Bad Wrong Things

by C.P. Harris

His hair and stubble, once blond, were now the color of gray clouds and moonlight.

Aaaand we're off. C.P Harris coming in hot with the lyrical descriptions right off the bat.

“Hair the color of a raven’s wing, eyes the color of glaciers,” he’d said to me more than once, stroking a hand over my widow’s peak, making love to me like I was his possession—because I was. Reflecting back on it, what we did couldn’t qualify as lovemaking. Clint and I were like hot oil kissing water. Gasoline crooking its finger at an open flame. We came together like animals in heat, marking and pissing over our territory. And love had everything, yet nothing, to do with it.

Ohh it's gonna be like that yeah? Damn. No room for breathing, we just gonna fucking roll eh?

I had vanished into the night with only the clothes on my back, then burned them as soon as I had the chance, because everything I owned reminded me of him. Because what I owned he owned, too, because he owned me.

A heavy breath tumbled from his lips. A sign of the gut-punching effect my words and disposition had on him. It broke something already glued together inside me to treat him that way, that dismissively. Because Clint co-owned the pain, it didn’t belong to me alone. My hands shook from where they hid behind me, because god they wanted to apologize all over him. Time hadn’t changed a fucking thing.

“Promise me. And if you can’t promise me all those things, then please, lie to me.”

Entering the kitchen, my heart jumped before calming. I left the lights off, moving to the window over the sink, watching Raven—barefoot and jovial—as he caught and released fireflies in the backyard.

“I’m sitting here playing Rummy, vying for a prize I’ve already won, yet still dying for the chance to win you again because I can’t get enough of winning you.”

No one knew me better than me, and I wore my trauma like a badge of honor because if life didn’t hurt sometimes, we wouldn’t have a frame of reference when things were going good. I didn’t want to be fixed, I wanted to be loved for my brokenness.

“I’ll always find you in the dark, Raven,” I’d said, wrapping my arms around his shaking shoulders. Raven hid to be found. He ran to be caught. When I stepped into his dark place that night, it solidified for him that he was worth the effort it took to chase him. Tonight, he was keeping company with his demons again, and I wouldn’t let them have him. I wouldn’t leave him to fight them alone.

“I love you,” he said hatefully, finally starting to regret it. “When you get over this, and I’m gone, it’ll be my love for you that’ll linger forever. That is what you’ll die wishing you could forget,”

I’d hobble out of Clint’s room, swearing I wouldn’t return, but my nights would make a liar out of me. My skin itched for him.

“I wanted under your skin.” And the more he let me, the deeper I wanted to go. “But getting under your skin meant getting under your demons, too. I wanted you lawless. I wanted to know what your hell felt like. I wanted everything.”

“I can’t live without you isn’t some fucking cliche,” I said, drying his tears as his eyelids drooped and his hold on my jacket slackened. “But I’m going to do it, anyway.” “I’ll find you,” he said, fighting sleep. “I…love you.” “This isn’t love, Clint.” I cried for all three of us, weeping all over him. “Not anymore.” “Then what is it?” he mouthed more than spoke. “Poison.” The low dose, slow-killing kind, and we’d reached the death end of it.

He made tattoos, tight tees, and slick-backs timeless. He was vintage, aged like fine wine. He was from another time and place.

“If you’re asking me if I’m jealous, the answer is yes. I miss you. And I don’t know how long you’ll be here or when you’re coming back, and I selfishly want all your time. It has nothing to do with Link. I’d be jealous of God if you said you were going to spend time at church.

He used to smell like nicotine, fire, and mint. Now he smelled like sun, moon, and stars, all things that were promised to return. He smelled like second chances.

“It turns my body to tinder, and you’re the fucking flame, Clint. Together we burn.”

Clint was my map, my compass, my way out of the dark. I’d learned that I could live without him, but that I didn’t want to, and I no longer had to. I’d love this man forever, until the end and beyond. To the grave.

We had battle scars, some seen, others hidden in places only our love held directions to.

“I promise to never waste another minute of our lives on what-ifs. I’m going to love you for however long I’m privileged to do so, and you’ll let me because I don’t plan on giving you a choice in the matter.”

I needed to love myself enough so you wouldn’t have to love me enough for the both of us.