Steve is a good Catholic boy.

Steve is a good Catholic boy.

Good Catholic boys do not fight any asshole who disrespects people.

Good Catholic boys do not have criminal records.

Steve is not a good Catholic boy. He fights anybody who deserves it and gets arrested for fighting a and protesting.

A good Catholic boy does not get arrested when the cops raid gay clubs.

Steve will never be a good Catholic boy. He steals kisses with boys on rooftops and takes beatings in alleyways. He prays, and he goes to church.

Steve wakes up in a new century with no one to steal kisses from and the only ones to fight are drunken assholes who have problems with the word no. He prays, but he’s not sure he can go to church.

There are rosary beads between his fingers and dreams of his best friend in bed, and Steve is not a good Catholic boy.

He goes to confession and a priest tells him that Hail Mary’s and the Lord’s Prayer are all well and good, but he just needs to accept himself and find a good boy. Steve is confused and the priest is kind and the little church in Hell's Kitchen becomes his own.

There is a pride flag over his bed and a rosary on his nightstand and a dead boy in his heart.

2.

Steve goes to confession and lights candles and meets a boy, his name is Matthew. He’s lawyer who does mostly pro bono work. Matt’s blind and Catholic and Steve thinks that his mother would love this boy.

Matt takes him to Pride in June and Steve doesn’t know what to do with himself. They march with the bar association and Matt kisses him in front of the Stonewall Inn and Steve, who is still uncomfortable with PDA, who hasn’t told anybody about his boyfriend and thinks, all my secrets come out today.

Someone takes a picture. Steve and Matt go to bed happy and oblivious and wake up to a shitshow. Steve is making breakfast, Matt is flipping channels and lands on Fox News. It’s bad. Mike Pence is talking about how Steve’s been corrupted by the leftist Avengers. They even bring the Westboro Baptist Church lady. The pancakes burn, Steve and Matt stare in horror as the little life they’ve built for themselves collapses all around them. They switch channels, Ellen is on. She, at least, is kind. She tells people to leave them alone, let them live their lives, she says and Steve is thankful for that small mercy. They turn off the television and their phones and order in, preparing to hunker down for a long day.

Tony shows up and Matt nearly murders him on sight. Steve tells Tony to fuck off and he and Matt go back to reading. Foggy shows up, then Karen, and even Clint and Natasha.

It’s Nat who suggests it first, get out of the city for a few days or weeks, however long it takes for this to blow over.

3.

They rent a car, pack their bags and go on a roadtrip.

They go through New York, up to Canada and along the Great Lakes. It’s summer and they swim in Lake Eerie and jump over the Canadian border. They live in cozy bed and breakfasts and they are happy, for a while, at least. But then they come home and it’s different.

They’re not being attacked but Matt has bruises on his knuckles and a baseball bat under his bed but Steve loves him and that’s all that matters.

Steve stops by every evening to pick him up from work and packs him lunch and Matt is happy because his boyfriend loves him. Matt should have known it wouldn’t last.

When Steve is assigned to the Triskelion he tells Matt he’ll visit often and call every night when he kisses him goodbye.

Matt misses Steve the way your heart misses your lungs. But they love each other and Steve promised he’d come back.

He doesn’t come back.

Matt is greeted one fall morning by two dark suited SHIELD officials. The day is perfect, it’s not too warm but not too cold. The leaves are bright. The day is perfect.

Steve is missing. The day was perfect.

Matt loves Steve, this he knows. But Steve is missing and he’s not sure whether he's dead. Matt loves Steve, but in this moment, he wishes he didn’t.

4.

Steve’s team betrayed him. They attacked him as he was sleeping, ripped his shield from his back, pulled his cross from his neck, stole his rosary out of his pocket and chained him.

He had a rosary in his pocket, a cross around his neck but he still has St Matthew around one wrist and St Michael around the other and he is not alone.

They take his medallions of St Matthew and St Michael when they find them and Steve is worried for a second that no one will come for him.

They take him to a warehouse in some Eastern European wilderness and for a minute Steve can replace fall leaves with snow covered bows and chirping with the rattle of train tracks. He is almost relieved when they drug him. He doesn’t think he wants to see those nightmares yet.

Matt has a rosary between his fingers and prayer candles in his window because his boyfriend is missing, didn’t you know? But there’s work to be done and people to protect because that’s what Steve would have wanted.

5.

They want the serum, want his blood and his bone. His heart and his lungs, but he has no heart for he has already given it away.

They take blood until he’s woozy, then lock him in a cell for who knows how long.

They take bone marrow and tissue samples. They take and they take and they take until Steve isn’t sure if he has anything left to give.

Matt has case files on their kitchen table and a stab wound in his side, because his boyfriend is missing, haven’t you heard? But Matt is just as reckless as Steve and he needs something to distract himself, because his boyfriend is missing, haven’t you heard?

6.

Fall turns to winter which turns to spring and Karen and Foggy say he should move on but Matt’s still waiting for that letter from the government. 

Steve isn’t sure whether he’s dreaming or not, he’s so in this haze of lost blood and pain. Sometimes he swears he’s small again. Sometimes he thinks he sees the Avengers.

Steve has fever dreams in his head and a team by his side, a rosary between his fingers and a cross around his neck.

Steve thinks he sees the light, thinks he sees his mother. Swears his rosary is back beneath his fingers and his cross around his neck.

There is a cross above his door and a hand holding his own. But there's’ a boy standing at the door and a girl sitting in a chair and he is not alone.

7.

Apparently HYDRA had been inside SHIELD since its inception. They tell him this on the plane to Germany. 

(Matt remembers watching in horror as the helicarriers burn above the Potomac. For a moment he was worried that they would never bring Steve home.)

They tell him that Steve doesn’t look the same, that he might not remember him but he is alive and Matt is deliriously happy.

The nurses tell him to prepare himself and he thinks he is. He’s not, Steve’s heart sounds so weak, and the machines are so loud, and his lungs shudder with every breath.

(Steve Rogers was never meant to be caged, God rest him who ever tried.)

They give him 15 minutes before he wakes up and has to be sedated again, Matt cries.

(It’s been months since he last heard Steve, and every morning he woke up thinking that he was in the kitchen making breakfast.)

Matt cries because Steve is alive, even just barely, and that’s all that matters.

8.

Apparently he’s small again. Matt doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t mind that Steve’s lungs rattle and his heart flutters even when Matt isn’t in the room.

Steve has rosary beads between his fingers and physical therapy three times a week but his boyfriend sticks by him and Steve’s not sure what he did to deserve Matt, but he still has him.

When they release him from the hospital, he goes home and has a quiet welcome home party with his boyfriend and this little family that he has created. It’s Natasha, her brother Alexei, and his girlfriend Ava. There’s Karen, Foggy, Clint, and Clint’s wife Laura. They have cake, watch a movie, and make sure that Steve is all settled before leaving Steve and Matt alone.

There’s a rosary on his nightstand and his boyfriend is right next to him but he can’t sleep because Steve is terrified of being ripped from his arms.

Matt eyes the bags under his boyfriend’s eyes and Steve’s doctor ordered therapist wanted him to talk about it, but he couldn’t.

There were talk show appearances scheduled for him by Pepper and for a moment, Steve hates her. He appears on Ellen, Good Morning America, and The View. They ask about his life and adjusting to his new body, they ask about Matt and he answers. His voice is higher now, breath more wheezy and his heart flutters at any new emotion. He is different now, but the hosts eat it up. They ask him what he will do now and he says got to art school, maybe college and law school as well. Steve tells them that he wants to help people, and he thinks those are the best ways to do it.

The interviews are uneventful and repetitive until he gets to the Fox and Friends interview. Steve hadn’t wanted to go but Pepper insisted and he had obliged. The only upside to the whole thing was that Matt was coming as well.

They ask the normal questions, but things take a turn when they start asking uncomfortable questions. They ask about his Catholic faith and how that contradicts with his “unrepentant homosexuality.” There are questions about immigration, marriage, and finally his “support” for Republican candidates in the midterms. 

The truth is, Steve doesn’t support any of those candidates but someone had inserted Captain America in each and every one of them, voice imitation technology lending them his voice. In the beginning, Steve Rogers wasn’t linked to Captain America, but then he kissed Matt which then somehow got leaked. Steve hates the ads, because they’ve co-opted his image and voice.

Next, they ask whether he’s going to endorse anyone running because apparently he should “support those who want to stop unskilled immigrants from ruining our great nation.” He loses it. Steve tells them about his mother who, at 16, was driven out of Ireland by the potato famine. Then he speaks of his father, who came a year later at 19 whose family form had been decimated by the famine. They were unskilled workers and yet he, the son of these immigrants, was America’s favourite son, whose dog tags had been forced to read Protestant and not Catholic. One of the host tries to interrupt him before he finishes and he tells them to “fuck the hell off and take me out of your goddamn ads,” before collapsing into an asthma attack.

Steve has a rosary between his fingers and a crucifix around his neck and he’s never going to get the Presidential Medal of Honour that people keep talking about but his boyfriend loves him and that’s all that matters.

9.

The Kavanaugh hearings happen and Steve goes down to DC to protest the appointment where he sits in the rotunda until he gets arrested. Matt bails him out and signs a letter with a group of other lawyers urging the Senate not to confirm him.

They’d been living in an endless cycle of protesting, hospitalisations, and getting their names dragged through the mud. Matt has plans for them the night after he bails Steve out and they go to a nice restaurant and a then a walk around the monuments. They’ve made it to the World War II memorial when Matt drops to one knee and proposes.

Steve says yes.

There’s a rosary on his nightstand and a ring on his finger but there are  wedding plans spread out all across the kitchen table.

They are happy, if only for a while.

I started playing because my brother did,

And I gave up gymnastics,

And managed to fell in love.

They put a stick in my hand,

And I abandoned the air for solid land.

Our team was shit,

There were never enough girls for a team come spring

(Even though I never quite was one)

The soccer players on the field over liked to use our space

But there was Sally and Pia and Juliana and Asa.

Juliana had a smile so bright it lit up the sky,

And I remember thinking -

the first time I saw it-

that I wanted to make her smile like that all the time

And it made my stomach flip flop and my heart sing.

( I wasn’t gay, I couldn’t be we weren’t gay.)

We sat on the pier and and waited to be subbed in,

Swapping stories and exchanging smiles.

Together we were unstoppable,

Our line, legendary.

We giggled at the praise, it was just lacrosse.

Pia and I played against girls three times our size and twice our weight,

Thrusting our tiny twelve year old bodies at immovable objects barrelling down the field,

Throwing our legs and arms and torsos to the mercy of some cruel lacrosse god.

Pia always wore her hair in a braid,

And the braid always came out,

She ran down the field, braid halfway undone, hair flying in her face, yellow mouth guard flashing with each gasping breath.

We lay under a bridge on a track strewn field,

Waiting for the game to start.

Sally swore like a sailor and played like a demon,

People cycled in and out, off and on our team,

As we grew older, as the ranking system changed,

As we moved in and out and around the field.

But she was constant, ages and grades in sync,

Our inability to find a new team, a better team.

We were hungry, wanting, yearning, clawing our way up to greatness.

We kicked balls balls back to soccer matches, laughing at their surprised faces.

We didn’t fit the mold of stereotypical lacrosse girls,

Sally was too short, too focused.

I was too black, too violent.

We both wanted too much.

It was easy, the two of us,

We knew each other.

Asa was really, really good.

She came from a lacrosse lineage,

Born with a stick in hand, but she loved it,

But she didn’t want it,

not the way I did.

We were defensemen, always in competition with one another

Sharing stories and tips in shuttle lines,

Bitching about the cold and heat and sweat and equipment.

Asa was a far off distant star to reach to,

Spinning off every time you came close enough to touch her.

I joined varsity this year, for the first time

(I’m only a freshmen y’know.)

There wasn’t really much else to do,

They’d been asking since September.

They needed a goalie…

I was the only one.

I’ve never had friends on the school team,

It wasn’t that they weren’t good people, they mostly were

Taylor just didn’t like me,

And she dictated terms,

So I spent time with the grade above or below.

I was the baby goalie, the mama goalie.

None of them know what they did for me.

Taylor stopped playing in eighth grade,

But it’s hard y’know,

To start talking to the kid you ignored for three years.

Varsity’s really different,

Junior Annika, our captain,

Checks in on me before every game,

And writes pick me up notes for the entire team with her co captain, Sophia.

Junior Libby has to be reminded not to kill me when she shoots,

But she really cares and plays filthy beautiful attack.

Coach Montenegro makes us do endless passing drills,

Coach Grew makes us do endless sprints,

And my weak lungs give out,

But there us nothing left to crawl my way up to,

Nowhere higher to go,

And yet, …. yet,

I still want more.

But the sophomores are kind,

Madison makes sure I’m ok after everyone shoots,

Is willing to walk with me to my bus in the dark,

Kate tells me I didn’t drop the ball,

Even though I did and we all had push ups to do.

Tiny smiles from across the field and gives me thumbs up.

The sophomores are kind and the freshmen don’t want me.

Sophie, who isn’t even on the goddamn team,

screams “go Jamie” every fucking time she sees me step into goal.

They are kind even though no one had ever wanted me.

I love lacrosse,

Or at least, that’s what my friends tell me.

Aunnie says my face lights up and I start speaking faster.

Sophie says my hands start flapping,

Ara says I bounce and rock.

I love lacrosse they say,