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The silence didn’t need filling with words when the echoes of his brother screaming—bouncing off the edges of Aras’ skull like they would off walls of the murky pension bathroom—did the job just fine.
The same boy who had sworn to Aras that he’d force him to kneel eventually had fallen by his feet. Whatever he had been trying to say bled into itself so loudly that passersby must’ve thought he was dying.
…And judging by how he’d shrivelled up, nothing like the inflated Teoman everyone knew, the assumption wouldn’t have been a ridiculous one.
But Aras hadn’t known that.
In that moment at least, the ringing in his ears had been the only real thing he could feel. Everything else—the body he usually governed so confidently—hadn’t felt like his own. And the brother he had grabbed and dragged by his limp arm like a corpse across the beach (before the police could beat him to that right) hadn’t felt quite like his own either.
The only thing that had registered—truly registered—on the way “home” had been the listless weight of Demir’s body weighing Aras down. It had almost felt as though he’d wanted the distant sirens to come close enough to deafen. He hadn’t responded once despite every prompt Aras had given him to respond to; from the simplest questions to the rawest pleas.
And still, something from deep inside him had propelled his body forward. Against the soreness of his shoulders, end of his wits, the bone-deep wind chill—the heat of his gut had become his new muscles when his legs had given up.
If only that same heat could save him now. If only something—anything in the world—had the power to save him from growing cold as he held a cold body in colder water.
The ripple set off by the motionless somebody in the water led Aras’ vacant eyes to the yellow edges of the tub that, the further he reached, connected to the moist drywall. That sight wasn’t new—most of what this dingy space had to offer wasn’t. Not how cramped it was, not the battered and leaky faucet nor the colour of the tile which had faded into stale grey. The grim palette generally didn’t help his situation.
And the ordinariness—and the darkness and filth—of it all pulled him back to the contrast in front of him: the graceless and faceless mop of (what was once) gold, bowing. He looked like an ornament painfully out of place. Cracked porcelain exiled to a landfill, never to be mended, expired once the pressure from inside had nowhere left to go.
He couldn’t fix it now. It was too cool for something so brittle. The best Aras could do was pretend the soapy water he’d shakily scooped up could act as temporary glue when he swiped it over his brother’s collar.
“... Are you ever going to talk again?”
The question disappeared into the air before it had the chance to echo. He knew he asked himself more than he did Demir—but he couldn’t help the wince that escaped at the silence. Not just the silence of his brother, but the silence of his mind. Nothing—no mental images or softening memories—wanted to come up when he needed it the most.
Aras had always been the type who needed to live in immediate reality. If not to assure himself that he was in control, then to feel real when his head wouldn’t let him rest. Today, though, immediate reality was too painful to want for himself.
Maybe ‘painful’ wasn’t the right way to put it—this wasn’t pain as Aras had come to know it. It wasn’t anything like generic punishment or a situation with a clean culprit for him to bare his teeth at. It was something he didn’t know how to handle, regardless of how much he’d convinced himself that he was more hardened than any 17-year-old he knew.
So why did it have to be now, where there was no threat of anything, that his arms turned to jelly mid-action to embrace who had been his months-long enemy like a lifeline? Why this way? Why now, at this time? And why him? Why the boy who wouldn’t talk, watching from outside himself as Aras gripped his jaw and held his head above water like he was scared he would drown?
“You’re somewhere in there, right? You have to be somewhere in there.” Aras thought he was imagining the vibration under his arms as Demir monotonously echoed his words. “Please, tell me! Say something, fuck!”
His voice rose as his arms tightened, cut off by his brother hissing and trying, weakly, to squirm himself out of Aras’ grip. Aras resisted, even when he felt the tension of Demir’s neck under the chin he’d pressed it against.
Only when he stopped struggling did Aras relent, letting his arms fall lifelessly back into the water with a blunt splash.
With a mind now totally numb, there was a new job for him to take on: compensate for the quiet of the room and the emptiness of his heart with everything that had weighed his tongue down for so long.
“You know, you wouldn’t want to talk to strangers without knowing someone was somewhere behind you, holding your hand,” Aras said idly as his fingers found another hand that wouldn’t reciprocate the gesture. “Many of our relatives thought you were shy. But when me or our mum said the right things and managed to get you excited, it confused them. You’d become a completely different person.”
Following the failure to seize his brother’s hand, Aras resolved that if he was going to let his mouth slack off, then his arms should at least bear the practical load.
Without a cloth—with only water, blue soap, and lathered palms—his hands came up to Demir’s shoulder blades. He tried to be more attentive this time, careful to pause when Demir shivered at the contact.
He continued, sounding like he thought someone was actually listening, “And when you started talking, no one could stop you. Whenever someone tried to interrupt you, you’d…” he briefly cut himself off to collect himself, then smile, “you’d raise your little finger at them and shake your head until they stopped. All you needed was to be around the right people and then you’d glow. That’s all you needed.”
Aras’ finger swept over a blooming bruise on the nape of Demir’s neck which became clearer when he moved the hair that had clung to it. It should’ve been harder to see in the scarce light, but the greenness stood out so sickeningly that Aras had to grip his own shoulder to stop himself from choking.
“I don’t even know half of it, do I? How much did I miss?”
“How much?” Demir repeated. His mouth was slack until Aras closed it on his behalf and let his right hand linger at his jaw, making sure it was angled up, a few moments more.
Aras sniffled. His voice dropped. “Is it possible to make up for all the times I couldn’t be there for you?”
Despite his struggle for composure, Aras’ voice faltered under the load of what he was saying—and everything else he had yet to say.
His tongue felt heavy in his mouth and his eyelids heavier. His washing hand felt heaviest as he had to put conscious effort into continuing to make it work. He kept returning to his brother’s bruised collar, aching with him every time he flinched tightly, unable to fight it.
Demir’s injuries weren’t just a reminder of the hurt that Aras had failed to shield him from. They made his stomach churn at the memories of when he had refused to let Teoman off the hook unscathed.
If his point of view were just a little clearer—not blurry in the dark and occupied with staring down an injured back—Aras could’ve told himself that he’d been in the right. He’d always been a noble type.
But in that moment, every act of retribution that he could remember twisted themselves into violent lashes on his conscience.
“I’m here now,” he tried to break the stream of thought off. “I pray to God that’s enough.”
Aras cupped water in his still-occupied hand to pour over his brother’s pale skin until his fingertips landed slack on the edge of the tub. At the same time, his other, protective hand surrendered from Demir’s throat like a resignation.
Or if he was bright enough to find a golden lining in the water, then—like a frail and gentle hope. Not the hardened kind that couldn’t get him anywhere now that porcelain was what he’d found.
He turned—to grab a towel, to cry, whatever.
Something brushed his hand, weakly, and even without the courage to look back, his fingers found it as softly as they could with their callouses.
“I love you so much.”