Bygone

Darcy marries Steve Rogers on December 15th, 1942, exactly three months, two weeks and four days after she met him. She’s never been more certain of a decision in her entire life.

Rebecca and John are their witnesses, and Mrs. Barnes sits in one of the courthouse pews. John had procured paperwork for Darcy through one of his brother-in-law’s more shady relations, and the judge hadn’t looked twice.

Steve wears his father’s ring with a piece of cloth knotted around it several times to keep it on. For Christmas he had his mother’s rings re-sized for Darcy’s smaller fingers.

She takes a single day off from the bank, much to Ms. Howitz disapproval. The reception at the church is small, only attended by people from the neighborhood. Rebecca and Mr. Grant’s granddaughter Eunice Adams bake a cake. Vera Adams, the only child resulting from Eunice’s marriage before her husband died, eats eight pieces and throws up in her mother’s lap. She cries until Steve talks to her and tells her it’s okay.

Darcy wakes up the following morning with her face pressed into Steve’s neck. A smile takes over her face and she snuggles in closer.

“Good morning, Mrs. Rogers.” He says, voice raspy from sleep, but smiling.

She wants him again, but their second time last night she’d felt his chest jumping and his breaths had shuddered.

Instead she gets ready for a day spent inside with him. She pulls on one of her looser dresses, not bothering with a girdle.

Steve’s apartment is a shotgun layout. There are no doors other than the front door and the door to the bathroom. She can see straight through the living room, with his worn couch and drawing table, to the kitchen where he stands with his pants unbuttoned and a sweater pulled over his mussed head.

She leans against the doorway and watches him until he notices her.

He stops, his hand hovering over some toast on a plate. “I still can’t convince myself that this is real. That you actually married me.”

Darcy frowns. “Why do you say it like that?”

“I know you love me.” He shrugs his shoulder. “But it’s fact that you could have any man you wanted, even if you only looked like that, without everything else that makes you amazing.”

“You do know that I have my insecurities, right? I have stomach rolls when I sit down, I jiggle when I walk, I’m paler than your canvases, even in the dead of summer, and I have weird toes.” She walks into the kitchen and wraps her arms around him, bending her head to rest it against his back between his shoulder blades. “But I tell myself that you love me and that means you love all of those things. Just like I love every part of your body, like your heart, because it keeps you alive, even if it has to work twice as hard as everyone else’s.”

He doesn’t say anything, just wraps his arms around her. Finally he kisses her temple. “Darce, jiggling when you walk really, really isn’t a bad thing.”

Darcy laughs, bracing her forehead against his shoulder.

“But you do have weird toes.”

They eat cold toast with jam for breakfast with the radio on because Darcy always likes music.

They spend the morning rearranging the drawers and making room in the small closet. Darcy’s meager belongings are soon interfiled with Steve’s. Her case of copy work joins his briefcase of commissions by the front door. He moves the valet that had been his father’s over to the mirror so she can sit in the mornings while she does her hair and make-up.

They end up back in bed by lunchtime, but it’s slow. The touches are soft and lingering. He puts both his thumbs on her nipples and lightly drags the nails over until she’s twitching underneath him, and he slides in so slow that just before she’s about to grab onto him and try to yank him down, she comes in a long, delicious shudder of pleasure.

Afterwards he brushes his hands over her body and she declares his toes not weird at all. In fact, his feet, like his hands, are rather pretty. He drags one of his canvases from behind the bed and holds it against her skin, ready to declare her not that pale.

He opens his mouth and shuts it again, and his lips twitch.

“I told you.” Darcy tells him, pushing the canvas away.

He traces a finger down her rib cage, his eyes following the movement before looking back up at her. “Well, I think it’s beautiful.”

“Draw on me.” Darcy leans up on her elbows to look down at her body. “Where no one can see.”

He draws the Brooklyn skyline just under her breasts, spanning her entire rib cage. It’s a waste of ink, but when she tells him, he shakes his head. Midway through he begins to dip his head, catching her nipple in his mouth.

She ends up riding him for the first time, in order to prevent smudging the ink.

The next week Steve and John both show up with wrinkled clothes and busted lips. Steve refuses to speak of it, but Rebecca gets it out of John.

Apparently some of the neighborhood busy bodies were on baby watch, because of course the only reason Darcy would marry Steve was if she’d gotten into trouble. Some thought she’d been sent from home to live with the Barnes already in the family way, others thought she’d gotten into trouble living in the big city without a man in the house to look out for her, and Steve took the fall as a family friend.

It doesn’t bother Darcy, but it makes Steve livid to hear that people are even thinking that way about her, much less talking about it.

They celebrate Christmas with the Barnes. Steve surprises her with a pair of warm winter gloves lined with velvet in sumptuous royal blue. She gets him more ink and paints.

Mrs. Barnes and Rebecca give Darcy a new dress in emerald green, and Steve three dress shirts altered to fit him from the church bin. Darcy makes them a real apple pie, and they finish the entire thing that night.

Darcy had wanted to stay in on New Years, but Rebecca begs them to go to the Prescott’s party so that she can go.

Darcy meets three more of John’s sisters. Gladys and Geraldine are just as snotty and poor mannered as Ruth and Evelyn, but Agnes is a treat. Darcy is almost certain that Gladys and Ruth spend the night purposefully talking quietly on Steve’s deaf side to embarrass him. Darcy spends much of the party talking with Agnes and her husband Charles before Rebecca comes to drag her outside.

Steve brings her coat and helps her climb up onto the carriage house with the rest of the younger party-goers to watch the fireworks. The fireworks are loud and smoky, but they’re away from the prying eyes of the older people and it’s nice to relax. She sits between Steve’s legs and leans back against his chest while Rebecca holds onto one of her hands.