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Don’t touch me, I’m fragile, I’m bitter in my heart
-A Million Men, Melanie Martinez
I wasn’t always.. like this. My momma used to say I was strong, and she was proud of me, but she never meant it. I wasn’t strong. I was just a weak boy, nobody cared for me.
Except for Stevie. He was mine. And I was his, in a way. Not like he could.. carry me. That’s hilarious to imagine, actually. But okay. It all started when we were teenagers.
We were so.. silly. Just two silly boys playing games like kids but feeling like grownups. In my case, smoking like a grownup. Not Stevie, though. He had asthma. So I never smoked when I was with him. I always sat on the roof, next to the window, blanket over my legs looking at the sun going down. On the bad nights, watching the sun coming up. Sometimes Steve was there, in the window, looking at the sun with me. When I was going through one of my bad days again, he was there to.. be there.
His whole presence… calmed me in a way. I still hope he felt the same about me. I wish I was half as good as him, for him. You know, I’d never be able to pay him back, but it would be nice to know I wasn’t just bothering him. But alright. He was the one calm thing in my little, messed up world. He was the sun in my universe.
As a teenager, I kissed a girl for the first time. Her name was Kelsie, and she smelled like shampoo. She kissed me because I was ‘kinda cute’ and after a week she dumped me again. Made me promise to never tell a soul. When I told Steve, those eyes of him lit up, and he looked at me like I was some kind of king, and I’d just met my queen.
‘it’s nothin’ like that Stevie.’ I told him, flushing. He laughed, said he knew. That day we listened to his favourite music (surprisingly, he favoured Rock, said it made him feel powerful), cuddled up in a blanket on his bed. Shoulder to shoulder, nothing unsafe for work, but his thin arms around me, and that’s my heaven you know.
He was so thin, so fragile, and he clinged to me, to my bones, and my existence.
Since Kelsie I kissed a lot of girls. Undressed a lot of girls, touched a lot of girls. They liked it, and you know, so did I. they took my mind off things. And while I was doing that, Steve was doing his own thing.
He drew. And he was really good, too. Could draw these great cartoons, always made me laugh. He drew a bunch of portraits of me and mine back then, too. That’s how he got the tension out of his bones. I fucked it out while he created something beautiful. Well, multiple ways lead to Rome, as they say.
I first kissed a boy when I was fifteen.
Steve and I were laying on his bed again, cracking jokes. It was warm, he hadn’t any shirt on so it was a lot of skin-against-skin as one describes that. So when our lips first touched, you could imagine it was warm. Well, it was not. His lips were dry, and he was kinda cold. I hadn’t noticed he was shivering. So I put an arm around him, protectively, and he gave me kisses, like you give your mom on the cheek. Complete with that ‘mwah’ sound. I was lost.
I started laughing and he asked ‘what?’ in a tired voice, and I said nothing. I kissed him all over his face, pecks on his cheeks and in his neck, and he said something like ‘no- Buck, ugh’ but in a fond way.
“You like that?” I asked him. His baby blue eyes opened and he looked at me. “Yes, Buck. Duh. I was wonderin’ when ya’d get the courage.” I started laughing hysterically. Homosexuality was such a taboo yet he knew I had the worst crush on him since the first time we met, and he took me in (he loved me back!).
I first got him off when… I don’t remember. I remember seeing his flushed little face and making him swallow those words on his lips (‘oh god- Bucky.. oh my g-‘). He liked it when I was tender with him, kissing down his body slowly, whispering ‘I love you’s into his skin.
But he loved it even more when I was rough with him. I needed to be careful still, he was a fragile boy, visible bones and always sickly, but he forgot when I was working. He liked to be hurt. Made him feel more alive, he said. I didn’t wanna help him outta that dream, didn’t want to tell him that it would stop feeling so good eventually, that he’d need more. So I hit him against that wall just too hard instead, bruising him with kisses, so maybe he wouldn’t hurt himself so much.
Never managed to teach him to be tender with himself. No, he still likes the way it burns on his arms and legs when he cuts them through. One day he’ll go too far, I know that. One day he’ll cut too deep, and it won’t heal again. He’ll scar, and he’ll decay, and it’ll be my fault.
Still, I’m so god damn proud of my boy.
After that it gets fuzzy. War, and having to leave my Stevie. One night I remember clearly. Just before I.. well.. died. But I’ll get to that later.
We shared a tent back up in camp, managed to stay off each other outside. But inside, it was that familiar skin-on-skin from so long ago. He grew, he was some kind of superhero. But he was still the same inside. He was still my boy, my Stevie, and I wanted to be his so badly. But he was someone else’s now. I wasn’t good enough to cling onto now.
They put something into me, you know, at that HYDRA office. My wounds healed in minutes. I never told Steve, didn’t wanna worry him.
We grew apart.
I fell. I.. died, in a way.
They healed me. They hurt me. They taught me a hundred ways to snap a man’s neck. And I tried it out on every one of them.
They taught me to kill. They made me kill. I killed them off. There were always too much for me.
I fought, I bled, I healed.
I remembered Steve.
I forgot Steve.
I remembered Steve.
I forgot Steve.
I killed, I killed a man. He looked like my boy.
He wasn’t my boy, was he?
I forgot Steve.
I forgot Steve.
There, I met Steve again.
In between the red, the blood which clouded my vision, the ‘shoot to kill’ imprinted in my brain, I met Steve. And god damn, he was beautiful.
I decorated him with a hundred shades of red, and then I saved his life.
God, I wonder if we’re even now.