In This Iron Ground (Natural Magic)

by Marina Vivancos

  Damien could do nothing to stop it.

  God, he was sick of this. He was tired.

  He was so, so tired.

  Hakan was wrapped around him when Damien finally surfaced. He was running his fingers through Damien’s hair, rubbing his back. Damien’s chest would hitch periodically, breath stuttering, but Hakan didn’t shush him. He just held Damien, an anchor in the hard earth.

  “Sorry,” Damien finally said, sighing with exhaustion.

  “It’s okay, Damien.”

  The collar of Hakan’s jacket was wet with tears and snot. “You should—” Hakan let Damien take off his jacket before they lay back down.

  Hakan ran his thumb across the damp skin under Damien’s eyes. Damien closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again.

  “What happened?” Hakan asked softly. Damien looked down at the space between them. He tried to smile.

  “It was nothing,” he said. Hakan frowned. “Seriously, Hakan. It was so stupid.”

  “Okay. I get you might think it was stupid. But…can you tell me anyway?”

  Damien hesitated. He picked at the material of Hakan’s shirt as they lay on their sides, facing each other.

  “It was…honestly, it was nothing. I was…I was with someone, you know…” he trailed away. Hakan tensed against him.

  “Did they…Damien, did they—”

  “No! No, it wasn’t like that. They didn’t like, force me. See, I told you it was stupid. It’s nothing.”

  “Okay, but, just…”

  “Look, we were, you know, and he just tied my wrists to the headboard without me noticing. I thought he was just holding me, I don’t know. He was trying to be playful and I just totally freaked out, but it was nothing,” Damien babbled. “Honestly, he tried to untie me straightaway.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “He should have asked,” Hakan said lowly, a growl reverberating from his chest.

  “It was fine. He didn’t mean—”

  “I don’t care what he meant. It wasn’t fine. He should have asked.” His eyes looked fierce in anger. Damien couldn’t help but smile a little. Damien leaned forwards, placing a soft kiss on Hakan’s jaw. Hakan’s growl ended abruptly. This time, Damien really did smile.

  He rubbed at his itchy eyes, jolting when Hakan moved to get up. Damien tightened the arm around him instinctively before letting go.

  “Sorry, you were doing a project, weren’t you? You probably need to go.” Damien tucked his arms against himself.

  “Damien, I’m not going anywhere until you kick me out. I’m going to get some tissues.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Damien closed his eyes as Hakan pressed a kiss to Damien’s forehead before getting off the bed.

  He took his shoes off and disappeared into the bathroom. When he came back, it was with a roll of toilet paper and a damp towel in hand. He placed the towel on the bedside table before winding some of the toilet paper around one hand. He pulled, snapping off the section. He sat on the edge of the bed and placed the tissue lightly over Damien’s nose.

  “Blow,” Hakan said.

  Damien frowned. “I can do that myself.”

  “I know. But…let me look after you, okay? Blow.”

  Damien blew. When he was done, Hakan set the tissue aside and picked up the towel.

  “Close your eyes,” he said softly. Damien closed his eyes. The towel was cool and damp as Hakan ran it lightly over the skin of Damien’s face. Over the vulnerable, bruised underside of his eyes. Over the aching eyelids. His salty mouth.

  It was ridiculous, really, seeing what the people in Damien’s life had done for him. How they had saved his life, given him a home, taken care of him. But that moment there. His eyes closed. Hakan next to him, wiping his face from the remnant of tears.

  It was the most quietly, beautifully caring thing anyone had ever done for him.

  Without being able to help it, Damien started crying again. Soft, cracked sobs that had Hakan wrapped around him again. That time the tears left a pure, clean pain.

  Hakan repeated the ritual a second time. When he pressed the damp towel against Damien’s face, the action quieted everything inside Damien. He let Hakan change him into soft PJs. Let himself be tucked under the covers next to Hakan, who was in just a T-shirt and boxers now. Let himself be held.

  He let himself fall asleep in Hakan’s arms.

  **********

  That night became a landmark for change.

  Damien gave into sleeping with Hakan. Actual, literal sleep, warm and safe in Hakan’s bed. He wasn’t cured of his nightmares by it, but Hakan learnt how to react. How to let him go and then welcome him back without questions.

  Damien gave up on sleeping with other people. He found he had to psych himself up, and the whole process felt fruitless and unnecessary.

  Damien started dividing his time between study, friends, and Hakan, actually going out with the latter instead of only hanging out at home.

  He knew exactly what it looked like. He knew the danger he was in. But Damien had lost the will to fight something so good anymore.

  **********

  “What are you doing?” Damien asked sleepily, squirming underneath the sheets as Hakan trailed his fingers down his side.

  “You’re soft here.”

  “It tickles,” Damien protested. Hakan poked him between the ribs before moving his fingertips there. Damien barked a laugh, turning around to hit Hakan on the chest.

  “No nonconsensual tickling!” Damien admonished through a smile. Hakan snorted, kissing Damien on the nose.

  “I saw a documentary on nonconsensual tickling the other day,” Hakan said.

  Damien frowned. “Is that a joke?”

  “No. I mean, it was kind of about nonconsensual tickling…well, I guess the actual tickling was consensual? It was about this dude that sort of tricked and manipulated young guys to film videos of them ‘sport tickling’ each other. Like, one, or a group, of guys would tickle another guy until he couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “I know. The documentary was really good, though. The guy was such a creep.”

  “Write the name down for me and I’ll look it up later.”

  “Sure,” Hakan said. He ran his hand through Damien’s hair. “What do you want to do today?”

  “Hmm…I’m actually caught up on my projects and reading…I don’t want to go out, though.”

  “Me neither. You want to hang around here? We can finish the book, watch movies…” Hakan suggested.

  “That sounds freaking perfect. I feel like I’ve been studying for seven years,” Damien groaned. Hakan snorted. “I also have a book Nova leant me that I’ve been wanting to sink my teeth into, so. A Relax Day sounds perfect.”

  They cooked a haphazard breakfast with what they found in the fridge. Oil splattered against Damien’s wrist, burning the thin skin into splitting into a reedy, red line. Hakan held it under cold water before inspecting it with a frown.

  “I hate how you don’t heal,” he muttered.

  “I do heal, dummy. Just slowly.”

  After eating, they washed up and returned to the bed that still smelt like them. They made the bed together before lying on top, reading the graphic novel they had started the other day until its conclusion.

  “Crap, and the next one isn’t out yet?” Damien whined.

  “Nope.”

  “Torture. You’re torturing me.”

  Hakan snorted, snuffling into Damien’s neck and licking him there. Damien laughed, pushing him half-heartedly.

  “God, you smell so good,” Hakan said against his skin.

  Damien smiled, running his hands through Hakan’s hair. “What do I smell like?”

  “Us.”

  They made out until their lips were red and sore, getting each other off with lazy, slow hands until they made a mess of each other.

  They spent the afternoon in the living room, Hakan rereading one of his favourite books wh
ilst Damien became engrossed in the book Nova had sent him. He became so distracted he didn’t even notice when Hakan moved to the kitchen to make lunch, blinking into awareness as a plated sandwich was placed on the coffee table in front of him.

  “Thanks,” he said to Hakan, smiling gratefully.

  The day melted away. It found them in the late hours, Damien sprawled over Hakan on the couch as they watched a movie. Damien was at the edge of dozing, a hand petting his hair, when Hakan spoke.

  “I was thinking…have you ever considered going to therapy?” His voice attempted casualness, but it came out wary.

  Damien tensed awake. “Therapy.”

  “Yeah. You know, just to…talk.”

  “I have people I can talk to. I can talk to you, can’t I?”

  “Yeah. Of course. But, I don’t think it’s the same. It’s about…sorting things out. So that they…so that they don’t hurt so bad.”

  “I’m not hurting. What’s hurting? I’m fine.” Damien wanted to sit up, get away from Hakan, but that would betray his words. He tucked his arms against his chest, curling up slightly where he was laying on Hakan.

  “You’re doing—Damien, you’re great. But…don’t you think there are a few things that are still, I don’t know. Haunting you?”

  “So I need an exorcist now.”

  “I’m not. Damien, I’m not trying to suggest anything bad. It’s the opposite. You’re so fucking strong, it has nothing to do with that. Strength doesn’t have anything to do with it. Hurting doesn’t happen to weak people. It happens to everybody. I just think…I mean, do you think that maybe life would be a little better if you had someone—a professional—to help you through things that are still hurting you?”

  Damien closed his eyes. The day had been perfect until that moment.

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Damien said. Hakan remained silent. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

  “Okay. That’s all I wanted to say. For you to think about it.”

  “Okay.”

  Hakan’s hand moved softly through Damien’s hair. Damien let it soothe him.

  He didn’t want to go to therapy. He didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted the things that haunted him, like Hakan had said, to simply disappear. To not have been true in the first place. But that, Damien had to acknowledge, was impossible.

  His parents’ deaths. Foster care. The McKenzies. They had happened. There was no way to undo that. And he wasn’t so far in denial to believe that the wounds that had been dealt to him during those years had healed right. He’d ignored them too long. They had infected and festered and he could still feel their ache. Their pain. Some days, he battled to keep them closed.

  Some days, he lost.

  But he didn’t see how therapy could help. Talking about it wouldn’t change what happened. It wouldn’t erase the wound. And healing it correctly…God. That would take a purging of diseased skin. It would ask for reopening the wound, cleaning it out, having to watch his raw flesh try to knit itself back together all over again.

  The very thought of it was exhausting. The very thought of having to sit there once a week and talk about it. To reveal the mess that had been made of him. That he himself had made. To have to carry all that again. To have to relive it.

  But, the truth was, Damien was already tired. He already relived it. He was still confronted by it regularly. The thought of more was too much. But, the thought of more leading to less? Less nightmares, less anxiety, less putrid skin?

  There is something clouding your sight.

  Camille wasn’t the first Kephalē to tell him he couldn’t see clearly the truth of his own worth. Damien thought of his Ousía. How unbalanced was it? How much was he ignoring the needs of his earth?

  “Damien.”

  Damien looked up at Hakan. Hakan urged him up until they were chest-to-chest, their legs tangling together. He rubbed his cheek against Damien’s as if he wanted to purge every sad thing through his scent.

  Damien nuzzled him back.

  He could forget about the whole world there, hidden away in Hakan’s warmth.

  **********

  Damien thought about it. He thought and thought and thought about it.

  In the end, it was like Hakan finding him in the forest. Saying, “Just until New Year,” and convincing him to do something that terrified him with a gentle suggestion.

  His therapist’s name was Mandy Monroe, “Call me Mandy, please.” Her office didn’t have soft music or a water fountain or a miniature Japanese sand garden. It had a desk with a computer, a big round table surrounded by chairs, and what looked like a big, blue, plastic wardrobe with the doors closed.

  “That’s where I keep all my art stuff,” Mandy said when she noticed Damien looking. He nodded, staring at his fingers. There was a stuffed seal in the middle of the table. Damien stopped himself from grabbing it. He wondered if it was some kind of test.

  “Okay, well, now that we’ve introduced ourselves, how about this. You can tell me a little bit about what’s going on at the moment that encouraged you to come here, and I can tell you a bit about the therapy I offer. That way you can decide if that seems like a good fit for you. How does that sound?”

  “Um, yeah. Sure. But, what if I’m not a good fit for you?” Damien couldn’t help but ask.

  “Well, the questions you answered when you first contacted the service were aimed to evaluate if there was a therapist here who could meet your needs and if so, whom. I was happy to take you on as a patient, so I doubt that will be an issue. But rest assured that if I ever think that I am not capable of meeting your needs, I will do everything in my power to help you get access to a service or person that will.”

  But what if you don’t like me? “Okay.”

  Mandy asked him questions. Questions, questions, questions. How are you eating? Are you sleeping? Can you go back to sleep after a nightmare? How often does that happen? Where do you feel the anxiety when it happens? Can you give me some examples of a few triggers? Was there any incident that made you think, okay, I think I need a little help with this one?

  “Well, I have a, a friend. He suggested it.”

  “Was there anything that you think prompted him to make the suggestion?”

  “Um…” Damien thought of the night with Lenard. He remained silent. His throat wouldn’t work.

  “Should we leave that for another session?”

  “Yes, please.” If there even is another session.

  There was another session. And another. And another.

  He told Mandy about the night with Lenard.

  “Stupid, right? I mean, he was just playing around. It was nothing.”

  “Well, I can see why it would be easier to frame it that way, Damien. But it sounds incredibly normal to have been distressed. Sex, even playful, casual sex, can be a very vulnerable and intimate activity. It’s also something which engages our senses and attention very fully. Remember when we talked about flashbacks? How sensory they are? The situation you just described seems like it was, unfortunately, the perfect situation to prime you into being more vulnerable to a flashback. One second you were safe and the next, your body was telling you it was tied up. Now, I know we haven’t talked about your past but…am I right, without having to go into any more detail, that it reminded you of something about your past?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, you get that sudden input of sensory information in an already vulnerable situation. Your brain wants you to survive. If it thinks there’s a lion in the room, it’s going to err on the side of caution and send out a red alert. Danger! Danger! Your body goes to where it has encountered that presumed stimulus before. That level of distress and anxiety was adaptive then. It’s not now, but I think we can forgive your body for being scared and trying to help you survive. We can teach the body, kindly and with patience, how to react to that kind of stimulus in this current environment. But that it has learnt the dangers of a past environment so well is by no means
stupid.

  “What you went through, Damien, sounds like a very difficult, distressing situation. As unpleasant as your reaction must have felt, it was not stupid. It was normal.”

  Damien started crying. One moment he was nodding slightly, listening, and the next his breath was hitching in his lungs.

  “Shit, sorry, I don’t know why…”

  Mandy handed him some tissues. He grabbed a few, scrunching them up and covering his face with his hands.

  “Sometimes we refuse to acknowledge the validity of our distress and difficulty so much that when we finally do, it hurts. But it’s a good kind of pain, Damien. It’s the pain of healing.”

  His first reaction was to hide from it, but she didn’t let him. She asked him to breathe. To focus on where the anxiety was. Your chest? Your stomach? Your throat? She asked him to acknowledge it. You are not pleasant, but I understand why you are here. She asked him to continue breathing. To connect.

  She was right. It was painful.

  But it was the healing kind of pain.

  **********

  Nasir was already looking at Damien when Damien spotted him. Nasir’s dark, thick hair was pushed back, but a strand fell over his forehead. His brown skin glowed blue, green, purple as the cheap party-light device the frat had installed flashed across the dancing bodies.

  Damien pointed his chin to the door and Nasir gave him a lopsided smile.

  “Taking me somewhere quiet, huh?” Nasir joked as they went out to the still-packed, but significantly less overwhelming yard.

  “Guess it’s my M.O.,” Damien joked. He smiled reservedly at Nasir. “How are you?”

  They had exchanged a few texts after the last time they saw each other, but even that contact had dissolved with time. It had been months since they’d said more than two awkward words to each other.

  “Good. How are you? I’m guessing you’re still with…”

  “Hakan. And, yeah. I mean, it’s casual, but…”