Bygone

“I think Bucky isn’t getting our letters.” Steve says, helping her over a puddle as he walks her to work. The weather had given them a break during the last week in January and the snow had all melted.

Darcy doesn’t want wet shoes for the next eleven hours at work, so she lets him. She carries the umbrella, and he carries her case of copy work.

“He hasn’t said anything about the wedding.” Steve continues. “Or about you at all.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know what to say until he meets me? You know, the old saying that if you haven’t got anything nice to say you shouldn’t say it at all?”

Steve shakes his head. “I told him all about you. He’d have something to say.”

“So the post office is losing your letters to him, but not his to you?” Darcy makes another jump over a puddle with his hand for support. Rain boots. She misses rain boots. Good old puddle stomping rain boots, with grip soles and fake fur lining and tiny little Mjolnirs and lightning bolts all over them.

And, you know, Thor. She misses Thor and Jane.

“It just doesn’t seem very likely.” Steve wraps his arm around her waist, lending her his body heat. “He hasn’t said anything about not getting any, but then again, we didn’t expressly say that we would write. We just assumed.”

“Four and half weeks though, right?”

“February 27th.” Steve confirms.

A car comes wheeling around the corner and they dash towards the shopfront, Steve moving between her and the street as water sprays up.

Darcy had never been one to worry about clothing, but that had been before she’d had to spend hours working on a stain because she wouldn’t be able to afford another dress or pair of stockings whether the stain came out or not. One of the secretaries at the bank had been let go for coming in with a hole in her stockings.

They reach the bank just as Mr. Welker is unlocking the doors.

“John will be here to walk you home.”

“I know.” Darcy smiles.

“I’ll be home around ten. But you know that too.” Steve says with a wry smile. He kisses her cheek chastely, but hides a pinch to her hip with his coat. “Love you, Rogers.”

“Love you too, Rogers.” Darcy takes her copy work from him and hands over the umbrella. He follows her to the door as if she’ll melt if a single rain drop hits her.

When she tells him that later, he insists on verifying that she does indeed taste sweet enough to melt.

Darcy spends most of the day working on the copy work. Mr. Welker had cut her pay another dollar to make up for the ink she uses, but she can’t bring herself to care. The bank work is steady income, and the copy work is often an extra five to ten dollars a week.

The bank gets to pay an ace typist fourteen dollars a week, and Darcy gets to use their machine to pick up extra money in her down time.

She and Steve put fifteen dollars a week towards the Barnes’s expenses, and Darcy knows John puts in another fifteen himself, though neither his parents or Mrs. Barnes know. (Except that Darcy is pretty sure Mrs. Barnes does know, and just pretends she doesn’t because there’s nothing she can do, especially now that she needs two pills a day for her headaches.)

John picks her up right on time, and dedicates himself to getting her, her dress, and stockings home safely as studiously as Steve did. He also talks nonstop about the wedding, which is planned for the only Saturday that Bucky is in town. John plans to enlist at the Stark Expo four days later, and Bucky will ship out the next day.

When they reach a massive puddle John wraps an arm around her waist and carries her over. When he sets her down he blinks down at her. “Sorry. I think I’ve taken you on as another sister. Rebecca certainly considers you as good as.”

The following week Darcy visits Prescott’s, the shop down at 118th. Surrounded by the fine materials and newest fashions, she’s suddenly very aware of her faded floral print dress and dingy stockings.

But Rebecca is on cloud nine, dragging Darcy back to see her wedding dress. For all that Mrs. Prescott might have been hoping for better for her son, it seems that Mr. Prescott is enamored with his soon to be daughter-in-law. President Roosevelt is talking on the radio, but otherwise the shop is quiet.

Then Rebecca pulls Darcy to a long rack in the back and pulls out a blush pink dress. “And this is for you. To wear as my maid of honor. Don’t say anything about money, it’s already paid for and I did the work myself.”

Darcy runs a hand over the smooth material.

“Now we just need to make sure it fits. Come on, this way.” Rebecca prattles about measurements and cake and something about the priest.

They end up in a back room piled high with fabrics. Rebecca shuts the door behind her and leans against it with a huff. “There isn’t any reason your measurements will have changed, is there? But I suppose it’s barely been two months.”

Darcy shakes her head, not saying that she and Steve always used ‘rubbers’. Darcy was still enough of a modern girl to not want kids for years, and certainly not ready to face the reality of childbirth in the 40s. Steve was determined to get enlisted, and absolutely refused to chance leaving Darcy behind with a baby as his mother had been during the Great War.

Darcy bends to pick up the dress, stripped to her girdle and stockings, when Rebecca catches her arm, holding it up. The Brooklyn skyline with the Brooklyn bridge is drawn in black ink on Darcy’s upper right arm, where it’s always hidden by sleeves.

Rebecca traces a finger over the ink, a small smile curving her lips.

Darcy doesn’t show her the midnight blue iris, Darcy’s favorite flower, hidden by her girdle. She’d woken up with that one.

The dress fits perfectly. Darcy smooths her hands over the waist and looks up at Rebecca. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be giving me gifts for your wedding.”

“Shut up, Rogers.” Using Darcy’s new surname always makes Rebecca smile, and this time is no different. “It was nothing to add it to the rest. And now you’ll have a pretty dress for going out. I can’t wait for Steve to see you in it!”

Just as Darcy feels she and Steve have fallen into a routine - he’s got a good job with regular hours again, enough commission work to keep him happy, they have dinner at the Barnes’ twice a week, and host them once - he gets sick again.

It’s something in his lungs that starts with raspy breathing, mostly at night. It worsens until Darcy can hardly sleep because sometimes he seems to stop breathing altogether, holding his breath until it shudders out in a great gasp. The doctor comes four days in and it’s another expensive prescription, another job lost.

Again Mrs. Barnes comes to sit with him during the days. Rebecca takes over for her and Darcy finds a second job as a typist when she’s turning in Steve’s commissions to Mr. Anderson. He agrees that its only until Steve is better. She works from six-thirty to ten-thirty making twelve cents a page, with another fifty-cent bonus for every two hundred pages typed.

Steve doesn’t even realize for five days. John picks her up three of the nights, and then twice Mickey O’Brien comes for her. She’s glad for it, walking home that late. There’s almost a sense of you get what you deserve towards young women walking alone at that time of night. It's ridiculous and Darcy wants to introduce every last one of them to her taser.

Within a few more days, Steve is back up on his feet. He wants to go down to the docks and see about a job there again. The turnover is high. But Darcy convinces him, only once she cries, that it’s too cold and he’ll only get sick again.

Then Mickey O’Brien breaks his leg in a motorcycle accident on his delivery job, and gets Steve an interview first thing. Mrs. Barnes forces some of Bucky’s winter clothes on him, and that’s that. Steve is driving all over Brooklyn on a motorcycle and Darcy is praying to Thor he doesn’t meet the same fate as Mickey - and the last three delivery drivers.

No matter what he picks her up from work and gives her a ride home. When he gets his first paycheck, Darcy quits the job with Mr. Anderson, who is kind enough to privately tell her she’d be welcome back anytime.

Steve gets back on at the paper, arranging the presses again. Darcy spends those nights with Rebecca and sometimes John. They listen to the mystery show and come up with the most outlandish guesses about the endings. Darcy has years of Scooby Doo banked and rocks this game, often having Rebecca holding her stomach as she laughs.

One time Rebecca slaps Darcy hard enough to hurt. “You almost made me pee in front of John!”

“Oh, not in front of John!” Darcy teases, a little too loud. John looks over his shoulder from where he’s pouring them a half a coke each with a querying brow.

“Nothing!” Rebecca sings too loudly, and Darcy snorts, which makes Rebecca giggle.

By the time Steve gets home, John is pretty much just sitting back and watching them fight the giggles.

“They’re a right pair tonight.” John says as Steve pulls off his scarf, gloves, hat and coat.

“At least they’re easy on the eyes.” Steve observes, watching them with an amused smirk.

“Oh, I don’t know, your wife has been-“ Darcy throws Steve’s paperback Steinbeck at him.

“My wife has been what?” Steve asks, crossing the room. He bends and kisses the top of Darcy’s head. “Hello, gorgeous.”

“She’s been snorting.” Rebecca tattles.

Steve grins. “And I missed it?”

“Enough you.” Darcy shoos him away. Steve loves to tickle her until she can’t help but snort with laughter, and when he makes her do it in conversation he acts like he’s won an Emmy. “Go eat some dinner. It’s warm in the stove.”

“Don’t worry, she only made the biscuits.” Rebecca pipes in again.

Darcy flings herself back against the couch. “In my own home, you people treat me this way.”

The Steinbeck novel hits her in the stomach. Rebecca giggles so much she has to go calm herself in the bathroom, and John watches her go with the sappiest smile Darcy has ever seen.