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Fiona Gallagher’s days usually fell somewhere between the range of only a little bit shitty, to pretty damn shitty, to HOLY FUCKING HELL I WANT TO KILL EVERYONE AROUND ME AND THEN MYSELF.
Somehow, the sight of Frank reading The Hunger Games to Debbie and Carl forced her into the threshold of the last one.
“Any chance of you getting a job now that you’re sober?” It wasn’t so much a question as it was a tiny little expression of anger at the so-called former drunk who called himself their father.
She was allowed to express her anger once in a while, right?
Before Frank could respond, however, Debbie shushed her, whispering harshly about tracker jackers and some bitch named Glimmer.
For a split second, Fiona considered ripping the book out of Frank’s hands and hurling it across the room. However, in doing that, she’d run the risk of upsetting Debbie and Carl.
And Fiona may have been goddamn stupid when it came to all things PowerPoint, but she sure as hell wasn’t goddamn stupid when it came to all things Gallagher. She knew that it was only a matter of time before the clock struck twelve and World’s-Best-Dad-Frank transformed back into Angry-Fucking-Jerk-Frank. And she knew that, at some level, Debbie and Carl knew it too. Which is why, despite all that he’d done, they were currently huddled around him, soaking up his temporary love and attention like their little lives depended on it.
And so, Fiona moulded her anger into the next best thing: apathy.
“Dinner’s in the kitchen, if you want.”
In her defense, Fiona did do her best to remain apathetic.
The paper bag containing dinner crackled as she sat it down on the counter.
Her deep sigh filled the air as she fished out a box of cold spring rolls.
Crumpled dollar bills rustled and slid between her fingers as she pulled them from her pocket.
In hindsight, it was probably the dollar bills that did it.
Her chest hurt. Her stomach burned where the asshole at Sticks and Skates stroked her skin after tucking his money into the waistband of her too-short skirt. Christ, her hands were trembling .
There was no one in the kitchen.
Lip was upstairs.
Ian was out.
Debbie and Carl were busy with Frank.
And Liam was in his crib.
All five Gallagher siblings accounted for.
Time to let the pain come out to play.
Fiona allowed her face to crumble. A broken little whimper escaped her lips. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes squeezed shut. Her head found its way into her hands. Over the years, she’d learned to cry quickly and silently whilst her siblings were occupied.
Distantly, as though from another world, she heard Frank doing a terrible impression of Katniss.
Good.
In her opinion, it was better they didn’t know.
They wouldn’t understand even if they did.
…
Over the course of the last few weeks, Steve had witnessed, experienced, and been caught up in a lot of strange, Gallagher-related shit.
He’d given Debbie a pep talk after she’d abducted a child. He’d gotten fake-engaged to Fiona and smoked weed with Carl’s principal in a supply closet to keep Carl from getting expelled. For fuck’s sake, they’d even thrown a fake funeral for Frank, meat-filled casket and all.
However, all of this paled in comparison to the sight of Fiona Gallagher crying at the kitchen counter.
“Fiona?” He asked incredulously.
His girlfriend’s exhausted red-rimmed eyes snapped up to his. Pretty lips parted slightly in shock.
For a few seconds, all they could do was stare at each other.
Then, as quickly as it began, the moment was over.
The first words out of Fiona’s mouth are, “I thought you had an important work thing with Candace ?”
Steve shakes his head and steps closer to her. “Never mind that. Are you crying?”
It’s almost comical how affronted Fiona looks at that. “No, I’m not fucking crying!”
Steve crosses his arms at her and gives her a look that says cut the shit. “Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are!”
Fiona grits her teeth and tilts her face up towards the ceiling. Steve feels his slight annoyance give way to something softer, less familiar, as her tear-stained cheeks and trembling bottom lip come into view.
Christ, he really does love her.
The realization washes over him as Fiona roughly pushes her body away from the counter and shakes her head. “Look, Steve, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Just leave me alone.”
She moves to storm past him, and Steve does something that, in hindsight, would have probably gotten him a black eye under different circumstances: he grabs her waist and pulls her body flush against his.
Her sharp gasp cuts through the air. The skin of her stomach is icy cold against his fingertips.
“I’m not leaving you alone until you tell me what made Fiona fucking Gallager cry,” Steve states firmly.
Fiona glares ferociously at him, teeth bared in a snarl. “ Fuck you. ” She spits in response.
As she struggles and squirms to break free of his grip, her jacket falls open. Steve briefly glances down at her outfit, then double-takes when she realizes what he’s seeing.
A red halter top that’s practically a bra. A matching red skirt, designed to show off everything if she does anything close to bending over. Eye black applied under her eyes.
Oh, goddamnit.
“Fiona…” She must hear something in his voice because she stops struggling against him. When she notices where his gaze is directed, she rolls her eyes.
“What, you like the getup? You’ve seen me in less, you know.” He thinks she means for the words to come out annoyed, but instead, her voice shakes.
There’s a beat of silence.
Carl and Debbie howl with laughter from the living room.
Steve’s hands relax slightly against Fiona’s hips. She shifts, unsure and slightly uncomfortable under his gaze.
Neither of them are sure what to do next.
“Sticks and Skates, huh?” It’s really more of a statement than a question. One of his hands gently reaches up to brush the now smudged black makeup from her cheeks.
She nods. Leans a little into his touch. “We needed the cash,” she mutters.
“Sounds rough.” Steve looks her in the eye. “No one hurt you?”
“Nah.”
Her answer comes a little too quickly for Steve’s liking. He’ll have to probe her further on that later.
“I… I just…” Fiona ducks her head to avoid eye contact with him. She blinks furiously; her eyes shimmer in the weak kitchen light. “I had a real shitty day.” Her voice is smaller than he’s ever heard it.
Shit, she’s going to start crying again.
Steve’s had… varying success navigating the many chaotic moods and emotions of Fiona Gallagher. And right now, at this moment, he’s genuinely at a loss for what to do. So he decides to do what he usually does when stuck in a jam: he starts talking.
“Did you know that crying releases oxytocin and endorphins, which help bring your body back to a parasympathetic state?”
Fiona stares at him like he just told her he wants to kiss Frank on the mouth. “ What?”
Steve nods like he’s not totally spouting medical bullshit from his old Psych 101 textbook. “Yeah, no, it’s true! Blocking your tears actually creates more sympathetic activation.” As he talks, he slowly reaches up and frees her hair from its high ponytail. It cascades messily down around her face as she steps closer to him. Steve can now clearly see the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks. She looks absolutely exhausted.
“I literally have no idea what any of that shit means,” she mumbles, and she’s so close to him now that her lips almost brush his as she speaks.
“That’s okay. Come here,” Steve wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her into a hug. Her arms come up to wind around his neck as a soft little whimper leaves her mouth. Steve’s free hand comes up to stroke her hair as finally, finally, she begins crying in earnest.
“I’m still mad at you,” Her voice cracks and breaks as she buries her face into the shoulder of his leather jacket.
“I know,” Steve nods, even though she can’t see him.
“I could still totally kick your ass right now,”
“I’m sure you could.”
For several long minutes, Steve holds Fiona close against him, occasionally rubbing her back and pressing kisses to the crown of her head. Her quiet sobs echo around the kitchen, and Steve contents himself with slowly stroking her hair and whispering stupid medical facts in her ear.
And then, just as it sounds like she’s starting to calm down, just when he thinks she’s about to pull away… the sound of a throat being cleared from the entrance of the kitchen makes them both jump.
Steve looks up to see Debbie and Carl staring at them from the doorway. Debbie’s eyebrows scrunch together in confusion and concern as she takes the sight of the two of them in, while her younger brother glares pointedly at where Steve’s hands have come to rest on his girlfriend’s hips.
Fiona’s arms, which are now wrapped around his waist, tighten almost imperceptibly.
“Is it Frank?” Her whisper is barely audible, and his heart breaks a little at how shot her voice is, how terrified she sounds of her father seeing her like this. Steve has no idea how Frank Gallagher would react to any one of his kids crying in front of him, but he can guess from his limited encounters with the man that he’d probably show little sympathy for his eldest’s current state, especially considering how he’s treated her in the past.
“No, it’s just Debbie and Carl,” he whispers back to her.
“Is Fiona okay?” Debbie asks worriedly, her brown eyes trained on her big sister’s back. Carl looks about two seconds away from grabbing the killing bat and clubbing him over the head with it.
“She’s alright, Debs.” Steve gives them what he hopes is a reassuring smile over Fiona’s shoulder as she sighs and shuffles in his arms, getting ready to turn around and face her siblings head-on. “She just… she had a rough day.”
Fiona finally extracts her face from his shoulder, giving him a weak smile in the process. Steve is taken aback by how beautiful she looks in that moment; her coarse brown hair framing her face, eyes shining, cheeks flushed.
“Steve’s right; I’m fine, guys.” She tells her siblings, her voice softening to that tone she reserves just for them. “You can go back to Frank. Everything is okay, I promise.”
Debbie studies her sister’s face for a moment longer before shrugging and skipping back out through the doorway, already shouting for Frank to resume reading the story. Carl, however, hesitates. After a moment or two of deliberation, he walks over to them. Steve watches as he grabs one of Fiona’s hands, squeezes it briefly, then takes the box of spring rolls off the counter and tucks it under his arm.
“Thanks for bringing home dinner,” he says simply before vanishing through the doorway as well.
Once she’s sure they’re both out of earshot, Fiona sniffles and wipes her reddened nose on the sleeve of her jacket. Steve only speaks once he hears Frank and the kids resume talking from the living room.
“Come on,” He quickly kisses the tip of Fiona’s nose before grabbing her hand and steering her in the direction of the stairs, “Let’s get you out of that uniform and into something less…”
“Fucking gross?”
“Exactly.”
Upstairs, Fiona hurriedly trades her Sticks and Skates uniform for a tank top and a pair of Steve’s pajama bottoms. Steve suggests that they destroy the skimpy red outfit entirely, which leads to a spirited debate between the two of them over which Gallagher family member could obliterate it the most efficiently. The conversation ends with both of them collapsing onto Fiona’s bed, shoulders shaking in silent laughter at the image of Frank drunkenly putting the outfit on and wearing it to The Alibi Room.
“It genuinely seems like something he’d do!” Steve gasps out, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
“I swear, you get him drunk enough, he’d put on a pair of stilettos too!” Fiona chokes from beside him.
Eventually, they both settle down enough to crawl under the covers. The Gallagher house is as quiet as it ever gets, and Steve is glad for it. Once Fiona is safely wrapped in his arms, he grabs her hand in the darkness and squeezes gently.
“Next time you need cash, just let me know.”
Fiona lifts her head from his chest and opens her mouth (probably to insist, once again, that she and her family are not a charity case), but Steve cuts her off. “I’m not talking handouts here, okay? I need drivers for follow-cars all the time. You can drive a stick, right?”
Fiona is silent for a minute. Then she sighs, and her warm breath on Steve’s neck is enough to cause goosebumps to erupt all over his skin.
“I guess it can’t be any worse than serving those fucking assholes at the bar.” She relents.
Steve chuckles and rests his cheek against the top of her head. “That’s my girl.”
…
Though Fiona is never blessed with the sight of Frank dressed in her Sticks and Skates outfit and heels, she does wake up the next morning to the smell of burning fabric wafting through the house. Downstairs, she is greeted in the kitchen by the sight of Kev, V, Steve, and the rest of the Gallaghers cheering raucously as Carl (in what can only be described as a crazed frenzy) incinerates the outfit with a welding torch.
Instead of doing what she’d normally do and interrogating Carl on where the fuck he got a welding torch in the first place, Fiona simply stands back and watches with barely concealed satisfaction as the fabric smolders and burns.
Besides, if her boyfriend’s smirk is any indication, she thinks she already knows.