It's a nice service. Sarah leaves some money and it allows them to buy a decent casket to bury her next to Steve's dad, but she still puts all her savings into it, despite Steve's complains.
"I already buried my mother, Steve" she says and it tastes like ashes "I know what it feels like"
Oh, of course she knows what it feels like. It's like an open wound, still fresh inside her, and Sarah's death does nothing good to it. The grave is the only place she can visit her mammy now, so far away she can only make time for it once a month, to go and just talk, tell her all about her days.
She knows what it feels like to lose a mother, so when she and James walk Steve back to his apartment, his eyes devoid of tears, she knows what it's coming.
She hears them talk, and knows James is going to ask to come over to stay with them for a while. All Steve has to do is shine shoes, take out the trash, keep his hand to himself and stay away from the girl's room.
Like Steve, gentleman, good Catholic Steve would ever sneak into her room…while other people were in there.
When Steve can't seem to find his keys, she takes them out of her purse, where she put them before leaving for the funeral because he had forgotten them. She puts them on his hand and offers him the best smile she can muster up.
"Thank you, guys. But I can get by on my own" Steve says, and she hates the way the words sound coming from him.
"But you don't have to, love" she says, putting her hand on his face and trying not to cry, because she knows this. She knows what feeling alone feels like, what losing your last family does to you. But she also knows that, despite her wishes to be alone, she didn't really want that back then. Despite wanting to be alone, she never wanted to feel alone again.
"We're with you 'til the end of the line, pal" James puts his hand on his shoulder, squeezing, and she looks at him in the eyes and hopes she's telling him everything he should know.
She pushes her way into the apartment when Steve opens the door, sits on the couch and refuses to move until he sits by her side. It takes maybe ten seconds of silence before he breaks, and she holds him, his fingers curling around her shoulders, until he tires himself out and she stays by his side the whole night, sitting on the couch with his head on her lap and his feet in James'.
After that, it's like they have to learn to live again. James moves out to live with Steve in a new apartment, so the rent is not as harsh, leaving her with a family that is not her own, despite the many months she's spend with them. It's uncomfortable, no matter how welcoming and nice and good the Barnes are. She starts taking more shifts at the hospital, but none on the infectious ward again, because she knows otherwise Sarah would come down from Heaven to pull on her feet at night. She even considers taking a second job, but Steve talks her out of it. Like he doesn't have two.
They take down the curtain that separates her bed from the girls', move Becky's inside the room and she and Izzy start sharing, leaving Annie with her own bed.
She puts up a calendar on the room, marking all her shifts so whenever she gets there too late in the night, she just sleeps on the couch and lets each have their own bed.
By Christmas, she has enough money to buy small presents for everyone, even for Ms. Brennan, with whom she has dinner at least once a week. Nothing big, nothing expensive, and she cries herself to sleep that night after the dinner Winnie made for all of them, just like she cried herself to sleep on her mammy's birthday, on Thanksgiving and every night she just missed her voice telling her good night, muffling her cries against the pillow and drying her tears every few seconds in case someone decided to come talk to her. If the girls ever notice, they don't say anything.
The next morning, she dresses herself up, curls her hair and meets Steve with a fake smile that is just a mirror of his own. They're quiet, his hands cold even through his gloves, and she has to hug him and tell him to breathe with her when he tries to muffle his cries and triggers an asthma attack.
And then in New Year she buys booze and brings it to Steve and James' bachelor apartment, as she calls it, and they get piss drunk, watch the fireworks on the roof and she kisses Steve at midnight, her arms around his shoulders and his hands firm against her waist, sloppy and wet and excited as they pray and hope for new beginnings and James mocks them from a few feet away. Then they go down to their living room, where she and Steve cry for maybe ten minutes and the three of them scream their lungs out, trying to get everything bad of the year out of their body. They fall asleep on the floor, a mess of limbs barely covered with some blankets they somehow manage to find.
And the next day she goes to work while her neck hurts like hell, with a hangover and wrinkled clothes, thankful that she keeps her uniform in the hospital and feeling lighter than she has in weeks.
When another nurse offers her a cigarette, she accepts and chokes herself in the smoke, wondering how on Earth Steve does it with his asthma, until she gets the hang of it and doesn't stop. She buys her own packets then, keeping them hidden from the younger girls. She and Annie go out to the fire escape for a smoke some nights, when her shift has been too much and Annie just feels like it. She's recently turned seventeen, but she feels a thousand years old sometimes.
And then, in one of their dates a few weeks later, Steve blushes as he tells her that James was also on a date, and that he told him not to wait him up. It's only four o'clock, so she pulls on the arm she has hers looped around and leads the way.
She can't really ignore it. Not with how Steve made her feel, how their kisses were escalating.
Steve opens the door and she jumps at him, kicking the door closed with her shoe. She doesn't wear high heels around Steve, so she's not at risk of losing her balance as she helps him find the couch, her hands tangled in his hair as he pulls her closer.
She falls first, her hair starting to loosen from the hairdo she put it in that morning, and Steve falls atop of her, separating their lips so they don't knock into each other.
"We're not having sex" he says, and she's really surprised he can say it without turning into a tomato.
"No, we're not" she says, and god she wants to cry, because she's not ready for that, she's not and he knows it, but she needs to discover Steve and needs to discover herself, needs to know what they can bring out of the other, needs time for themselves, alone.
Steve kisses her again and she answers in kind, opening her mouth like she's seen others do, and god, how can she go back to simple kissing?
She grabs the back of Steve's head and brings him closer, pushing her chest out to just feel him against her, solid and real. He puts himself between her legs, taking fists of her coat into his hands.
"This needs to go" she says, blushed and hot, starting to unbutton it. As she undoes the top, Steve undoes the bottom and pushes it from her shoulders, throwing it into the floor.
He kisses her jawline, pushing his hands into her blouse to touch her bare waist and she gasps as his cold hands place themselves on her.
"Asshole" she whispers, letting out a breathy laugh as she searches for the buttons of his coat.
"Need to warm them up" Steve answers against her lips, taking them out to help her with his coat. Once it's off, his hands go back to her waist.
She takes his face in her hands, kissing his lips and starting a path towards his forehead. She kisses his nose and his cheek and pulls away when she reaches the top of his face to look at him in the eyes, smiling at his flushed face.
"I love you, Steve" she says, and thanks Heaven she can see perfectly well up close, because her boyfriend is beautiful, with his kind, kind eyes and his hair and his nose and his everything and God, if she's not in love, then what is she in? "I love you so much" she whispers, like it's a secret only the two of them can share.
She kisses him, closing her eyes to stop the tears that threaten to well up and gaps when Steve crushes her against his body, one of his hands going to her back to keep her there while his other arm holds his weight.
"I love you" Steve whispers back as he buries his face against her neck, leaving butterfly kisses there "I love you, I love you, I love you" he repeats like a mantra, and then he bites her neck at the same time he pushes his hips against hers and God.
"Ah!" she moans, throwing her head back, because this is new, completely new, but it feels so so good she never wants for him to stop. She fists his shirt as his hands go higher, his thumb just barely brushing against her bra as he leaves a trail of wet kisses along her neck-
And then, because the world hates her, the door fucking opens.
She squeals and pushes Steve off her, throwing him to the floor, where he lands with a huff. She sits up, pushing her skirt, blouse and sweater down from where they've ridden up and looks over the back of the couch.
And, of fucking course, James is standing there, dressed to the nines with a pretty girl on his arm. It takes him a second to see her, but when he does, his eyes widen.
"I hate you" she says when she sees the smirk appearing on his face.
"Lucy?" he asks, like he can't see her there, with her hair down and tangled, and then of course Steve has to stand up, with his mussed-up hair and his ridden-up shirt and his flushed cheeks.
"Buck" Steve says, glaring at him.
"Oh God. I don't know how to feel about this" James says, but of course he knows, because the next second he's laughing, having to let go of the girl's arm to clutch at his stomach.
"Weren't you supposed to be on a date, away, until later?" she asks through clenched teeth, narrowing her eyes to see him better.
"Well- Well, maybe" he says, standing up "Lucy, this is Mary. Mary, this is Lucy, Steve's girl"
And she lifts an eyebrow, because c'mon, she's more than that, isn't she? They've know each other for almost six years now, she lives with his parents because he begged them to take her in, she's gotta be more than just Steve's girl.
Isn't she?
"Lucy Fiorello" she says, extending her hand to the girl and trying to be pleasant while having her hair a mess "I'm sorry about this, we didn't know anybody would be here" and again she glared at James, because a little warning would have been really useful.
God, what if they heard her? She's going to kill James.
Thank you so much to everyone who favourited, followed and reviewed! I mean, 99 followers? Wow!