Page 58 of In This Iron Ground
This time, Damien’s smile was genuine with relief. “Yeah. I’m good if you are.”
“I’m…yeah. I’m good.”
“Okay. Let’s never speak of this again,” Damien said. Hakan look doubtful. “Just, for the foreseeable future. This will be dealt with. You’re off in two days. It’s all good.”
After a moment, Hakan sighed and nodded, but his stare was indecisive.
Damien didn’t want to hear whatever it was that Hakan wanted to say. He could already read it on Hakan’s face. The questions, the need to reassure Damien. But Damien was fine. For Hakan to bein lovewith Damien would be such an anomaly as to be impossible. This was the rightful order of the world.
Damien had tried to disrupt the balance of Ousía to get more than he deserved, and it had yanked him back to where he belonged.
“Anyway, you’re gonna do great out there. You won’t even miss us. Eketon University, here you come!” Damien tried to joke.
Hakan snorted. “I don’t know about the first, but I know you’re definitely wrong about the second one.”
“You’ll definitely do great,” Damien said before returning to the glasses he had been stacking.
He looked into the darkness of the surrounding forest. He let it wash over him and turn to numbness.
**********
Hakan’s departure was like a hook being pulled from the centre of his chest, but he couldn’t deny there was a tinge of relief too. Beneath how much Damien would miss him still lay the humiliation that burnt away everything that attempted to come near it.
They would text each other and there were some Skype calls, mainly with other members of the family. But the distance between them wasn’t only physical. Damien felt too raw to approach Hakan’s form. He needed a moment to breathe and assimilate the new reality his actions had caused.
At night, the scene would replay in his head. A rattling film, thetick-tick-tickof the projector, the image fogged by emotion and overuse. The tapes were starting to warp, the image distort, until it started to fade at the edges. He grew numb to the precession of images. The moonlight, the hope, that single touch of lips. The way Hakan had looked after.
What are you doing?
The memory started to lose meaning. It bled into everything else that made Damien up.
Another confirmation to an overstated fact.
**********
Hakan and Nadie returned for Christmas to a cheerful welcome. Damien felt a tremble of nerves, but it was swallowed by the joy of seeing them again.
Damien had helped put up a collection of Dee and Lallo’s drawings and Hakan indulged the twins withooh’s andah’s. Damien grinned and talked the pieces up like a curator of fine arts until Dee and Lallo were giggling, clinging to Hakan as they reasserted their pack smell on his skin and clothes. Hakan hugged them back, breathing in the smell of his home.
Koko made a joke about asking how many conquests Hakan had collected in the intervening months since he left. Hakan had just rolled his eyes. Damien ignored the momentary ache inside him.
Hakan had had a pair of girlfriends during the school years, but they hadn’t lasted long. There weren’t any shifters beside the Salgados in their town. Although there were a few families with witches or seers, both the girls Hakan had dated had been humans with passive Ousía, unknowing of the world that lived parallel to theirs. It must be hard, Damien thought, to maintain a relationship whilst guarding a secret so intrinsic to Hakan’s identity.
College, however, was a whole new world. Diversity was bound to have increased in the new landscape Hakan was in, and the opportunity to find someone lasting with it. Damien didn’t begrudge the fact. Hakan deserved someone worthy of him. That could see the whole of him and love him how he should be loved.
For Damien, it would almost be a relief. A stark, full stop to any possibility his treacherous mind may want to come up with. The final decay to something that had already died.
Damien couldn’t help but keep some distance between himself and Hakan. He clung to the excuse of school projects and homework to stay in his room instead of reawakening the ritual of spending his evenings on Hakan’s bed, pressed against him as they read.
Damien didn’t know if he could take that just yet.
Hakan, however, didn’t stand the artificial stiffness for long. When Hakan pushed to go hiking in the forest, Damien simply couldn’t turn him down.
They picked a day in the strange lull between Christmas and New Year. The Yule run had been a week before, and it stood out as a moment of complete normalcy between them. The energy of the full moon was contagious, and it was easier to slip into old habits when Hakan was in his wolf form.
The day was cold but bright as they trekked up the path between whispering trees. The air cleaned Damien through. The space between them was devoid of words as they walked, filled by the noises of the forest.
It was a balm.
