To Be Okay [PG-13] Steve, Mary, Danny
I've been really terrified to post this because there's another story that was just posted that used basically the same line I did for how this story came to be. And I don't want anyone to think I'm stealing or copying or anything. I've been working on this for awhile just because of how hard it's been. And I definitely didn't steal from anyone so...I guess if you think that then there's no reason to comment about it because I'll just delete it and what not.
This is in response to Pulling at Fragments by sheafrotherdon . This in a way is what happened to me, but not really. I can't explain it. I tried to write what happened to me, but considering I've never told a single person any of this in my entire life it was too much for me to handle. So this is different. It's wish-fulfillment in that I wish there was some I could tell or talk to, but every time I try I can't. Mary is way stronger than me.
Title: To Be Okay
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Own nothing.
Word Count: 2816
Warnings: Could contain triggers for survivors. Mentions of rape.
Summary: There was this incident once, in L.A. Mary’d been really good about keeping it secret, not saying a word.
There was this incident once, in L.A. Mary’d been really good about keeping it secret, not saying a word. She mostly only thought about it at night when she was trying to sleep. So she’d gotten pretty used to infomercials and margaritas from the blender. It had become kind of a thing for her. Sometimes she could even sleep with the soft blue of the television set flickering and the lull of a voice selling her company. Because even a salesman was better than loneliness.
When Catherine is over she jokes around, says she’ll have some competition. The lies come easy because that’s how she lives her life now, from lie to lie, from sleepless night to sleepless night. She hasn’t had sex since that night. Mostly because it gives her a sick feeling in her stomach and a little bit because she’s scared. Can’t imagine letting someone put their hands on her body, can’t imagine saying yes because someone took that away from her. And it’s not like she didn’t try to fight. Her brother was a fucking Navy SEAL after all. And before all of that he was an over protective brother that decided she needed to know how to throw a punch. So she knows how to defend herself. She knows. But it didn’t work. It didn’t change anything. Didn’t slow him down at all.
Mary knows it only takes four pounds of pressure to break a knee cap. Knows that gouging at eyeballs and punching someone in the throat is the most effective thing she can do. And she thought she was ready, thought she was prepared. She was Mary Ann fucking McGarrett after all. She could handle anything.
But she hadn’t been ready. And fucking men and their hidden strength. And why even bother with all the self-defense crap if it wasn’t even useful in the end? Because he’d held her down and covered her mouth and left bruises. So many bruises. Sometimes she still sees them, out of the corner of her eye as she passes a mirror or changes her shirt. Big black and blue splotches shaped like finger prints on her hips, her arms, her face.
She’d gone to the police. More because she thought she had to. She’d filed a report, sat through the four hour exam, taken the pills and shots they’d given her. Laid still for pictures and gave her statement. It didn’t matter though. She knew what they were all thinking. That a girl like her should have expected this, was damn near asking for it. And who was she to argue. She’d always been a troublemaker, always dressed a bit provocatively. She started to believe them. Figured the experts were right, so why bother with finding the guy. She’s pretty sure the cops just filed the report away and never looked at it again, never even thought about it.
Mary’s a woman. Okay. And she knows about how men aren’t nice and how most of them are dumb fucks. But it’s always just been someone getting too handsy or being a douche. It’s never been anything like this. Never been too much for her to handle. But then she was being grabbed and held down and then she just gets angry. Because what the actual fuck? Who does that? Because even though she knows the world is full of jerks her older brother is a prince and her dad, oh man her dad. Who treated her mom like an angel, who never made her cry, and always opened the door and helped her with her coat. And Christ why her? And the only thing she’s got, the only reason she can come up with is because. Because she dresses like a tramp and she’s slept with other guys and apparently she’s easy and apparently she was asking for it. Fuck her life. Fuck her life because she was raised better than that. But whatever. Whatever because it happened, so she deals like she always does. In silence. Because no one was ever there before. Why would they be there now?
And then she’s kidnapped. It’s as if any progress she might have been making is thrown back in her face. This time she manages to knock a guy’s tooth out. That makes her feel pretty good about herself. But she’s still tied up in the trunk of a car with bruises on her face and hands and chest. And then Steve is there and he’s saving her. It makes her kind of hate him a little. Because where was he when that guy pulled her into an alley? Where was he when all the moves he’d taught her hadn’t worked? Where was he?
Then she slips. Mentions it, but blows it off just as easily. Her heart clenches in her chest, feels one of those stupid panic attacks coming on. She breathes through it and focuses on the task at hand.
Steve can’t decide if there’s something wrong or not. It’s been so many years since he’s seen his sister that for all he knows this is who she is now. A girl that wears old jeans and baggy t-shirts and stays in on Friday nights. He upgrades the cable package though, so she has something more to watch than infomercials. She’s usually asleep when he gets home late at night from an exhausting case. And no matter how quiet he is (and he’s quiet, he’s fucking stealthy) she wakes up. Eyes wide, hands gripping the arm of the chair, and even when she sees Steve, after she recognizes him as her older brother, she still doesn’t relax. At least not all the way. So Steve mostly figures something is wrong. And so help him if it’s another boyfriend that just hasn’t gotten the hint yet. Because first he’ll kick his ass and then he’ll give Mary a nice long talk because she has got to start making better life choices. She’s too old for this. They both are.
When she mentions the incident in L.A. Steve wants to take the issue further, but she won’t let him. So he calls in Danny.
“I need you to do something for me.” Steve says.
“Yeah. What?” Danny’s a bit skeptical because this is Steve after all. He could want him to scale a building or something.
“Mary. She was involved in something. Back in L.A. Find out what.” He pauses. “Please.” He adds. Danny stares at him for a moment. Thinking.
“You sure you wanna go down this road?” Steve gives a curt nod. “Okay.”
The next day Danny has a folder in his hand when he walks into Steve’s office. He’s sent Chin and Kono out with no explanation, but they get it and leave anyway. He shuts the office door behind him despite the deserted bullpen.
“I’m going to ask you again. And I want you to think about your answer this time. Because you open this can of worms, you jump down this rabbit hole, there is no going back. I get that she’s your sister. I get that. I have four. But there are some things sisters just don’t tell brothers and they have their reasons. So I’m going to ask you. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Did you get it?”
“Steven.”
“Yes, yes dammit. I asked didn’t I?” And Steve just knows it’s something awful by the way his gut clenches at the look on Danny’s face. At the way Danny sits in the chair and rubs a hand over his face before he can even make eye contact with Steve again. “It’s bad.” And it’s not really a question, but it is. And damn him for wanting to know the answer. But he has to because she’s his sister.
“Yeah,” Danny says, “it’s bad. And when I tell you. When I finish you’re going to remain in this office. You’re going to stay here. Because every idea in the first ten minutes that comes into your head is a bad one. This is something even you can’t fix.” Danny pauses, opens the folder. “September 12th, 2010 at 8pm in Downtown L.A. Mary Ann McGarrett was beaten and raped.” Danny reads from the file. Steve goes pale. Feels as if all the blood is draining out of his body.
Rage can’t be the emotion he’s feeling because it’s so much more than that. And it’s not blinding. He can see perfectly, knows exactly what he’s going to do. “Sit down.” Danny tells him. He didn’t even realize he’d stood. When he moves towards the door Danny blocks his way. “I said sit down. And if you think I won’t body check you you’ve got another thing coming.” Steve glares, but his Super SEAL one hundred yard stare doesn’t work on Danny. “This is not what she needs Steven. And I know exactly what you’re thinking because I’ve been there. Because I have four sisters and I’ve been right where you are. You want statistics. I’ve got tons of them. One in four women is sexually assaulted and all these statistics they made my sister feel better because she could deal. She could deal if she was the one in four because it meant the other three didn’t have to deal. Every two minutes another woman is assaulted and fifteen out of sixteen rapists will never spend a day in jail. And those are horrible and scary. So you’ve got to know what you’re dealing with here.”
Danny takes a deep breath. Let’s everything sink in. Steve gives him a barely perceptible nod.
“She’s going to need to know that it wasn’t her fault. And you’re going to have to remind her of that all the time. That this guy was just,” Danny has trouble finding a word so he just lets the words trail off, “that it wasn’t because she was wearing a pretty dress or a low cut shirt or any of that. And she’ll ask why and there’s no answer. And the most you can do, the only think you can do is be there. Let her tell you what she wants, what she needs. You acting like a Neaderthal and tearing down everything from here to L.A. will make it worse than it already is.”
Steve knows he’s right. He’s been to the same seminars Danny’s been to, knows how he’s supposed to treat a victim. But this isn’t a victim. This is Mary. Mary is his baby sister. Mary with her gold hair and bright smile and such a ringer for their mother.
Steve holds out his hand for the file and says, “Let me see.”
“I don’t think-” Danny starts.
“I said let me see, Danny.” And the coldness in Steve’s voice does something to Danny’s soul. The way he’s already steeling himself to see the photos and read the report and Danny just wants to save him from all of it. But he can’t. So he hands over the file. Steve takes it and sits back down behind his desk.
As soon as Mary sees him come through the door she can just tell he knows. She stands there, staring at him. He stares right back. Mary wants to break down, to sob and scream because she had tried so hard to keep him from finding out and now he’s going to be all noble and worried and he’s probably going to…
“Don’t send me away. Please.” She gasps, throat raw from everything she’s keeping from him.
“Okay,” Steve says, “okay.”
“If we’re gonna. If I have to.” Mary stops. Takes a breath. “I need a shower first.”
Steve nods. “Okay.”
She heads for the stairs, pauses like she wants to say something, but then just heads up to take a shower. Steve rubs a hand over his face.
Mary uses Steve’s shower. The one in the master bedroom with the big fluffy towels on the rack and all of Steve’s things in the shower and on the sink. It was like she was a teenager again and she’d never left and none of the really crappy things in her life had happened yet. If she closed her eyes and listened hard enough she could hear Steve yelling for her to hurry up and her mom cooking breakfast and her dad yelling at Steve to stop yelling. She wants to smile at the thought, but can’t. She turns on the shower instead.
When she comes back down she’s wearing a pair of Steve’s sweats and one of his old Annapolis t-shirts. Her hair is still damp from the shower and she hasn’t brushed it yet. Steve thinks she looks beautiful and wants to know how anyone could ever see her and want to hurt her. The thought makes his stomach turn and something must show in his eyes because Mary takes a step back. Steve takes a breath.
“Hey, I uh.” He doesn’t really know how to form the sentence so he just gestures to the dining room. Mary looks and a small smile appears on her face. He’s used the chairs and table along with an old blanket to make a fort. It looks way better than any of the ones they made as kids. “Like old times.” Steve tells her.
She follows him into the fort where he’s set up pillows and blankets and a tray of all her favorite foods and she can’t believe he remembered all of it. And if she wasn’t ready to cry before she definitely is now.
“Hey, hey.” Steve says when he sees the tears. He holds out his arms, but he doesn’t touch her, doesn’t know if he should. And it kills Mary because she should be able to hug her brother, but it scares her a little and she doesn’t know why. She ignores the fear and crumples into his arms. He rubs soothing circles on her back and mumbles ridiculous things about how it’s all going to be okay when it clearly isn’t.
“You don’t have. There’s no need. I brought movies.” He finally gets out. “And the laptop. And I will suffer through Lady and the Tramp for the millionth time for you and only you.” Mary snorts.
“You love that movie. You stole all your moves from Tramp.”
“Liar. My moves have Thomas O’Malley written all over them.”
“Yeah. Whatever.” She wipes at her eyes with the hem of her shirt and sits up.
“Hey,” Steve says, grabbing her hand, “hey, I love you. Okay.” Mary nods.
“I’m sorry.” She bursts out.
“What? What are you sorry for?”
Mary just shakes her head, the tears falling again. She throws her hands in the air because there’s nothing she can say. Steve still doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch her. If he can initiate a hug or if he should just wait for her. And what if he screws this up, makes it worse.
“I tried you know. Like really hard.” Steve nods as she talks, not quite sure what she really means, but he wants to be as reassuring as possible. “But all the stuff you taught me, all the fancy moves. None of it worked. And I’m really sorry, okay? I tried.”
And Steve gets it. Knows that she’s talking about what happened and he doesn’t care anymore about what he should or shouldn’t do he just pulls Mary tight against his chest and holds her, smoothes his hand down her hair.
“It’s okay.” He murmurs. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s okay.” He just keeps saying it over and over, hoping it will sink in and that she’ll get it.
When she’s all cried out and the front of Steve’s t-shirt is soaked she pulls back.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Sure?”
“That it’s not my fault.”
Steve grabs her face with both hands. He makes sure she’s looking at him before he answers.
“I’m positive. There is nothing that you did wrong, ever. There’s no reason you deserved this.” She nods because she wants to believe him, but it’s going to take some time. “You hungry?” he asks.
“Starving.”
Steve shuffles around a bit and hands her a pitcher full of margarita. He’s busy grabbing the glasses he brought when he sees her take a sip straight from the pitcher.
“Why do you do that? I have cups. I’m not drinking your backwash for the rest of the night.” Mary rolls her eyes because he always made the same argument when she took a sip from the carton of orange juice in the fridge.
“SEALs don’t drink margaritas.” Steve just laughs at her.
“Shows what you know. Now give me the pitcher.”
Once they’re settled back against the pillows and Mary has a plate filled with Oreos and peanut butter and cheddar cheese flavored chips Steve starts the movie.
“Hey,” Mary says, “thanks.”
“Always.”
This is in response to Pulling at Fragments by sheafrotherdon . This in a way is what happened to me, but not really. I can't explain it. I tried to write what happened to me, but considering I've never told a single person any of this in my entire life it was too much for me to handle. So this is different. It's wish-fulfillment in that I wish there was some I could tell or talk to, but every time I try I can't. Mary is way stronger than me.
Title: To Be Okay
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Own nothing.
Word Count: 2816
Warnings: Could contain triggers for survivors. Mentions of rape.
Summary: There was this incident once, in L.A. Mary’d been really good about keeping it secret, not saying a word.
There was this incident once, in L.A. Mary’d been really good about keeping it secret, not saying a word. She mostly only thought about it at night when she was trying to sleep. So she’d gotten pretty used to infomercials and margaritas from the blender. It had become kind of a thing for her. Sometimes she could even sleep with the soft blue of the television set flickering and the lull of a voice selling her company. Because even a salesman was better than loneliness.
When Catherine is over she jokes around, says she’ll have some competition. The lies come easy because that’s how she lives her life now, from lie to lie, from sleepless night to sleepless night. She hasn’t had sex since that night. Mostly because it gives her a sick feeling in her stomach and a little bit because she’s scared. Can’t imagine letting someone put their hands on her body, can’t imagine saying yes because someone took that away from her. And it’s not like she didn’t try to fight. Her brother was a fucking Navy SEAL after all. And before all of that he was an over protective brother that decided she needed to know how to throw a punch. So she knows how to defend herself. She knows. But it didn’t work. It didn’t change anything. Didn’t slow him down at all.
Mary knows it only takes four pounds of pressure to break a knee cap. Knows that gouging at eyeballs and punching someone in the throat is the most effective thing she can do. And she thought she was ready, thought she was prepared. She was Mary Ann fucking McGarrett after all. She could handle anything.
But she hadn’t been ready. And fucking men and their hidden strength. And why even bother with all the self-defense crap if it wasn’t even useful in the end? Because he’d held her down and covered her mouth and left bruises. So many bruises. Sometimes she still sees them, out of the corner of her eye as she passes a mirror or changes her shirt. Big black and blue splotches shaped like finger prints on her hips, her arms, her face.
She’d gone to the police. More because she thought she had to. She’d filed a report, sat through the four hour exam, taken the pills and shots they’d given her. Laid still for pictures and gave her statement. It didn’t matter though. She knew what they were all thinking. That a girl like her should have expected this, was damn near asking for it. And who was she to argue. She’d always been a troublemaker, always dressed a bit provocatively. She started to believe them. Figured the experts were right, so why bother with finding the guy. She’s pretty sure the cops just filed the report away and never looked at it again, never even thought about it.
Mary’s a woman. Okay. And she knows about how men aren’t nice and how most of them are dumb fucks. But it’s always just been someone getting too handsy or being a douche. It’s never been anything like this. Never been too much for her to handle. But then she was being grabbed and held down and then she just gets angry. Because what the actual fuck? Who does that? Because even though she knows the world is full of jerks her older brother is a prince and her dad, oh man her dad. Who treated her mom like an angel, who never made her cry, and always opened the door and helped her with her coat. And Christ why her? And the only thing she’s got, the only reason she can come up with is because. Because she dresses like a tramp and she’s slept with other guys and apparently she’s easy and apparently she was asking for it. Fuck her life. Fuck her life because she was raised better than that. But whatever. Whatever because it happened, so she deals like she always does. In silence. Because no one was ever there before. Why would they be there now?
And then she’s kidnapped. It’s as if any progress she might have been making is thrown back in her face. This time she manages to knock a guy’s tooth out. That makes her feel pretty good about herself. But she’s still tied up in the trunk of a car with bruises on her face and hands and chest. And then Steve is there and he’s saving her. It makes her kind of hate him a little. Because where was he when that guy pulled her into an alley? Where was he when all the moves he’d taught her hadn’t worked? Where was he?
Then she slips. Mentions it, but blows it off just as easily. Her heart clenches in her chest, feels one of those stupid panic attacks coming on. She breathes through it and focuses on the task at hand.
Steve can’t decide if there’s something wrong or not. It’s been so many years since he’s seen his sister that for all he knows this is who she is now. A girl that wears old jeans and baggy t-shirts and stays in on Friday nights. He upgrades the cable package though, so she has something more to watch than infomercials. She’s usually asleep when he gets home late at night from an exhausting case. And no matter how quiet he is (and he’s quiet, he’s fucking stealthy) she wakes up. Eyes wide, hands gripping the arm of the chair, and even when she sees Steve, after she recognizes him as her older brother, she still doesn’t relax. At least not all the way. So Steve mostly figures something is wrong. And so help him if it’s another boyfriend that just hasn’t gotten the hint yet. Because first he’ll kick his ass and then he’ll give Mary a nice long talk because she has got to start making better life choices. She’s too old for this. They both are.
When she mentions the incident in L.A. Steve wants to take the issue further, but she won’t let him. So he calls in Danny.
“I need you to do something for me.” Steve says.
“Yeah. What?” Danny’s a bit skeptical because this is Steve after all. He could want him to scale a building or something.
“Mary. She was involved in something. Back in L.A. Find out what.” He pauses. “Please.” He adds. Danny stares at him for a moment. Thinking.
“You sure you wanna go down this road?” Steve gives a curt nod. “Okay.”
The next day Danny has a folder in his hand when he walks into Steve’s office. He’s sent Chin and Kono out with no explanation, but they get it and leave anyway. He shuts the office door behind him despite the deserted bullpen.
“I’m going to ask you again. And I want you to think about your answer this time. Because you open this can of worms, you jump down this rabbit hole, there is no going back. I get that she’s your sister. I get that. I have four. But there are some things sisters just don’t tell brothers and they have their reasons. So I’m going to ask you. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Did you get it?”
“Steven.”
“Yes, yes dammit. I asked didn’t I?” And Steve just knows it’s something awful by the way his gut clenches at the look on Danny’s face. At the way Danny sits in the chair and rubs a hand over his face before he can even make eye contact with Steve again. “It’s bad.” And it’s not really a question, but it is. And damn him for wanting to know the answer. But he has to because she’s his sister.
“Yeah,” Danny says, “it’s bad. And when I tell you. When I finish you’re going to remain in this office. You’re going to stay here. Because every idea in the first ten minutes that comes into your head is a bad one. This is something even you can’t fix.” Danny pauses, opens the folder. “September 12th, 2010 at 8pm in Downtown L.A. Mary Ann McGarrett was beaten and raped.” Danny reads from the file. Steve goes pale. Feels as if all the blood is draining out of his body.
Rage can’t be the emotion he’s feeling because it’s so much more than that. And it’s not blinding. He can see perfectly, knows exactly what he’s going to do. “Sit down.” Danny tells him. He didn’t even realize he’d stood. When he moves towards the door Danny blocks his way. “I said sit down. And if you think I won’t body check you you’ve got another thing coming.” Steve glares, but his Super SEAL one hundred yard stare doesn’t work on Danny. “This is not what she needs Steven. And I know exactly what you’re thinking because I’ve been there. Because I have four sisters and I’ve been right where you are. You want statistics. I’ve got tons of them. One in four women is sexually assaulted and all these statistics they made my sister feel better because she could deal. She could deal if she was the one in four because it meant the other three didn’t have to deal. Every two minutes another woman is assaulted and fifteen out of sixteen rapists will never spend a day in jail. And those are horrible and scary. So you’ve got to know what you’re dealing with here.”
Danny takes a deep breath. Let’s everything sink in. Steve gives him a barely perceptible nod.
“She’s going to need to know that it wasn’t her fault. And you’re going to have to remind her of that all the time. That this guy was just,” Danny has trouble finding a word so he just lets the words trail off, “that it wasn’t because she was wearing a pretty dress or a low cut shirt or any of that. And she’ll ask why and there’s no answer. And the most you can do, the only think you can do is be there. Let her tell you what she wants, what she needs. You acting like a Neaderthal and tearing down everything from here to L.A. will make it worse than it already is.”
Steve knows he’s right. He’s been to the same seminars Danny’s been to, knows how he’s supposed to treat a victim. But this isn’t a victim. This is Mary. Mary is his baby sister. Mary with her gold hair and bright smile and such a ringer for their mother.
Steve holds out his hand for the file and says, “Let me see.”
“I don’t think-” Danny starts.
“I said let me see, Danny.” And the coldness in Steve’s voice does something to Danny’s soul. The way he’s already steeling himself to see the photos and read the report and Danny just wants to save him from all of it. But he can’t. So he hands over the file. Steve takes it and sits back down behind his desk.
As soon as Mary sees him come through the door she can just tell he knows. She stands there, staring at him. He stares right back. Mary wants to break down, to sob and scream because she had tried so hard to keep him from finding out and now he’s going to be all noble and worried and he’s probably going to…
“Don’t send me away. Please.” She gasps, throat raw from everything she’s keeping from him.
“Okay,” Steve says, “okay.”
“If we’re gonna. If I have to.” Mary stops. Takes a breath. “I need a shower first.”
Steve nods. “Okay.”
She heads for the stairs, pauses like she wants to say something, but then just heads up to take a shower. Steve rubs a hand over his face.
Mary uses Steve’s shower. The one in the master bedroom with the big fluffy towels on the rack and all of Steve’s things in the shower and on the sink. It was like she was a teenager again and she’d never left and none of the really crappy things in her life had happened yet. If she closed her eyes and listened hard enough she could hear Steve yelling for her to hurry up and her mom cooking breakfast and her dad yelling at Steve to stop yelling. She wants to smile at the thought, but can’t. She turns on the shower instead.
When she comes back down she’s wearing a pair of Steve’s sweats and one of his old Annapolis t-shirts. Her hair is still damp from the shower and she hasn’t brushed it yet. Steve thinks she looks beautiful and wants to know how anyone could ever see her and want to hurt her. The thought makes his stomach turn and something must show in his eyes because Mary takes a step back. Steve takes a breath.
“Hey, I uh.” He doesn’t really know how to form the sentence so he just gestures to the dining room. Mary looks and a small smile appears on her face. He’s used the chairs and table along with an old blanket to make a fort. It looks way better than any of the ones they made as kids. “Like old times.” Steve tells her.
She follows him into the fort where he’s set up pillows and blankets and a tray of all her favorite foods and she can’t believe he remembered all of it. And if she wasn’t ready to cry before she definitely is now.
“Hey, hey.” Steve says when he sees the tears. He holds out his arms, but he doesn’t touch her, doesn’t know if he should. And it kills Mary because she should be able to hug her brother, but it scares her a little and she doesn’t know why. She ignores the fear and crumples into his arms. He rubs soothing circles on her back and mumbles ridiculous things about how it’s all going to be okay when it clearly isn’t.
“You don’t have. There’s no need. I brought movies.” He finally gets out. “And the laptop. And I will suffer through Lady and the Tramp for the millionth time for you and only you.” Mary snorts.
“You love that movie. You stole all your moves from Tramp.”
“Liar. My moves have Thomas O’Malley written all over them.”
“Yeah. Whatever.” She wipes at her eyes with the hem of her shirt and sits up.
“Hey,” Steve says, grabbing her hand, “hey, I love you. Okay.” Mary nods.
“I’m sorry.” She bursts out.
“What? What are you sorry for?”
Mary just shakes her head, the tears falling again. She throws her hands in the air because there’s nothing she can say. Steve still doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch her. If he can initiate a hug or if he should just wait for her. And what if he screws this up, makes it worse.
“I tried you know. Like really hard.” Steve nods as she talks, not quite sure what she really means, but he wants to be as reassuring as possible. “But all the stuff you taught me, all the fancy moves. None of it worked. And I’m really sorry, okay? I tried.”
And Steve gets it. Knows that she’s talking about what happened and he doesn’t care anymore about what he should or shouldn’t do he just pulls Mary tight against his chest and holds her, smoothes his hand down her hair.
“It’s okay.” He murmurs. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s okay.” He just keeps saying it over and over, hoping it will sink in and that she’ll get it.
When she’s all cried out and the front of Steve’s t-shirt is soaked she pulls back.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Sure?”
“That it’s not my fault.”
Steve grabs her face with both hands. He makes sure she’s looking at him before he answers.
“I’m positive. There is nothing that you did wrong, ever. There’s no reason you deserved this.” She nods because she wants to believe him, but it’s going to take some time. “You hungry?” he asks.
“Starving.”
Steve shuffles around a bit and hands her a pitcher full of margarita. He’s busy grabbing the glasses he brought when he sees her take a sip straight from the pitcher.
“Why do you do that? I have cups. I’m not drinking your backwash for the rest of the night.” Mary rolls her eyes because he always made the same argument when she took a sip from the carton of orange juice in the fridge.
“SEALs don’t drink margaritas.” Steve just laughs at her.
“Shows what you know. Now give me the pitcher.”
Once they’re settled back against the pillows and Mary has a plate filled with Oreos and peanut butter and cheddar cheese flavored chips Steve starts the movie.
“Hey,” Mary says, “thanks.”
“Always.”