Chapter Text
The thing about Harry, Mark has always found, is that he is charming in an unforgettable way. Casual invites to their dormitory were always followed up on, one conquest or another always showing up to watch rowing practise. Time hasn’t seemed to change that fact in the slightest, he thinks as he corks the wine just as the doorbell rings.
“I’ll get it,” he yells up the stairs.
Mark opens the door to Harry perched on the doorstep, leaning onto his umbrella with a grin and a bottle of wine in his hand. “Brother dear,” he says and Mark rolls his eyes.
“Do you always have to be so melodramatic?”
“Comes with the profession. I’m a man of diversions,” Harry says and steps past him into the hallway.
“Yes, as your lawyer, I would know all about that. Which prison was it last? Magadan?”
“That was three and half years ago,” Harry says, “Besides, you enjoy the challenge.”
He’s not wrong in that, although Mark didn’t appreciate sitting at a police station in Eastern Russia at two in the morning one bit. Harry remains his only permanent client to date, exempt from the realm of high profile human rights cases Mark has been taking on for the better part of two decades now. Harry isn’t a case that swallows him whole for months or years on end, but he isn’t resolved in one go either, resurfacing on the other end of his one phone call from some obscure prison again and again.
Mark isn’t entirely sure anymore if it’s fraternal obligation on both sides or a matter of competence now. After all, he’d started getting his suits tailored at Kingsman to support Harry, but made the bullet proof arsenal a permanent fixture in his closet after realising he’s unfortunate enough to have a look-alike secret agent on the loose. Him and Harry have always had a knack for getting each other in trouble.
“You have had worse years,” Mark admits.
“True. Remember 1992?”
“I’d much prefer not to.”
They drift through the living room into the kitchen, somehow always in tune no matter how long they’ve been apart. Mark peers into the oven while Harry pries open cabinet doors looking for the wine glasses.
“You’ve moved house again. It’s a bloody nuisance.”
“Lots of things can happen in three years, Harry.”
“Indeed. You’ve what? Gotten married, divorced, and had a child with another woman.”
Mark cringes at that and Harry’s teasing smile transforms into a concerned frown. “Bridget’s not exactly happy about all that,” Mark says, “Understandably. If you don’t mind not bringing it up.”
“Of course. You have talked to her though? Because if I have to watch a third marriage of yours-”
“Despite what you may think, I’m not a complete oaf.”
“I never said that,” Harry says pointedly, “but you do have a history of letting the rigid cane up your arse run your life.”
“Christ-” Mark flushes and turns back to the roast in the oven. “Besides, we’re not married.”
“Perhaps not on paper. Don’t cock it up is all I’m saying.”
“I won’t.”
“Good,” Harry says and corks the bottle, “because she’s coming down the stairs right now.”
“You and your spy senses,” Mark grumbles just before Bridget appears in the doorway with William in her arms.
“Oh, hello. You two are already in full swing with the wine,” she says and presses a kiss to Mark’s cheek. “Sorry I took so long,” bridget says to Harry, “We had a bit of an incident earlier involving lots of porridge and my hair.”
“William’s got your aim for destruction,” Mark says to Harry, who groans.
“It was only three windows.”
“It was the same window three times. Reordan came so close to mauling you.”
Bridget moves to set William down in a baby walker. “Is this a story I want to hear?” she asks and watches her son shuffle slowly across the kitchen floor with a bright smile.
The two brothers give each other a sideways glance before Mark says, “Not really. I’ve got far more incriminating tales of our time at Cambridge. He had a worse reputation than Daniel Cleaver.”
Bridget cocks an eyebrow at that.
“I have much better manners, I assure you,” Harry says, offering her a glass of wine.
“But just as much mischief,” Mark adds.
“Better taste in wine though, wouldn’t you say, Bridget?” Harry turns to her with a knowing smile and Mark suppresses a brief impulse to kick him in the shin.
Bridget only sips at the wine and says: “This is much better than anything he ever bought me, but I don’t know how you would know about that?” She levels Mark with a look and he averts his eyes.
To make matters worse, Harry says, “Oh, you know, the usual. Mark crying on his big brother’s shoulder.”
“For the record, I’m the older one,” Mark says and clears his throat.
“By four minutes. And I’ve grown taller.”
“By half an inch.”
“Boys, please,” Bridget interrupts. “You’re both dashing and impossible. Mind me asking what the wine is, Harry?”
“It’s an Alphonse Mellot Cuvée Edmond.”
“Don’t we have that as well?” Bridget asks and picks up the other open bottle on the counter.
“Mark prefers the 2002, I lean toward the 2006,” Harry explains.
“The 2006 is more expensive, not that it matters. I simply prefer the flavour profile.”
Harry turns to Bridget. “How about you?”
“Uh, I’m really not an authority on the subject. I’ve always been a Chardonnay girl.” Bridget chuckles and makes a face at Harry. She doesn’t suppose he’s the sort who’d get drunk alone at home crying down the phone on their birthday, but then the Darcys have always been full of surprises. “Cocktails and shots and other such things.”
“Nothing beats a good bottle of vodka.”
“I beg to differ, when it gets you thrown into a thai prison.”
“That’s not how I-” Bridget says with a confused look, before Mark interrupts her to add, “I meant Harry.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen. She asks: “You’ve been in a thai prison too?”
“There was an incident, yes, but I’m afraid I’m prone to little squabbles with the authorities here and there. Good thing to have Mark as a brother. What worries me is the ‘too’ in that question.”
Bridget laughs nervously and says, “That was really not my fault. My friend met this guy - gorgeous and half her age - and, uh, he gave this hideous fertility snake bowl, which ended up in my luggage because she’d run out of space in her suitcase. The bowl out to be a massive stash of cocaine and a bit of a pickle for me of course, which is how I ended up singing Madonna behind bars renting my bra out for cigarettes.” She fights a blush and swallows. The story has become funny over the years, but she’s never told it to anyone in a tailored suit. “But, you know, Mark’s quite skilled at handling these sort of things and here I am, not renting out my undergarments.”
“You’ve never told me about this,” Harry says to his brother, sounding accusing and amused at once.
“It was a bit of a convoluted matter at the time,” he says and looks at Bridget, the memory of Daniel Cleaver passing unspoken between them. He ought to have gotten it right then already, but all roads lead to Rome. Eight years and many hiccups later he’s got Bridget - still, again - and William.
“How is that roast beef looking?”
“Almost done.”
“He’s quite remarkable,” Harry says as he’s crouched down opposite William in his walker. The baby squeals at him, offering a four and a half toothed grin at his uncle as Bridget laughs at them from the sofa.
“Be careful,” she says just in time for William to reach out for Harry’s face with his apple puree covered fingers.
“Oh, foul,” Harry shouts and Bridget dissolves into a new, wine infused bout of giggles.
Mark returns with another bottle of wine and a kitchen towel he tosses at Harry. “And another has fallen victim to William Jones-Darcy’s cunningly deceptive charm.”
“A good general rule is not to get within arms reach, unless you’re prepared to be covered in food or bodily fluids.”
“Although he doesn’t spit up anymore.”
Harry wipes at his face and gives them both a look. “Aren’t you two just delightful?”
“What are you implying?” Mark asks and takes a seat on the sofa next to Bridget, who curls into him. He notes she’s long discarded her shoes to pull her legs up under her and that there’s a loose thread in her tights that’s ripped from her heel halfway up her thigh. So very Bridget, he thinks, as he settles an arm around her. “We’re unbelievably exciting.”
“Indeed,” Bridget agrees with a twinkle in her eye. “We never go out, Mark spends most his free time baby proofing every nook of the house, and I’ve developed quite the knack for removing dried stains. How dare you call us dull?”
It’s Harry’s turn to laugh, something William seems to find particularly entertaining, since he shoves his food coated teething ring at him as an offering.
“Thank you, William,” Harry tells him seriously and sets the plastic ring down on the towel with the briefest flash of disgust crossing his face.
“He’ll want that back in about twenty seconds, by the way,” Mark says, though he doesn’t doubt Harry would figure that out for himself just fine.
He does rather well with William in a way Mark didn’t expect. They used to be so similar, him and Harry, it went without question that he could do anything Harry could and Harry could do anything he did, but over the years they’ve grown to become wholly different people: Mark being the sensible, if slightly emotionally stunted one looking to settle down while Harry had chosen a life of lonely extravagance. Come to think of it, they probably haven’t spent an evening together this effortlessly in a decade.
Mark wonders if this is Bridget’s doing too. She’s the one who mistook Harry for Mark in the street and brought him face to face with his nephew for the first time. She’s the one to have pestered Mark about inviting Harry to dinner. Moreover she gets along with Harry, running with his eccentricities in a way Mark has never seen anyone do before. It’s so different from tense Christmas dinners with Camilla on the family estate, of her giving him impatient sideways glances during Harry’s wilder tales.
This, on the other hand, is pleasant, the three of them and William existing in some bizarre sort of harmony involving the trading of prison stories. Mark could get used to it.
As if on cue, William lets out a high pitched scream, pointing to the teething ring on the coffee table.
“Please and thank you, William,” Harry says, but hands it over anyway. “Manners maketh man.”