Damien shifted forwards. Hakan wrapped him in his arms immediately, pulling him close. They collapsed on the couch, noses buried in each other’s necks.
**********
“It’s not that I think I deserved what happened,” Damien said, looking away from Mandy. “It’s just that I don’t think I should feel so bad about it. There are people who have it so much worse. At least they weren’t my parents. And it was for less than two years. I just think…I don’t know. It’s been years. Maybe I should just be over it by now.”
“Okay,” Mandy said. “That seems like a particular point of view you have on the situation. What if we stepped away from it a bit? What if the exact same situation happened to someone you cared about? Say, the friend that suggested you go to therapy?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Okay. What makes those two situations different?”
“I don’t know,” Damien huffed.
“It’s a difficult question to answer. Take a moment. Something is telling you those situations are not the same. What differs them?”
There was a pause. It stretched. Damien forced himself to answer. “Because he’s good. He’s…good. And I’m…”
“You are?”
“Not. I’m just not.”
“Okay. Let’s take another step back. In your opinion, because this differs from one person’s perspective to another’s, what makes a good person? What characteristics, behaviours, et cetera would they have?”
“I don’t know…” Damien paused. “The way they treat others, I guess.”
“Okay. What types of behaviours would qualify as making that person good?”
“I don’t know. Like…when they do something, are they thinking of how that’s going to impact someone else? Is it going to help someone—like, I don’t know, make them happy or give them something—or is it going to hurt them? I mean. I guess you can’t know for sure the impact of something until it happens, but that’s, like, mistakes. Being good is…your intention and, like. The effort you put into behaving in a way that does good instead of harm, even if it’s not the easiest thing.”
“So how good or bad someone is should be judged primarily on how they treat others, in your definition of the concepts,” Mandy clarified.
“Yeah. Like, treating people with like a threshold of respect. People can earn more or less respect, I guess, through their actions, but you should treat others well no matter your, like, position or money or race or whatever as a rule.”
“Okay. That makes a lot of sense to me. Now, how do you fit into this definition of good and bad? Because it’s all well and good for me to tell you, or even a loved one to tell you, that you are good, but what I judge to be good may be different from what you judge to be good. How do you fit into your own view of morality?”
The silence fell heavier this time. It was true that other people—Mia, for one—had told Damien he was a good person. But it had never felt real.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. It was like trying to push together two puzzle pieces that didn’t fit.
“Do you enjoy treating people badly?”
“No. No.”
“When you encounter someone, are most of your intentions to help them, or harm them?”
“I mean…help them, I guess. I mean, I don’t want to harm them.”
“Give me an example. Take your time thinking about it. Just one example of something you do that shows you are thinking about causing good, or helping someone. One act of kindness.”
Damien thought. “I…don’t know. Um. I guess, sometimes, when I’m in a public bathroom and someone else is going to pee I turn on the tap so they won’t, like, feel self-conscious of the noise, you know?”
“That’s a very good example. Can you conclude that, in that instance, you were a good person?”
“I…” Damien’s throat simply closed up. It refused to make that leap, his brain disconnecting from his lungs so that there was not enough breath to speak.
The silence stretched. Mandy smiled kindly.
“It sounds to me like you have a very sturdy perspective on morality, Damien. On good and bad. However, sometimes, you can know something is true in the most logical sense of the word, but you don’t feel it’s true. It can feel like we’re running on two different tracks—logic and emotion—and those can lead us to different places. And, most of the time, the emotion track can have a lot more influence on where we end up than the logical one. We can have logical beliefs, and then we can have emotional beliefs, and these can differ.
“What that means is that we may hold emotional beliefs that we try to tackle purely with a logical argument, resulting in a lot of spent energy for little change. So, for example, you may know, deep down, or when you look at the situation analytically, that you are not bad, because you don’t harm others. But you feel bad. Does that sound at all familiar, or like it would fit how you feel and think about this topic?”
“Yeah,” Damien said truthfully. “It’s like…I can’t give you a reason for why I feel this way about myself. I just…do.”
“Maybe, Damien, the voice that is telling you that you’re bad isn’t yours.”
Damien’s eyes flicked towards her before looking away again. He could feel his muscles tense.
“The truth is, Damien, that we all internalize ideas and beliefs from outside sources. Society, culture, other people. When those outside stimuli are very consistent, it’s normal for our body to adapt to them as if it were the heat of the desert and the humidity of the jungle. In a way, it’s your body trying to survive. But a lot of the time, those stimuli can be completely incorrect, and you can adapt to an environment that isn’t real—or that ends.”
“That makes sense,” Damien said quietly after a moment.
“Has the idea that you’re bad ever been sold to you? Through words, or actions, or the environment you were put in?” Mandy asked.
Damien’s mind blanked. They had talked around the McKenzies enough for Mandy to guess the nature of what had happened, but no specifics had ever been voiced.
The silence stretched on and on. Damien couldn’t speak. It was like having a scary creature behind him. He couldn’t bear to turn and look.
“How about we table that discussion for now?” Mandy suggested softly. “I’ve pushed you hard today, huh?”
Damien just smiled slightly.
“Damien, I want you to know that we don’t have to do everything at once. A deep excavation of the past is not only unnecessary in each session, it’s not necessary at all. Even if it would be helpful and it would inform the work we do together, we live in the now. And though that’s informed by the past, we can learn lessons from the past without having to lay out every detail.
“For example, today we learnt your core beliefs on what makes a person good or bad. We have seen that your behaviours mirror what you classify as ‘good’, and we could logically postulate that, according to that definition, you fall under the category of good. However, we have also learnt that how you feel about whether you are good or bad doesn’t actually align with this analysis. And—correct me if I’m wrong—we’ve suggested that this misalignment was caused by some part of you adapting and internalising messages from people that were not at all a reliable source of your worth.
“With that information, we can look at the present a little differently. Now, when you get that feeling, the ‘I’m not good enough’ feeling, you can ask yourself, gently: Where is it coming from? Me? Or someone else? And is that person worth listening to? Are they worth keeping in your life?”
“No.” He could voice that much at least.
“Good. Then we can be more understanding now. When you feel like that, you can gently say, ‘I understand where this feeling is coming from, but it doesn’t align with reality. This is not a belief I wish to hold.’ By that I mean, although those feelings and perspectives exist in subjective reality, they don’t reflect objective reality. Each person lives in their subjective reality�
��the reality of the subject—and sees objective reality—where all the objects exist—through the lens of subjective reality.
“Your lens is clouded by those past messages. However, we can slowly but surely start refocusing that lens so that it is yours. So that it fits with how you want to see the world.”
“It’s not that easy, though,” Damien couldn’t help but burst out. “They—I can’t just say, ‘No that isn’t true’ and move on.”
“That’s an incredibly valuable point that we should keep in mind. This road is hard. In fact, it can be so difficult at times that you may feel like you aren’t moving forwards at all. But just the fact that you are on this road, Damien, is so amazing. You may not be able to see that now, and you don’t have to. But, God, it is.
“We have to remember, difficult roads lead to places too. It’s not easy to say ‘No, actually, negative thought, that isn’t true’, but it’s worth it. And it’s not about getting into fights with yourself. And it definitely isn’t about expecting the emotion that negative thought causes to go away the moment you challenge it. That’s the rather cruel secret of mental health—a lot of the strategies to improve it are building blocks. But, right now, that voice—the Other Voice, the disparaging one, is very loud.
“There’s an old, Native American parable. It explains how everybody has two wolves constantly fighting inside each of us. The negative wolf—the wolf that tells you that you’re bad, you can’t do it, you’re a failure. And the positive wolf, which tells you, you can do it. You are worthy. You are loved.
“The wolf that wins is, very simply, the one you feed. When you indulge one of the wolves, leave it to go unchallenged, agree with it, don’t seek out evidence to oppose it, you feed it, and it grows stronger.
“Right now, the positive wolf, your own voice which aligns with your own morals and how you want to see the world and yourself, is weak and malnourished, whilst the other one is huge. So, of course giving the malnourished voice a piece of meat may not make a noticeable difference in that one fight. But every scrap of meat you give to the positive wolf is a piece of meat you have denied the negative wolf, and down the line that is going to make a huge difference. Everybody has those negative thoughts. Having them isn’t the issue. We just want to get to a point where your own voice is louder than the rest, some—hopefully most—of the time. Does that sound like something we could do?”
Damien thought about it. He wanted to say yes just to please her but felt safe enough to tell the truth.
“I don’t know.”
“Damien, that’s a great answer,” Mandy said.
Damien looked at her sceptically.
“It is! It’s truthful and makes sense. You have your own experiences helping you predict the future. You can put some faith in me if you can, and in yourself, too. Most of all, we can simply do, and observe. We have a hypothesis. Feeding the positive wolf will cause slow changes. All we can do is employ tactics, which is what therapy is basically for, to feed the wolf we want to grow, and see if it works. How does that sound?”
“That sounds…” Exhausting. Lengthy. But, also, “…doable.”
Mandy smiled at him.
“Okay, then. We have a plan.”
Walking home after the session, Damien let himself feel it. For the first time in a long time, he let the feeling flow without the fear of getting hooked on something that would kill him.
Hope.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Damien left the bar alone. He enjoyed hanging out with the friends he had made at Eketon, but they didn’t have the depth of feeling his friendships back home had. He knew it was perhaps unusual to think that his high school relationships would be the longest-lasting of his life, but they had been bonds forged at war. It was hard to untangle yourself from people you had gone through so much with.
Damien’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out to see a text notification.
Hakan
U up?
Damien rolled his eyes. He knew Hakan was using text-speak in an attempt at humour.
Damien
Yeah, just left the bar. Want me to come over?
Hakan
Yeah
Damien looked up at the sky. It was almost a full moon night.
It was a myth that werewolves had to fight against themselves and the moon. It was true that they had instincts that differed in kind and strength from humans’ but, born werewolves especially, made no distinction between the two. They came from the same source. Themselves.
However, an outsider like Damien could differentiate between instincts which occurred in humans and those which were common in werewolves, and the influence the moon had on these.
On a night like this, with the moonlight bright and on the cusp of fullness, Hakan would be easier to tip into shifting, to tease into losing control.
Damien took a detour.
His dorm was on the way to Hakan’s apartment, and he stopped there for half an hour. He showered with a scent-neutral gel, washing away the smell of the people at the bar. He dried thoroughly and didn’t put cream or deodorant or aftershave on.
He dressed in sweatpants and a shirt he had slept in. They wouldn’t smell of anything but heavily of him.
He pulled on an old, clean hoodie and went outside. The moonlight greeted his mischievous smile.
He tried to enter the apartment as silently as possible, but Hakan was already waiting for him. His eyes flashed yellow in the low light.
Hakan made to move towards him but Damien held up a hand. Hakan halted immediately.
Something took over Damien. The night, or the jasmine flourish of his burgeoning confidence. Maybe it was just knowing he was safe with Hakan.
Damien took off his shoes, his socks, his hoodie. He left them in a pile on the floor, uncaring. He straightened again, leaning against the door. He looked at Hakan, whose eyes were still animal green, yellow.
Damien ran one hand slowly up his clothed chest, pressing his fingers to his neck, rubbing the scent there. He tipped his head back, exposing the line of his throat. For a moment, a low growl sounded before it was cut off abruptly.
Damien tried not to smile.
Damien’s other hand brushed up his thigh, down, up again. Up, until he was cupping himself, already starting to get hard from the taste of anticipation in the air. From the look in Hakan’s eyes.
Damien let himself make a little noise of pleasure. Hakan took a step forwards. Stopped. Damien jutted his hips forwards as if he were in the midst of being taken over by pleasure. He squeezed and rubbed himself until he was fully hard, tenting the material of his sweats. The small flower of a wet spot bloomed on the material.
“Hakan,” Damien whispered to himself. This time, Hakan’s growl sounded much closer to a whimper.
Damien could only imagine what he smelt like. What the drumming of his heart echoed.
Damien removed his shirt. The painted wood of the door was cool against his shoulder blades. He yanked his sweatpants down until they were pooled at his feet.
He was exposed for Hakan. And for himself.
Damien pulled his dick slowly, looking at Hakan’s half-moon shift from beneath his eyelashes, head tilted back. Hakan’s mouth was open and panting, filled with sharp teeth.
“Take your clothes off,” Damien said.
Hakan took his clothes off, barely looking away from him.
“Come here.”
Hakan was pressed against Damien in a moment, picking him up so that Damien’s legs were wound around his waist. Hakan’s favourite position.
“Are you gonna fuck me here? Gonna fill me with your cock and your come?” Damien’s mouth said. He felt both apart and completely anchored in himself.
This is what he would be if he let go.
Hakan growled a groan. He licked at Damien’s skin, face returned to its human form, before fitting his mouth on the side of Damien’s neck. He kept himself there, the imprint of teeth, wet and panting breath heating Damien’s skin. Damie
n exposed his neck further. Hakan’s teeth squeezed before letting go.
“Your scent, God,” Hakan moaned. He carried Damien through the apartment almost blindly, buried as he was in Damien’s skin.
They landed on the bed tangled in each other. Damien pulled Hakan up for a kiss, but it was as if he couldn’t get enough of Damien’s skin. He bit and kissed at Damien’s neck, across the sharp line of his collarbones, the slight dip between lungs, the peak of his nipples. He snuffled into the concave of his stomach, rubbing his cheeks and lips on him as if he were trying to burrow underneath the skin.
When Hakan flipped Damien to his stomach it didn’t take a genius to know where this was going.
Damien hitched his hips up without having to be prompted, pushing against Hakan until his ass was in the air. Hakan moaned like he couldn’t help himself, squeezing the globes of Damien’s cheeks.
“God,” Hakan said before parting Damien’s cheeks and licking a broad, wet line across his hole.
Damien groaned, burying his head in his folded arms, but Hakan was relentless. It was one lick after the other, bites to the meat of his ass, back again and then deeper. Hakan licked into Damien’s hole, pushing forwards as he held Damien’s hips still. He fucked Damien with his tongue as deep as he could go, getting him wet and trembling with want.
Damien was outside his head. He was deep inside his body where Hakan was taking over. The scent and sound and feel of him. Damien pulled at the sheets as Hakan slid two fingers inside him, fucking them roughly alongside his tongue.
“Oh God. Oh, God,” Damien groaned.
He could feel Hakan’s answering growl reverberate through him.
“Fuck. Hakan, please, fuck me, Jesus fuck, just—” Damien choked on a sound as Hakan rubbed his prostate.
He was falling apart. He was being remade.
Damien slumped onto the bed, hard cock brushing against the sheets as Hakan released him. Time lost meaning with Damien untethered. In a fold of time, Hakan had returned, Damien’s hips being lifted up again. Damien felt the tip of Hakan’s cock rub his entrance before it was being stretched as Hakan pushed inside.
In This Iron Ground (Natural Magic) Page 26