve. “Oh,” Bridget finally managed to say working very hard to not let the hysterical feeling take over. Instead she managed what she hoped was a normal looking smile and repeated a trifle uncertainly: “You like me?” Her question was punctuated by the beginning of an absurd rendition of ‘Wind beneath my wings’ was playing on the television, which was enough to make her feel slightly hysterical. Her Valentine’s Day had gone from being dreadful and humiliating to being all right really, to being, well -- a very handsome man confessing that he liked her to the soundtrack of an off-key Wind Beneath my Wings. Uncertainty did not begin to cover it. “I do,” Mark confirmed, and tried to ignore the soundtrack. Wind Beneath My Wings, for heavens sake, and badly sung at that. The people on this wedding show really had no taste whatsoever. But that was just a distraction from the conversation he was attempting to have. She didn’t seem to believe him, and he felt he should make his position more clear. “I mean, there are elements of the ridiculous about you,” he went on, because Mark always talked more (and more honestly) than he ought when he got flustered. “Your mother's pretty interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker. And, um, you tend to let whatever's in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration of the consequences...” Which he really had no room to be throwing stones about at the moment. “But the thing is, um, what I'm trying to say, very inarticulately, is that, um, in fact, perhaps despite appearances, I like you, very much. Just as you are. “I - well,” Bridget stammered. It wasn’t a particularly glamorous admission, and to be honest there were bits of her that were flaring up at the idea that there was anything ridiculous about her, and who was he talking about when he suggested that whatever was in the person’s head just came out their mouth because she rather thought that might be calling the kettle black, but ‘just as she was’. “Even though I leave the remote in the freezer?” She asked him with a wry smile, trying to wrap her mind around what precisely the implications of liking her exactly as she was might be. The admission wasn’t an unpleasant one at all and it occurred to her that she rather liked being liked just as she was even though she was not a superhero, or a thin or pretty as a superhero... “It’s sort of charming,” Mark admitted. “Bizarre, especially when you attempt to defend it as though it were some sort of logical choice you made, but charming. In an odd way. Like how you leave at least one pair of shoes in absolutely every room of the flat, as if you might have to put a set on and make a run for it at any time.” The truth was, Mark didn’t want a superhero or a supermodel or a super anything. He just wanted Bridget. He liked Bridget, and he didn’t like that many people, not really. She was fun, and funny, and smarter than she acted sometimes, and had, let’s all make our peace with it now, an excellent rack. It might not make any sense, but he liked her all the same. “Well, one never knows when one might need to make a run for it,” Bridget pointed out, at least partially because it was easier to keep things a little lighter than to dwell much on what the entire thing might mean for them. “I mean, particularly here. There are vampires and wizards and superheroes - and one might need to make a run, although I don’t know if it would actually do much good to make a run for it...” But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to dwell on it a little bit. What did it mean exactly? If he liked her and she couldn’t say that she didn’t fancy him just a little, then did that mean they ought to be something... more? “Is that why you got this?” She pointed to the pizza and the wine. “I mean -” if he’d liked her why hadn’t he just asked her on a date... unless this was meant to be a date... Mark had been ready to launch on the shoe angle. This was indeed terribly awkward, and he could have happily discussed how if her footwear littering the flat was indeed part of an escape plan, she ought to use more sensible shoes. Then she asked about this, the pizza, ice cream, and wine and sitting around watching terrible television, and he froze up again. "I...um, well...I just thought it might be nice," Mark said, and somewhat to his dismay found that his tone had gone all stiff and formal again. To his even greater dismay, some other part of his brain felt compelled to respond with being painfully honest again. "Everyone likes pizza, and you certainly like wine and ice cream, so I thought we could just have a...a Valentines Day that wasn't fraught with expectations and anxiety and disappointment." “Well, it was nice,” Bridget said and then realized the rest of what he’d said. What did he mean she certainly liked wine and ice cream? Of course she did, although not more than most people did, and had he meant that to be - but he had just said he liked her and if he liked her surely he didn’t mean it badly. She stared at him for a moment trying to figure out how to respond. The dreaded Wind beneath my Wings had dissolved into an argument about gold hand bells for favors and Bridget shook her head deciding it might be wise to ignore all other things lest she dive them straight into disappointment. “Well, I don’t know about you, but perhaps we ought to have that ice cream - oughtn’t we?” Mark smiled, mostly with relief that he’d somehow avoided saying the complete and utter wrong thing this time. And despite his remark about Bridget’s fondness for wine and ice cream, Mark rarely no to either ones. “We definitely should,” he agreed, equally relieved that the subject had changed to something other than Feelings. “And I’m going to step right up now and say that I will not be using a bowl, because Ben and Jerry’s already comes in a bowl at the store.” “And why on earth would you want to dirty more dishes?” Bridget asked, her eyes twinkling. While on some level she was completely freaking out at this pronouncement and she was certain some part her would feel quite awkward tomorrow, she couldn’t help but feel ecstatic at the same time. While it wasn’t the most romantic of Valentine’s - it certainly couldn’t be counted as a disappointment. Mark Darcy liked her - just as she was. Wine drinking, and ice cream eating, and remote control hiding, and high heel dispersing Bridget Jones was liked. That had to count as a Valentine’s success... didn’t it? |