It's an odd feeling to be holding hands with someone you're supposed to hate.
Having sex with someone is supposed to be one of the most private and intimate acts one person can share with another and yet somehow, you can still have sex with someone that you hate, even a perfect stranger. Steve and I had proved that fact many times over. But holding hands? Steve's palm had met mine, his fingers weaving through my own. Every once in a while he would squeeze his fingers around mine and sweep his thumb across the back of my hand, a gentle pressure that I think was meant to remind me that he was there, that he was there for me.
Somehow this action felt more personal and more intimate than anything we had ever done before. The feeling of his fingers laced with mine felt almost scandalous and improper. This left me struggling to wrap my head around the idea that holding hands could feel too private and too confidential of an action to share with a man who had been inside of me multiple nights a week for the past month.
None of this however was enough to make me pull my hand from his. None of this was enough to make me unwrap my fingers clutched tightly to his. The touch of his skin against mine replaced the ghost of the metal dagger that these same fingers had held onto only moments ago. His humanity intersected with my own, pulling me away from the alloy darkness and back into the living and breathing light.
Our hands stayed tied together as we crossed the gym and as we made our way through the maze of hallways. Soon we found ourselves once again outside of my room. Our hands stayed together then too, even when I used my free hand to open the door. It wasn't until after I had pulled him inside the room and into the private bath that was connected to it that I let go. I reached under the sink where I kept my first aid kit, plopping it on the sink counter. Standing up from the crouched position I was in, I turned around so I was facing Steve. I placed my hands on the counter behind me, hoisting myself up so I was sitting on the edge then motioned for him to come closer. Steve took a few lazy steps forward until he stood in between my legs. From this seat I was almost eye level with Steve. If I had wanted to, I could have looked him directly in the eye, for once, without having to tilt up my chin to meet his gaze. But I didn't want to. Instead, I kept my head down, beginning to dig through the first aid kit.
"You don't have to do that (Y/n)." He said. "It's not even bleeding any more."
His hand came to rest on my knee, his thumb brushing against it lightly, similar to the way he had been doing when we were holding hands. Other than a slight shake of my head, I didn't respond. Instead I pulled out an antiseptic from the kit, screwing off the cap and grabbing a spare Q-tip. He grabbed my wrist just as I was about to dip the Q-tip in the cleaning solution, momentarily stopping my progress.
"Really sweetheart, I'm much more concerned about whatever is going on with you than cleaning up my arm."
Against my better judgement I looked up into his eyes, not being able to hide the pleading expression I knew would be there. There was so much damage done by the those daggers. Damage to me, Damage to others. Damage that I'd never be able to fix and would probably never heal properly. The cut on his arm, the cut I had put there... it could still be fixed.
"Just let me do this, okay?" I asked quietly. "I need to do at least this much."
He sighed but acquiesced, relinquishing his hold on my wrist. I continued to dip the Q-tip in the disinfectant, making sure it was coated before lifting it up to Steve's arm. I gently pulled his torn sleeve up so that I could get a better look at the scratch there. Steve was right, it wasn't that bad, but I didn't stop what I was doing.
"I'm sorry about your shirt. I can buy you a new one." I offered, rolling the cotton against the scratch.
"Don't bother, I don't like it very much. It's definitely not my color." He gives me a tentative smile and I surprised myself by giving him one back. Self-deprecating humor was a specialty of mine but I'd never seen Steve make a joke at his own expense before. I think he did it to try and cheer me up, but that didn't really fit in the normal dynamics of our relationship so I couldn't be sure. I could never be sure with Steve.
It felt like someone was chipping away at the ice between us, cracking it piece by piece until one day there'd be no barrier separating me from him and him from me. We kept having these "firsts". The first time he made me smile, the first time he held my hand, the first time he saw me cry. Each first was bringing us closer and closer to whatever it was that we really were. I still wasn't sure what that was going to be or look like or if I even wanted to know, but for the first time, I found myself not caring about the confinements of our agreement and the careful rules keeping our block of ice afloat. I wanted to add a new first to my list, the first time I ever willingly told Steve something personal about my life.
I'm not sure why I wanted to tell him. I think I just wanted to test him. I wanted to see if he would understand and how he'd react. I wanted to test the limits of this new side of him I was beginning to see, needing to know if it was all just an illusion, if there really was a softer side to him or if I had created it all in my mind to somehow make myself feel better for getting involved with a man I hated.
"My Dad had me starting to train with pairs of daggers when I was eight." I began tentatively. "He knew my Mom would disapprove so he would tell her he was taking me to ballet classes or private piano lessons and then drive me off to a training facility."
My voice was still slightly quiet. I didn't make eye contact with him, being much too focused on dabbing the cut on his arm with the Q-tip, wiping away the dried blood. Steve seemed to tense slightly as I began talking but he didn't say anything so I kept going.
"I was never really interested in learning how to fight. I've always hated using those daggers and would have much rather been going to the made up classes he used as an excuse than learning how to fight, but I was so focused on trying to gain his approval, to make him proud..." I trailed off slightly, unsure of what I wanted to say and how much I should reveal.
I had never talked about this with anyone before, and some part of me was internally screaming to shut up now and change the topic. Steve didn't need to know this, nobody did. By giving anyone, especially him, this access into my life and my past, I felt like I was losing a part of myself. Another part of me thought that it might be worth it even if I did have to lose that piece of privacy. Each word spoken was a weight lifted off my chest. For once, I wasn't baring this burden alone.
I felt Steve's thumb once again brush against my knee, coaxing the next words out of me.
"My Dad, the one that you met, and the woman he married... they are my fourth set of parents." I explained, picking up a cotton ball and continuing to dab the cut even though the blood was a distant memory. "My birth parents died when I was baby and I spent the first seven years of my life bouncing around from foster family to orphanage."
I could feel Steve stiffen at my words. I think he was beginning to understand what I was telling him. He was putting the pieces that had shaped me into the person I am together. Thankfully, he continued to stay silent, letting me paint the picture myself instead of grabbing my brush and painting his own version.
"Twice I got adopted and twice I got sent back into foster care. To this day I don't know why, something about not being a good fit, whatever that means."
I kept my eyes fixed on his arm, still refusing to meet his gaze even though I could feel it on me.
"When I got adopted the third time I promised myself I would do whatever it took to make these parents feel like I was a good fit. So I put my all into my training, I picked up those daggers and trained for hours after school until my hands were so used to holding them that I couldn't unwrap my fingers from the handles of the blades."
Even as I said it I could feel the hauntingly familiar cool harsh metal in my palms. Suddenly I wished we were holding hands again, anything to just make the feeling go away. Instead I kept my hands busy, ditching the cotton ball on the counter and reaching for a band-aid.
"He was so happy, watching me train, watching me fight. He said that I should be proud of myself. That I had become strong, unbeatable. That there wasn't a government agency that wouldn't be knocking on my door, begging me to work for them. That I fought with a weapon made for those who weren't cowards, a weapon where you couldn't kill someone else without seeing the whites of their eyes before taking their life away."
I peeled off the wrapper of the bandage, discarding it to the side and gently placing the band-aid over the cut. It was unnecessary, so unnecessary, but I still felt like I needed to be doing something.
"I hated it. I hated it so much, but I just wanted to be apart of his family. I thought becoming the soldier that my father wanted me to be was a small price to pay for him to see me as his daughter. For him to love me like a daughter. Only he didn't see me as a daughter or even a soldier. He saw me as a weapon, a means to an end. He was infertile. He couldn't have any kids of his own, and I think he always saw himself as a failure because of that. All of his friends had children that they were raising to do amazing things and he had nothing to show for it, so he adopted one and turned it into his own personal ammunition." I said, my hands falling into my lap. With the band-aid covering the scratch, there was nothing left for me to do. No way for me to cover the damage of those daggers, no way to try and make it better.
"So that's why he was so angry the other day." Steve broke the temporary silence for the first time. "You gave up training with him and the positions he wanted you to take to come work for Tony?"
I nodded, still keeping my gaze fixed on my hands that were sitting lamely and uselessly in my lap. It wasn't the whole story. It wasn't the entirety of the damage that those daggers had wreaked on my life. All the same it was enough for now. It was enough for Steve to begin to understand the relationship between me and my Dad and explain the things he had seen. It was even enough for him to just to begin to really understand me. When he used his hand to lift my chin up towards his face, I knew I had been right. I could see it in his eyes, the grasp he had on my childhood, the comprehension of the interaction he had witnessed between me and my father and why it had affected me the way it had. It was piercing and intense. He had looked at me a million times before but this time, he was really seeing me.
"I should have punched him when I had the chance."
I shook my head, shrugging my shoulders lightly.
"You would have ended up in jail, trust me. He's just looking for an excuse to shut down operations here, using violence against the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have been all he needed as proof to the National Security Council that we're out of control."
"But he's the one that's out of control." Steve argued back, his voice growing louder. "He forced an adopted little girl into a life of violence, that's child abuse! He's the one that should be in jail!"
I tried to stay still, but I couldn't help but recoil lightly at the anger and the volume of his voice. It brought me back to conversations with a completely different man, one filled with just as much anger. I knew Steve's anger wasn't directed at me, so to feel that way was foolish at all but to some extent it can become a sort of instinct, a pavlovian reaction even. As if I had been trained to expect some sort of emotional or even physical pain when a man's voice reached that tone or hit the level of volume.
He seemed to register the affect he had on me because when he spoke again it was a little quieter, even though the wave of emotions still ran across his face, as if he was struggling to remain calm for my benefit, forcing the tidal waves of outrage to become mere bubbles under the surface of his skin.
"When he told you that you weren't his daughter..." He said, his voice still tense. "It was bad enough before, when I didn't know but after this? How could a man say that to his adopted daughter?"
Of all the reactions I could have expected from Steve, this was probably the last one. I had expected maybe sympathy or even pity. I hadn't expected to see the furious and indignant look on his face, not one this strong or intense.
"It's fine." I said, shrugging again.
"Don't do that. Not with me." He replied, shaking his head back and forth and looking at me intently. "It's not fine. Nothing that man has done is fine."
"Probably." I admitted. "But he's still my Dad."
It was odd. It was the first time I had ever admitted to anyone that the way my father had raised me was in any way, shape or form, not okay. But regardless of the manner in which he had chosen to parent me, it didn't erase the fact that he was the one who had raised me. He was the parent who hadn't sent me back, who hadn't said I wasn't a good fit. It wasn't until now that I realized I still wasn't a good fit for him, that I had tried to force myself to be but it had only prolonged the inevitable.
Steve bit the inside of his cheek, I could tell he wanted to argue that fact with me. That he was going to say no real father would even consider doing that to his daughter. He seemed to realize it wasn't something I wanted to hear though, and I was grateful when he kept those words under the surface. Instead, he leaned forward, one hand reaching behind my neck as his lips pressed against my forehead.
"You deserve so much better than him, Princess." He sighed.
I think this must have been the first time him calling me Princess didn't bother me. That was because the way he had said it changed. There was no insult, no insinuation of me not being able to take care of myself. It wasn't exactly a compliment, but it wasn't degrading either.
I could tell that he truly meant what he was saying. That he was unhappy with my relationship with my father. That I deserved better. The fact that he thought I deserved anything at all still came as a quiet shock. A pleasant shock, but still a surprise nonetheless. It made me wonder if there would ever be a day where he would say something nice to me and I wouldn't be surprised.
"I'm sorry I forced you to use the daggers. If I had known-"
"It's not your fault." I interrupted, shaking my head. "You didn't know."
He continued to stare at me. It wasn't something new, our staring matches were frequent, even common, but something about this one was different. It was as if the insight I had given him had opened a hole into my very being, a hole that he was now pouring himself into, exploring every corner as if he was saying "so this is who you are?"
"I'm glad you told me." He admitted.
"You are?"
He nodded slowly in response to my question.
"I am."
We were quiet for a moment, not daring to break the comfortable silence that had fallen between us. His eyes were on mine, not wavering when his hand reached up to push the strand of hair that had fallen out of my pony tail behind my ear.
I wasn't surprised when his lips found mine. I think I had been expecting it, knowing that he was going to lean forward to kiss me in that moment. But what I hadn't been expecting was the way in which he had kissed me.
In all the previous times where his lips were touching mine, one of us was fighting for dominance. It was not us, just him and me. It was a game of sorts, each player fighting for the upper hand. We weren't on the same team, we were even opponents, trying to determine who was going to win first. That was how it had always been with us. At least until now.
Now there wasn't anything even remotely playful about the way he kissed me. It was serious, and it was intimate, his lips brushing against mine like freshly mixed oil paints on a blank canvas, smooth and precise. This was controlled, this was purposeful, and it was noticeably lacking the malice with which his lips normally attacked mine. It was like coming home in the middle of a thunder storm, comforting and warm in the covered safety from the torrential downpour.
I felt him lift me off of the counter, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carried me back to the bed. He laid my down gently on my back, keeping his lips on mine and not bothering to come up for air. I don't really know how either of us were even breathing anymore. Things like oxygen and respiratory systems seeming suddenly trivial and unimportant. All I could feel was him. All I could breathe was him.
His lips left mine to press against my neck, sucking there and nipping it gently. His hands roamed over every inch of my body he could reach. With each touch, I could feel things beginning to change between us. This was something different, and new, and based on the way Steve's heart was beating out of his chest I could tell he knew it too. His hand traced the length of my body, coming to rest on my hip bone where he gripped it gently, his mouth returning to mine. The gentle squeeze of his fingers and the pressure of his lips were turning my world upside-down, kneading every ounce of hatred for the man I was sure I was supposed to despise out of my body until all that was left was him and me. Until all that was left was us.
That night I had another first with Steve. A first time that seemed to push on every boundary of our agreement. A first time that terrified me and exhilarated me. A first time without a single drop of resentment, with the promise of something completely opposite and equally dangerous.