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If it hadn’t been for his laboured breaths coming in bursts of air and the painful sound that the grit of his teeth made, Kutay would’ve assumed that Teoman—who had shrunk into the corner of the hell that was the basement’s closet—had died with bloodshot eyes, rigid as a shocked corpse. Judging by this rare state of him, hair mussed as a nest and glistening sweat a reflective source of light in the cramped space, Teoman had been at it for some time.
The doorway leading to the same specific recess Teoman would scrabble to during every relapse cracked open like a rectangle of light. A saviour, Kutay dared to think. The space was longer than it was wide—the dust-collecting shelves and forgotten memorabilia threatened to close in on him who had culpably intercepted the illumination. The rays bent around him, ushering his fraught eyes (that trembled with a worry that could blind) to his target.
He didn’t need to witness what he heard to understand the ache tenfold; his fingers twitched with phantom pain at the conception of a catatonic Teoman.
Kutay feverishly scoured for any indicator of time—it was three. He’d learned from his mum that Teoman would retreat to his room at ten if he wasn’t out. He’d been at the gruelling activity for more than just “some time”: it had been hours. Hours of the frenzied scratching. Hours of broken sobs that came out as silent heaves.
So why had he come as late as he had? Maybe five hours tardy—maybe more. Why had he, who had pledged the second time he’d forced his love into his embrace to become his safe haven, not noted anything earlier? The sense that he’d neglected what he wanted so badly to shield and let indulge in him twisted into guilt. Guilt that came bundled as a rotten apple—a lie—taking root in his stomach. If it hadn’t been for the pleas he swore he heard from Teoman, Kutay could’ve fainted.
His approach was haphazard, crouching as he drew nearer to Teoman like he was a small, terrified yet all the same rabid animal. By the look of the blond’s wild eyes seeming slowly to come down from their high as they clocked a familiar silhouette, Kutay wagered that Teoman had been unaware thus far of his presence—another weight on his rounded shoulders, rot continuing to claw its way from his stomach into his throat.
What a miserably odd spectacle; Teoman folding, as if shamefully, into himself. If it wasn’t the contrast to his grandeur that gave the instinctual gesture its upsetting quality, then it was Kutay’s presumption that Teoman feared him. That he wouldn’t allow him his duty of dissolving into Teoman’s sanctuary. That if he couldn’t any longer be a satisfactory refuge, nobody would be able to hear him—not Şebnem, not Leyla, not his parents.
(And, shamefully, Kutay will have lost what he deemed his worth and gotten his already poor parents fired.)
I failed, a distorted voice picked at Kutay’s thoughts, mixing Teoman’s usual condescension with his own worry. And I will pay the price for my failure. If not for me, he’ll be abandoned.
Just as quick as he’d pulled back, however, Teoman sprang forward almost manically, latching onto Kutay’s shuddering arms, perhaps an attempt at anchoring himself. The pair landed with a thud—the cold of the concrete floor bit Kutay’s back—but he was overcome with some sort of numbing agent. The sensation of Teoman’s nails nearly breaking Kutay’s skin was white-hot—but so perversely calming.
At the same time that Teoman had thrown his skull into Kutay’s collar at bone-shattering speed, he raked his nails down—his attempted anchor hadn’t held—lifted them and raked them down again. With each searing scratch—burning worse than any hellfire for sodomy—Kutay was better able to breathe.
But his pants of gratitude stuttered and halted when the vibration of a strangled cry shook him, spreading from his breath-warmed collar to his gradually numbing legs.
Kutay had been woefully naïve to believe himself safe so quickly. This time, the push that forced his head to collide with the floor hit him with its full weight. In all of its degrading whole. He didn’t take—nay, he didn’t have—time to feel for the warmth pooling under him, slicking his hair.
Teoman had come to. He had something to say—when didn’t he?
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Getting up was dizzying—focusing even more so. Nevertheless, Kutay obediently heeded Teoman’s scolding, the schoolboy to him that he was.
Normally, the anger colouring Teoman’s chiding was, by and large, performed. It functioned like a bush of hedgehog’s quills or the toxic leaves of a lily of the valley. A lily better suits him, Kutay resolved in a haze of smittenness and repentance. He’d resigned himself to the notion that Teoman’s provocation was inbuilt—a poison that couldn’t be sucked out despite his self-diminishing and debasing efforts.
Teoman tore Kutay from his fleeting fantasy with a dramatic repetition, “I— Answer me, I asked what the fuck is wrong with you?!”
Kutay paused, dumbfounded, making an effort to speak with a gruellingly sluggish drop of his jaw until Teoman decided that it was the time to have a conversation with himself. Kutay didn’t at all mind him taking the lead of “their” conversation—he reserved each and every right to. Kutay—lowly as he was—had no claim to words.
“You promised me you would be there as– as soon as I needed you to be. You promised me,” Teoman prodded, tone now walking the precarious line between a breakdown and beating. “If you break your promise, then,” Teoman’s voice spiked, cracking on his vowels, “how can I trust the only person who can be there for me?!!”
The rot hadn’t dissolved. It had retreated momentarily—then took the opportunity to rattle Kutay as soon his guard wasn’t high enough to close his throat.
“I’m sorry, Teoman.” The only hoarse words he could force out without a side of vomit.
He almost fell forwards as his hands clawed along the floor, praying to feel Teoman’s own; in pursuit of his own relief, he’d neglected one of the biggest wounds. A chill ran down his spine at the feeling of Teoman’s blistering—hot and wounded—fingers. Teoman sucked in a breath; Kutay raised his fingers to his face, softening his grip as much as his fear allowed him.
“What are you doing,” a question came, though it rang more like an observation.
Teoman made no effort to pull away, instead letting his gaze sink to the floor in parallel to his teeth sinking into his bottom lip. He drew blood, but dared not to make so much as a peep. Perhaps he’d noted that Kutay was rattled enough. Or perhaps it was, like always, the bone-chilling shame that accompanied vulnerability.
To Teoman’s surprise—though not his disgust—Kutay connected one numb finger with his mouth. Then the other. Had he resuscitated them? Teoman had stopped feeling his fingertips one hour in. The (he silently hoped imagined) sensation of his fingers being… kissed shifted the tide, whatever it was worth.
Kutay breathed, as if helpless, as if at Teoman’s mercy, pleading and defeated, “Teoman.”
He had never heard his name uttered with such warmth. But to a freezing man, even the gentlest hearth can scorch.
Teoman’s fingers twitched. “What do you think you’re doing?” he whispered, volume just a step above Kutay’s prayer. His voice fractured cleanly, almost a cry if he hadn’t shut up so soon.
Kutay looked up helplessly, Adam’s apple bobbing with restraint against the wail that threatened to break if he was put on the spot to speak.
“Kutay, what are you doing?”
“I’m sorry.” The tremolo in Kutay’s voice betrayed his bravery. He would humiliate himself a thousand times over again if it lured Teoman’s grief out of hiding.
His arms extended so lethargically you would’ve assumed the pain originating in his cracked head had run its lap around the rest of his body too—reaching for Teoman’s face through trial and error, grazing his ears first before his palms enveloped his face like feathered wings.
Teoman didn’t know what to make of it, torn between revulsion and terror, molars grinding, jaw flexing—either side was trumped by an overwhelming undertow of something so terribly young.
He melted, wept boyishly into Kutay’s hands like they were the only things that would ever want to embrace whatever disgusting thing he was. Kutay took the initiative of shifting in a way that put their foreheads against the other, allowing them to exchange irregular gasps and making way for Teoman to fist at his back—his only ground, his mooring, his harbour when the winds were too harsh and his straw not dense enough.
“I hate you.”
Kutay could only respond by occupying the thumbs of his cradling hands with swiping under Teoman’s eyes, aim muddled by the dark, his tunnel vision, the blur owing to his brimming eyes.
He landed a single furtive kiss to Teoman’s lips—too light to notice, enough for the tang of dried blood to register in Kutay’s mouth.
Only now would he let his eyes bleed.
“I will die for you if I have to.”