In This Iron Ground (Natural Magic)

by Marina Vivancos

  “Thanks, man,” Hakan said with a sigh as he collapsed on the bench. Damien smiled, joining him.

  They sat close together in the warm cicada night. The air was rich with the scent of the forest. Damien could still hear the laughter and chatter of the Salgados on the other side of the house, the comforting lull of the sea.

  He took a deep breath. He let it out slowly.

  The moonlight was everywhere. Inside him. It almost had a sound, like the clean ringing of a bell.

  Hakan’s shoulder brushed again his. Damien wondered how his heart wasn’t racing. Why his head wasn’t filling with the sound of his rushing blood, his lungs tightening with a lack of air. But everything was still and quiet.

  What if?

  There, in that lit darkness, Damien turned towards him. Hakan looked back. His smile was as clear as the sky.

  Damien leaned in. In, in, until there was a brush of skin. Of lips. Damien felt Hakan’s breath against him.

  This was his first kiss.

  He pressed forwards and suddenly it was real. The shape and feel of Hakan’s lips. The electricity of it. The—

  And then, it was gone.

  Damien opened his eyes. For a moment, Hakan’s expression didn’t make sense. It was a disjointed piece in the image that had been unfurling inside him.

  Damien’s eyes cleared. His mind.

  The expression fit into place. Fit into the progression of his life. Perfectly.

  “What are you doing?” Hakan said. His mouth was painted open and startled, his eyebrows frowned by confusion, his hands held up a little, as if to ward Damien away. Hakan was leaning away, jolted from Damien by the kiss.

  Everything stopped. His blood, his organs, his neurons, his atoms. There was nothingness—for a moment. And then everything came rushing back.

  “I—I…” Damien held up his hands too, sliding to the opposite side of the bench. Hakan straightened slowly.

  “Damien…” he said and God, that gentle voice. That pitying letdown. It was worse than any anger could have been.

  “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t even know what I was—I was just, fuck!” Damien made to get up, but Hakan grabbed his arm. Every one of Damien’s particles froze.

  “Wait. Wait, Damien. I…I’m really sorry, I just don’t—”

  “I get it. I totally, totally”—he laughed, hating himself—“totally get it. I’m an idiot, I—”

  “You’re not an idiot. It’s not…I just don’t…I can’t…”

  “I get it. Seriously, Hakan. I get it.”

  How he could have thought this would end differently defied reason. How many times did life have to teach him this lesson?

  “We can forget about it, okay? I’m not…I’m not gonna do that, I mean, I don’t…” Damien tied himself in knots. He wanted to leave. He needed to escape.

  He looked up at Hakan’s eyes and knew. There was no forgetting about this. There was no misunderstanding what this meant.

  Damien pulled at his arm. Hakan squeezed for a moment before letting go.

  Damien got up. “Sorry. I…I’ll see you later, okay?”

  Hakan looked at him. Damien shook his head. There was nothing more to say.

  He walked in a haze. He slipped into the house, thankfully devoid of people. He crept into his room. As soon as the door was closed, he collapsed.

  The thick substance of shame was dripping down his neck and into his lungs. It was covering each alveolus oily and black.

  He was suffocating.

  How could he have been so stupid?

  He’d known. All along, this premonition had been clear, a reflection from the past. He ruined things. Families. Opportunities. Relationships.

  Himself.

  He ruined things, and now his greed had ruined this too.

  He took a trembling breath. Instead of moonlight, it was filled with the scorching rake of humiliation.

  The image of Hakan’s soft, pitying eyes was a ghost howling in his head.

  Damien took another breath.

  He couldn’t do this now. It was Hakan’s goodbye party. He was leaving in two days. There was a family of werewolves downstairs. He couldn’t freak out here. He’d made a mistake and had to live with it.

  He folded his emotions down.

  a pig, a snake, a deer

  Folded the corners down. Pressed the creases.

  a swan, a plane, and eagle

  He transformed its shape and pressed it down.

  Down.

  Down.

  *****

  “You smell funny,” Dee said, running towards him as he stepped outside again. She was so big now. Almost seven.

  “You smell funny,” Damien teased, sticking his tongue out. Dee reciprocated, scrunching her whole face up. Damien laughed.

  He waded into the crowd, camouflaged. He felt nothing inside. Everything was buried in the packed earth.

  He caught sight of Hakan. Damien gave him a smile. Hakan frowned in response. It didn’t really matter.

  The world made sense like this. Everything was as it should be.

  Even though it was late, Damien helped clean up as the party died down. He had to keep going, moving forwards on his own momentum. He didn’t know what would happen when he stopped.

  “Hey,” Hakan’s voice said from behind him as Damien stacked cups. He tensed at the sound.

  “Hey,” he replied without turning around. He didn’t want to be near Hakan. His presence pierced the thin film stretched over his skin that kept everything in.

  “Can we…talk?” Hakan asked.

  Damien turned around with a smile. At Hakan’s obvious frown he dropped it, but kept his face placid. “Look, I’m sorry. No! Just…let me finish. I made an honest mistake. And…I’ll deal with it. It’s fine. It’s not a big deal. Can we just…leave it as a blip and move on?” He felt like pleading, but his voice was flat.

  Hakan kept silent for so long that for a moment Damien wobbled over his shoddily constructed foundation.

  “We good, then?” Hakan said.

  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 be in love with 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, the tick-tick-tick of 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 with ooh’s and ah’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.

  They sat as they reached the plateau, familiar from the first of Damien’s hikes through the forest, during the Spring Equinox what felt like a million years ago.

  “What can you smell?” Damien asked teasingly, an echo from the past.

  Hakan looked at him. “The birds. The forest. The earth. You.”

  “That last one must be the best,” Damien joked. Hakan looked contemplative. “So, tell me about your adventure then.” Damien went on before Hakan could reply. “What’s it like?”

  “It’s been…it’s hard to describe. Exciting. Scary. Lonely. Interesting. Overwhelming.”

  “Are the classes good?”

  “Some. There’s a lot of entry-level stuff so there’s a lot of easy stuff to the point of boring. But there are some that are pretty amazing.”

  “What about the people? I know you’ve told me about a few of your friends, but…”

  “I’m not good with people,” Hakan said.

  Damien snorted. That wasn’t strictly true. Hakan was easily overwhelmed by people outside the pack, but he wasn’t especially shy or overly talkative like Damien was.

  “It’s been interesting,” Hakan went on. “It’s been…yeah.” He looked away, awkward, and Damien knew exactly what he was thinking.

  The moment was almost calming. Knowing that Hakan, who had always seemed to feel a little overshadowed by his family’s outgoing energy, was flourishing in the wild landscape of college. Damien didn’t have it in him to be jealous or hurt. Or if he was, it was overshadowed easily by love.

  “Man, you can talk to me about sex and stuff. What happened—that stuff, it’s in the past.” Damien didn’t phrase it as ‘I’m over it’, knowing Hakan would sense the lie. But the possibility of what Damien had been hoping for, the pining for it, really was in the past.

  “It’s been…interesting. People are very, well, they’re very…”

  “Let me guess. You’re beating them off with a stick. No pun intended.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Hakan replied, rolling his eyes.

  “I’m sorry to break this to you Hakan, but you’re not that horrible to look at. Some may say that you’re even attractive.”

  “Is that why you kissed me?” Hakan said. Damien froze. He could tell Hakan regretted the words as soon as he said them, but Damien breathed through them.

  “Yep. You got me. I don’t even like you that much. I just hang around you for your sick bod. Man, those pecs!” Damien said, poking Hakan’s chest. Hakan turned away from him, grumbling, but there was a smile tilting his lips. “It’s not like you’re my best friend and saved my life and are the reason I have a real home. It’s not like you’re part of everything good in my life. Idiot.” There was as much pain as there was relief in those words. The release of them was cathartic.

  Hakan looked at him, serious. Damien looked back. Even if Hakan didn’t return his feelings, it felt good to love somebody. To have someone in his life good enough to warrant that.

  Damien broke the moment by punching Hakan in the arm. “I know I’m a catch, but you gotta move on from me, man. Leave the past in the past,” Damien said with false joviality. Hakan snorted. “If you won’t tell me about your wild sexcapades, then tell me more about your lessons. Nerd.”

  After a moment, Hakan smiled at him. Damien could feel something repair. Be put to rest.

  As Hakan talked, it was almost like old times. Like they were back in his room, sharing space together.

  Almost.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Don’t drink too much. And. No. Drugs,” Olive said.

  Damien rolled his eyes, looking at her from the passenger seat of the car. She was driving them to a party, the first that Olive had invited Damien along to, although he knew she went to them regularly. A few years ago, the lack of invite would have sliced Damien up. Now, however, he could see it was just Olive’s strange brand of protectiveness, much like her warning words a moment before.

  “Okay, Mom,” Damien said as sarcastically as possible.

  “Don’t sass me. I’m not fucking you up.”

  “Dude, stop being a drama queen, jeez. Smoking is going to fuck me up? Really? You’re saying that?”

  “No, but…fuck, just be careful. I don’t know. Just be careful!”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Brat.”

  “Grandma.”

  Stepping into the house party was an onslaught of sensory information. The loud noise and warmth of the packed people he had expected, but nobody tells you about the smell. The sticky almost-sweetness of alcohol, the haze of weed, the musk of sweaty bodies. It seemed to ramp up the noise of the music and laughter, the sudden feeling of being in a confined space with so many people.

  There was no way there were any shifters here. They wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  Damien tried to mask his reaction, not wanting to worry Olive, who was watching him carefully.

  “Let’s party!” Damien said. Olive shook her head, but they waded in deeper. The smell and the heat and
the noise got bigger and more insistent until they started to lose their edge, Damien’s overstuffed head becoming used to the overload.

  Damien barely drank, nursing a single cup. He wasn’t panicking, but he didn’t feel nearly comfortable enough to lose an ounce of control. Olive, on the other hand, drank freely, obviously used to the habit. For the first hour, she stuck close by, but as distractions became more insistent and her inhibitions loosened, she started drifting away. Damien let her. It was nice to see that smile on her face. Damien had learnt to survive in the world of adults, but it still rubbed Olive raw. There, however, amidst college students and a lack of rules, she let herself go.

  People were friendly in an inebriated sort of way, but Damien needed a break soon after he lost sight of Olive. There was something about the slight glaze in their eyes, the wide and sudden gestures of their arms, that put Damien on edge.

  He went outside and the change in air was immediate. Despite the persistent smell of smoke, the cooling of temperature and open space relaxed Damien slightly.

  Damien sipped at his drink a little nervously, trying not to wince at the taste. He looked around, pausing when he spotted a boy sitting by himself on the ground, smoking. He blended with the shadows slightly, his black hair and eyes, skin quite a few shades darker than Damien’s own. Damien’s legs began to move without conscious thought until he was in front of the guy.

  “Can I sit here?” Damien asked. The guy looked up, a little surprised, but without a trace of annoyance.

  “Sure.”

  “Damien,” he introduced himself as he sat down.

  “Gonzalo,” the guy replied.

  “You know anybody here?”

  “Yeah, a few people. They were doing my head in.”

  “Too loud?”

  “Too stupid.”

  “Ah.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. But she’s neither loud nor stupid.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “What? Oh, no, she’s a friend.” For some reason the question made him blush. Gonzalo looked at him, almost as if he were finding something he hadn’t been looking for. His expression didn’t exactly soften, but it opened up somehow.