Boulevard of Scars

SFW (mentions of self-harm, emotional/psychological issues, scars)

Time taken: one hour

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“You want a hot chocolate as well?”

Jean doesn’t answer.

I stir the thick liquid with two spoons stuck in our favourite mugs. The chocolate steams and its warm scent spreads over to my bed where Jean hides under blankets, covering away from the rain pattering against the window. He’s shaking almost invisibly, only moving the blanket on top of him ever so slightly, body hunched and tiny. He hasn’t even touched the sandwiches I brought him an hour ago. I turn my eyes back to the chocolate and lift both spoons, check whether all crumbs are gone and dissolved. It looks good and so I take the package of cream and drizzle whipped cream on top.

It’s one of the worse nights, the ones where memories return and I don’t sleep. Instead we both stay awake and listen to thunder rolling, drink too much chocolate and kisskisskiss.

“Mhmn.”

He’s impatient and groans under the blankets, voice vibrating through the dense air. I hurry to his side, don’t want to make him even more anxious. The bed creaks under my weight. It’s a small thing, pressed into the wall of the dorm room we share. His bed is cold and without sheets. He hasn’t slept there in months.

“Move over for me?”

“‘Kay.”

He shuffles and his hair peeks out from under the blanket. The scalp is still spotted with dried blood from scratching. I bit my lip, worry it until he stops me with a cold thin hand wrapping around my chin. Jean sits up, eyes full of sadness and rain. He’s all thin and fragile and yet he never broke, not once. Not when those scars carved into his skin and made him bleed, not when he left home and not even when I made the mistake of accidentally ditching a date with him and he thought I’d left forever.

Those scars are the freshest and I apologize to them every night.

He lets me.

“Chocolate”, he says and his voice makes a jittery little jump, a cheerful acknowledgement of my poor cooking skills. I smile brightly, try to light him up with my happiness just like I always do. Whenever it works he boops my nose with his, and we giggle and are children again, the beds tangling between our legs until we are exhausted and tired from cuddling and whispering love.

I can’t make him smile. He takes the mug out of my hand and wraps his fingers around, careful and alert at all times. I have never seen him relaxed except for when he sleeps at last. My feet wriggle their way to his and my red and blue socks, knitted and warm, brush his ice cold toes. We sit pressed against each others, backs to the headboard, chocolate steaming into our red faces.

Minutes pass in a calm stream, wavering up and down with his quiet sipping and my delighted sighs. I’m finished at first and set the mug down. He’s still holding onto his. I turn my head and wrap both arms around his waist, feel the bones aching and his ribs holding the breath in.

“Will you lie down? Can I kiss them again?”

We need it both but I think it’s more important for me. I never promised to heal him and he never claimed me to.

“Mhm.”

Bad nights are silent with him. Usually he can talk a mile to a minute and when he does I drop everything and fall into the river of his voice and drown willingly. I take the mug out of his fingers and check the inside – it’s already empty. The smile on my lips falters, only a mere second. And then he’s pressed against me, fingers clawing in my hair full of desperation and he whispers “please” and “don’t go” into the crook of my neck he uses to cry.

I don’t reply because it never helps. Instead I pull him so close our breaths hitch and we gasp for air together, so close that my legs push his down and spread them, so close that he lets me in between and his bare neck stretches long and naked and I kiss him there, with all the gentleness and love that I have for my boyfriend.

Jean says my name when I slowly undress him. I smile constantly, I let him check my face every two seconds to see if I am still happy and content and not disgusted by him and his cursed body. He doesn’t understand when I explain that I love him. He can’t grasp the concept of it and I don’t think he ever will. Too much has happened, too much hurt licked fire into his skin and I can never take it away.

“I love you”, I say.

He tugs at the sweatshirt he stole from me and wears to sleep. It slides over his head, far too big and slobbering weirdly around his bony waist. I bend over him and lick along his neck, and he rewards me with one of those soft sighs that sing music in my ears. Jean sinks into the mattress, nails digging into my wrists and I let him lead. He guides me down to his stomach and I kiss him everywhere I’m allowed to.

The scars on his thighs are the deepest. He told me that he had nights where the razor almost vanished in him, the metal melting into thick red and the liquid poured down his pale legs in horrifying streams. I never want to see him that way again. I hum into his smooth skin and when he shudders and moans my name I smile again.

“I love you”, I repeat myself and he swallows. His fingers ruffle my hair and take a hold, and I turn my head to wrap my mouth over the chaos on his wrists. The red has long gone faded and was replaced with swollen tissues of a gleaming white. He hates himself everywhere and so I just have to love him enough for both of us.

I spend the whole night all over him. He rarely moves, only to guide me up to his mouth, to demand a shy kiss with closed lips and a warm pulse fluttering into my fingers on his neck. I have never slept with Jean. I have never seen him fully naked. He was angry and threw down a plate when he told me that he’d probably never – that we would never do it. I wanted to pick up the splinters and cut myself. I tried to tell him it’s okay and it took months, almost a year for him to accept.

“Are you okay?”, I ask into his ear for the sixth time this evening. My voice is heavy and I’m panting and he feels my arousal on his thigh, warm and hard. But we are okay.

“Yes”, he says and just turns so I can lay down by his side and we kiss again. My fingers follow the bumps on his spine, vertebrae by vertebrae until I’m at his tailbone and draw circles along the hem of his boxers. Jean can’t do many things. And yet when I first held him, and his scarred wrists pressed into my chest, when he curled into a tiny shell of sighs and a tenderly whispered “thank you” – it was okay.

I can’t stop loving him.