Fic: The Light By Which I Travel
The Light By Which I Travel
Author: ladyhurt
Fandom: Football RPS
Pairing: Hamit/Halil Altintop
Summary: Hamit’s POV. Follows Hamit’s decision to move to Bayern München.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13. Uh. This fic contains le eveel Twincest (of doom). If that doesn’t float your boat, then don’t read it.
Disclaimer: This is so unbelievably not true that it hurts me inside.
Note: This fic can be read as a prequel to However You Throw the Dice, except that fic does not include Twincest.
Halil is laughing really loudly, you think vaguely, probably not loudly enough to drown out your voice, but definitely too loud for the calm hotel corridors. You are imitating Kahn’s voice as best you can, just what you remember from television. At one point your accent slips into something that might be Russian, but to be honest, you weren’t trying for accuracy. You were just aiming to make Halil laugh.
Halil, who was strangely quiet tonight until you started passing him shots between chasers of white beer.
“You’re drunk,” your brother accuses in a loud whisper between laughter. He still says it as if you are twelve and stealing from your parent’s liquour cabinet: accusatory with something like awe underneath.
This is true; you’re a little drunk. Which is probably what draws your eyes to Halil’s mouth when he giggles. Probably what makes you want to hug him all of a sudden.
He’s giggling when you pull him into your arms and you go right for the spots you know are ticklish, making him fold in on himself to avoid your quick fingers. But he’s smashed too; his attempts to manoevour out of your grasp only serve to make him stumble into you, and this time you clutch at him just to stop the two of you collapsing onto the floor.
Someone opens their door and hisses at the pair of you to keep it down, and you both hush. You cover Halil’s mouth with your hand just to be safe. You used to do the same thing when your parents would hear you in the middle of the night, discussing that day’s training and plotting new strategies to try out on the field. Halil would never be able to stop himself from giggling, so you used to shove your whole hand into his mouth, lying flat on top of him and whispering, shhhhhhh into your brother’s ears until Halil’s body stopped shaking in mad laughter. Then you would take your hand away and wipe it on the sheets, and tug them over your heads so all you had to do was close your eyes against Halil’s neck and fall asleep there, tucked in the protective cocoon of blankets and warmth and your brother’s skin.
Now it’s a little more difficult, because you have separate rooms (but with a connecting door, which you found pretty damn cool because now you can just bang it open whenever you want, even in the middle of the night when you suddenly remember it’s your parents’ anniversary next week and you need to know what Hamit got them as a gift from the two of you). You still sort of wish you just had to roll over and poke Hamit until he woke up, but just because that saved you from the cold floor against your bare feet.
Anyway, you still only have to unlock one door, which is useful when you can barely focus on sliding one little card into its appropriate slot. Plus, you are pretty sure Hamit is drooling on your shirt; admittedly this would have been grosser if you hadn’t already spilled sticky tequila down it (and also if you hadn’t been drooled on by your brother a thousand times before, as well as puked on and occasionally bled on by the same). By the time you get through the door, you’re prepared to do little else but kick your shoes off and collapse into bed-- possibly after downing ten pain pills and a glass of water, and forcing Halil to do the same. You realize you’re probably going to be responsible for his shoes as well when Halil flops face down on your bed, not even bothering with the cleverly-placed connecting door.
“Shoes off first, kid,” you order mildly. Halil answers with a gargled noise and a wave of his hand, which at least indicates to you he is still alive, considering he makes absolutely no move to remove said shoes, or indeed to turn over. You kneel by the bed and yank off his trainers, then take yours off as well. You teeter towards the bathroom to get the required water and pills, and when you return Halil has managed to crawl upwards toward the pile of pillows the hotel provides, turned onto his back and is staring at the ceiling.
“Your pillows are more comfortable than mine,” he complains. “I think the staff likes you more. They probably change your towels every day, don’t they? They don’t change mine. They leave them wet and all over the floor.”
“They do that to be envemo-, enviromebably-, environmentally-friendly, you twat,” you protest, dragging yourself up beside him and forcing the pills and water into his hands. “And it’s you who leaves them on the floor, because you’re a lazy bum.”
Halil rolls his eyes from behind the glass. He seems to forget to swallow in his haste to reply, because he suddenly starts to choke and turn bright red. You laugh and whack him on the back, which probably doesn’t do anything other than make him cringe and cough harder. When he stops hacking up a lung he scowls at you, looking like he wants to fight back but can’t summon the energy. Instead, he flops down onto the pillows and wipes his wet face against them. You snort.
“It’s you who’s gonna be sleeping in the wet spots, dork.” You’re already climbing under the covers, not bothering to take off the rest of your clothes.
“Who says I’m gonna sleep here, hmm?” Halil says, but his eyes are closed and he doesn’t protest when you lift his legs under the covers. “M’too big to sleep with m’brother,” he slurs sleepily. You scoff lightly and turn to click the light on your side off. When you lean over him to turn his off as well, his arms snake around your waist and he burrows his face into your chest when you lay down. Your own arms move to hold him tightly, and you concentrate on the feel of his heartbeat falling in sync with yours almost immediately, as natural as when you were in the womb together.
You wake up early after rolling over into the wet spot Halil left when he drooled all over your pillow. He tends to do that when he’s drunk; that, and spread himself all over the bed, knees and elbows lodging themselves into your softer areas. You push his knee down out of habit and throw the covers off, pulling yourself out of bed. It’s only seven and the bus from the hotel to the airport doesn’t leave until noon, meaning you have time for a shower and coffee before you even have to think about waking up Halil.
The coffee isn’t Turkish but it is black and strong and has the added benefit of having such a smell that it manages to wake Halil from his dozing. Possibly helped by you sitting on the edge of the bed sipping it loudly and making sounds of obvious contentment.
“Mmmmkahvesi,” Halil mumbles and reaches a searching hand out towards you. You know better than to hand a half-asleep Halil a cup of anything hot, however (drool, vomit and blood are not the only things he has spilled on you), and you ignore him instead. After a few minutes of mumbling he manages to sit up and you offer him a sip of your cup instead of handing him the one on the bedside table. It’s a habit neither of you have managed to break since you were children; your parents made you share cups of hot cocoa, your mother paranoid of what the caffeine would do to you (the both of you, but especially Halil, who could barely handle cough syrup as a kid without going loopy). Eventually you’ll hand the cup off to Halil and drink his instead, but for now you place your lips on the wet spot where his mouth has just been and grin at the pink that flushes his sleepy face.
“When does our plane leave?” He asks, half-interested in your answer and half in trying to wrestle the mug back into his own hands. You give up and lean back against the pillows beside him, staring at the top of his head where it just peeks out from the covers.
“We have to be on the bus at twelve,” you answer. It is only 10, and there is nowhere to be except maybe the hotel restaurant if Halil gets hungry later. There is nothing to do but card your fingers through your brother’s hair, giving him a scratch behind the ears just because you can. Surprisingly he doesn’t bat your hand away like an angry kitten, he just snuffles kind of sweetly through his nose and continues to drink his coffee.
~
You definitely didn’t get enough sleep last night. This is well proven by the fact that your forehead now has a red spot where it bumped against the window of the plane when you fell asleep against it. You’re trying to keep awake now because the seat beside you is empty, meaning there is no brother to use as a pillow. Halil left to speak to Christian a half hour ago and hasn’t been back since, leaving you with a neck cramp and no one to complain to. You eye Kevin, seated in the aisle next to yours, but he’s listening to his mp3 player and Rafi is snoozing beside him, so you leave them alone. Everyone on the plane looks like they had a little too much fun the night before, but after a match against Bayern you know Mirko will turn a blind eye.
Your coach is currently playing a game of cards with young Özil, who came along to watch but wasn’t called up. He is the only member of the team who doesn’t look the least bit under the weather, but then you aren’t entirely sure he is even of age to drink yet. You turn away as Mirko laughs at something the boy says, looking around for your wayward brother. You spot him with Pander, their heads together like plotting little children-- except that’s your job, and it’s rather stupid that seeing Halil whispering and laughing with another makes you a little jealous. But it does. You sigh and lean your head back, closing your eyes and hoping for just a few minutes more of sleep.
~
Once when you were children Halil went away for a week without you. It was some art camp thing, something you weren’t even remotely interested in. The night he left you felt too sick to eat, and your mother held you that night while you cried. You refused to tell her what had upset you, too full of shame at missing your brother at the age of eleven, but your mother was never one to be fooled.
“Shhh,” she whispered in your ear. “Your brother would never leave you, my love.”
But despite her reassurances you still dreamt that Halil never came back, that you were forever reduced to sleeping alone and drinking entire cups of hot cocoa by yourself.
~
You receive a call one evening from a scout. A scout from Bayern München. He wants to speak with you, and you make a date for a week later.
You don’t tell Halil. You tell yourself it will probably come to nothing, no reason to bother him, no reason to make him worry.
There is a man in a dark suit waiting for you at the restaurant. He greets you with a genuine smile and a strong handshake. His hands sit folded on the table as he explains. There is a confident ease with which he does everything, which you hate, because you’re shaking and nervous and this feels something like betrayal. There are papers suddenly in your hands, neatly typed with certain sections highlighted. Everything is set up for you, you come to realize, and before you can stop yourself you ask him if it can really be that simple.
Yes, he answers. All you have to do is sign.
You tell yourself Halil will be okay. He always was the stronger of the two of you. Gelsenkirchen is good for him; he loves the Northern wind, the smooth lines of green field, the reflection of the rising sun on the Rhein river. He hears the arguments between you and Mirko after practice, sees your tired look when you walk together back to the car.
The smog of industry always made your nose itch; your teeth grind against the coal-heavy smells of the city.
~
You never were very good at hiding your feelings from Halil. You return home, toss your keys onto the hall counter, shrug out of your jacket-- and in that time Halil has seen you, watched the expression on your face, and decided there was something seriously wrong. He sits you down at the kitchen table.
His calm concern is quick to be replaced by anger.
“You didn’t tell me! You went to see a scout and you didn’t tell me!” He isn’t asking, but you know he’s demanding an answer anyway. He yanks his hands through his hair, and you cringe knowing he’s ripped out more than a few hairs in the process.
“I’m sorry,” you say, very quietly, head down and shame churning in your stomach.
There is a long pause, and you dare to look up at your brother for just a moment. His head is in his hands, and your chest does a funny pitter-patter that makes you suck in a quick breath.
“You aren’t happy anymore,” Halil says quietly, and you open my mouth to protest. He shakes his head, all visible signs of his previous anger gone; now his face is all sympathy, and in some ways, that is worse.
“You aren’t happy,” he repeats. “I can tell. All I want is for you to be happy, Hamit.” His voice becomes softer as he speaks and by the time he says your name, it is choked. You reach out and wrap a hand over his shoulder, letting your palm fit the curve that you know so well. He sighs and leans into you, in until his forehead rests against your collarbone, and the scent of his hair gel is all you can smell.
“Do you think--” Bayern is the place for me? You do not dare say it. Instead you let your hand slide from his shoulder to his back, and let your other one do the same, until he is encircled in your arms: as natural as on the field and in the locker room, or when you were children and snuggling in public was still considered acceptable.
There is no public now. You let your head rest upon his, and savour the rise and fall of his back under your fingertips. You hold him until the hitch in his breath evens out, until his muscles relax and his body is soft against yours. You hold him for longer than you normally would dare, and still he doesn‘t move and you don’t let him go.
Finally his face lifts from your shoulder, his eyes moist and his lips glossy with spit. His mouth is right there and suddenly it’s there, against yours; you’ve kissed him and this isn’t even close to brotherly anymore. He pushes against your shoulders with as much force as he can muster through his shock; it probably isn’t necessary, since you pull back the moment he starts to struggle.
“What the hell,” he starts, wiping his mouth. His eyes are turning dark, his lips curling into an angry frown. “What are you doing?”
You aren’t sure what answer will cause the least amount of trouble. It is too late to pretend it was a joke. The alternative, to tell the truth, is obviously a bad idea. You sit there silently, hoping he will leave or yell or throw a punch, so you can just take what you deserve.
“Are you crazy, Hamit? Are you--” he doesn’t finish, because there is a knock on the door. Halil goes to answer, throwing a look at you: a mixture of suspicion and warning, as if you were planning on pouncing him in plain view of--
Christian. Christian Pander is at your door and suddenly you feel incredibly stupid and ill, and you back away as Halil smiles nervously at him. Christian doesn’t even notice you, and Halil isn’t looking at you in any way, anymore. Which isn’t any better than yelling, apparently. You back out of the room and close the door to the study as quietly as you can.
All you have to do is sign.
The papers sit on the desk and you don’t think as you pull them out. The pen is heavy in your hand and you sign them all quickly. You hear two voices in the other room and there would be something disturbingly poetic about your tears making the ink run, but when you stuff the contract back into the envelope your eyes are dry.
~
For the next few days you revolve around each other, speaking but not talking. He is friendly to you at practise but avoids eye contact in the locker room; at home, he dodges around you so you’re never likely to touch. You feel disconnected in a way that is completely unfamiliar to you: for as long as you can remember even when you were apart there was a place inside you that knew you were never alone. You were always one part of two, but now it feels like the thing that held you together has been ripped away.
He still cries when you tell him you have accepted the offer. He cries and at first he tries to hide it, behind his smiles, behind his hands, and finally behind the door that closes between you.
You knock first to be polite, but when you turn the door handle it opens easily, and you know you are welcome.
Halil is sitting on his bed with his back to you, cradling his head in his hands. You crawl over the bed until you can sit behind him, close enough to hear his soft breathing but not touching. The back of his neck begs you to reach out and brush it; a caress you know will calm him in seconds, but you don’t dare to do it, not without his permission, not anymore.
You may not have ruined everything with your stupid, perverted attempts at kissing him, but that does not mean he feels comfortable with you yet.
“You love me, right?” he asks suddenly, and you swallow thickly. He likes (used to, used to like) telling you he loves you whenever you were upset, liked to snuggle you in his arms and tickle you until you were smiling again. He never asked, though. And you never did know how to comfort him.
“You know I do,” you answer softly, so softly you aren’t even sure he hears it. He turns around, giving you a full view of his puffy eyes and wet lashes, and inside the place where he has been torn from you aches.
“I love you too,” he says. Then he leans forward and kisses you. You don’t move, just sit there, your mouth open slightly from shock. You don’t move when he tilts his head and his nose slides against yours. His lips are soft and gentle against yours, and when they are gone you open your eyes, not even realizing they have fallen closed. Hamit looks sad and maybe disappointed, but you can’t imagine what your face must say. You feel so broken inside that you aren’t sure how you’ll be able to pick yourself back up when Halil walks away again.
“I love you, Hamit,” he says again. You nod, and maybe now those tears are going to finally appear. You figure you’ve held back for a long time, now. Maybe this is his forgiveness, or his goodbye-- but whatever it is, it hurts like hell.
“Please.”
At first you think you’ve accidentally said it, but you aren’t one to beg, not even for this. You look at Halil, really look, and maybe the pleading is in his eyes.
When he kisses you again you wonder how he thinks this will help. If he thinks you could ever get him out of your system, when you are one and the same: identical flesh and synchronized mind. Maybe some of that thought occurs to him because Halil pulls away. His breath is coming fast and his damp face is more beautiful than you have ever seen. When he takes another breath and leans back in, you move forward to match him, curling your tongues together, and soon after, your bodies.
Author: ladyhurt
Fandom: Football RPS
Pairing: Hamit/Halil Altintop
Summary: Hamit’s POV. Follows Hamit’s decision to move to Bayern München.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13. Uh. This fic contains le eveel Twincest (of doom). If that doesn’t float your boat, then don’t read it.
Disclaimer: This is so unbelievably not true that it hurts me inside.
Note: This fic can be read as a prequel to However You Throw the Dice, except that fic does not include Twincest.
Halil is laughing really loudly, you think vaguely, probably not loudly enough to drown out your voice, but definitely too loud for the calm hotel corridors. You are imitating Kahn’s voice as best you can, just what you remember from television. At one point your accent slips into something that might be Russian, but to be honest, you weren’t trying for accuracy. You were just aiming to make Halil laugh.
Halil, who was strangely quiet tonight until you started passing him shots between chasers of white beer.
“You’re drunk,” your brother accuses in a loud whisper between laughter. He still says it as if you are twelve and stealing from your parent’s liquour cabinet: accusatory with something like awe underneath.
This is true; you’re a little drunk. Which is probably what draws your eyes to Halil’s mouth when he giggles. Probably what makes you want to hug him all of a sudden.
He’s giggling when you pull him into your arms and you go right for the spots you know are ticklish, making him fold in on himself to avoid your quick fingers. But he’s smashed too; his attempts to manoevour out of your grasp only serve to make him stumble into you, and this time you clutch at him just to stop the two of you collapsing onto the floor.
Someone opens their door and hisses at the pair of you to keep it down, and you both hush. You cover Halil’s mouth with your hand just to be safe. You used to do the same thing when your parents would hear you in the middle of the night, discussing that day’s training and plotting new strategies to try out on the field. Halil would never be able to stop himself from giggling, so you used to shove your whole hand into his mouth, lying flat on top of him and whispering, shhhhhhh into your brother’s ears until Halil’s body stopped shaking in mad laughter. Then you would take your hand away and wipe it on the sheets, and tug them over your heads so all you had to do was close your eyes against Halil’s neck and fall asleep there, tucked in the protective cocoon of blankets and warmth and your brother’s skin.
Now it’s a little more difficult, because you have separate rooms (but with a connecting door, which you found pretty damn cool because now you can just bang it open whenever you want, even in the middle of the night when you suddenly remember it’s your parents’ anniversary next week and you need to know what Hamit got them as a gift from the two of you). You still sort of wish you just had to roll over and poke Hamit until he woke up, but just because that saved you from the cold floor against your bare feet.
Anyway, you still only have to unlock one door, which is useful when you can barely focus on sliding one little card into its appropriate slot. Plus, you are pretty sure Hamit is drooling on your shirt; admittedly this would have been grosser if you hadn’t already spilled sticky tequila down it (and also if you hadn’t been drooled on by your brother a thousand times before, as well as puked on and occasionally bled on by the same). By the time you get through the door, you’re prepared to do little else but kick your shoes off and collapse into bed-- possibly after downing ten pain pills and a glass of water, and forcing Halil to do the same. You realize you’re probably going to be responsible for his shoes as well when Halil flops face down on your bed, not even bothering with the cleverly-placed connecting door.
“Shoes off first, kid,” you order mildly. Halil answers with a gargled noise and a wave of his hand, which at least indicates to you he is still alive, considering he makes absolutely no move to remove said shoes, or indeed to turn over. You kneel by the bed and yank off his trainers, then take yours off as well. You teeter towards the bathroom to get the required water and pills, and when you return Halil has managed to crawl upwards toward the pile of pillows the hotel provides, turned onto his back and is staring at the ceiling.
“Your pillows are more comfortable than mine,” he complains. “I think the staff likes you more. They probably change your towels every day, don’t they? They don’t change mine. They leave them wet and all over the floor.”
“They do that to be envemo-, enviromebably-, environmentally-friendly, you twat,” you protest, dragging yourself up beside him and forcing the pills and water into his hands. “And it’s you who leaves them on the floor, because you’re a lazy bum.”
Halil rolls his eyes from behind the glass. He seems to forget to swallow in his haste to reply, because he suddenly starts to choke and turn bright red. You laugh and whack him on the back, which probably doesn’t do anything other than make him cringe and cough harder. When he stops hacking up a lung he scowls at you, looking like he wants to fight back but can’t summon the energy. Instead, he flops down onto the pillows and wipes his wet face against them. You snort.
“It’s you who’s gonna be sleeping in the wet spots, dork.” You’re already climbing under the covers, not bothering to take off the rest of your clothes.
“Who says I’m gonna sleep here, hmm?” Halil says, but his eyes are closed and he doesn’t protest when you lift his legs under the covers. “M’too big to sleep with m’brother,” he slurs sleepily. You scoff lightly and turn to click the light on your side off. When you lean over him to turn his off as well, his arms snake around your waist and he burrows his face into your chest when you lay down. Your own arms move to hold him tightly, and you concentrate on the feel of his heartbeat falling in sync with yours almost immediately, as natural as when you were in the womb together.
You wake up early after rolling over into the wet spot Halil left when he drooled all over your pillow. He tends to do that when he’s drunk; that, and spread himself all over the bed, knees and elbows lodging themselves into your softer areas. You push his knee down out of habit and throw the covers off, pulling yourself out of bed. It’s only seven and the bus from the hotel to the airport doesn’t leave until noon, meaning you have time for a shower and coffee before you even have to think about waking up Halil.
The coffee isn’t Turkish but it is black and strong and has the added benefit of having such a smell that it manages to wake Halil from his dozing. Possibly helped by you sitting on the edge of the bed sipping it loudly and making sounds of obvious contentment.
“Mmmmkahvesi,” Halil mumbles and reaches a searching hand out towards you. You know better than to hand a half-asleep Halil a cup of anything hot, however (drool, vomit and blood are not the only things he has spilled on you), and you ignore him instead. After a few minutes of mumbling he manages to sit up and you offer him a sip of your cup instead of handing him the one on the bedside table. It’s a habit neither of you have managed to break since you were children; your parents made you share cups of hot cocoa, your mother paranoid of what the caffeine would do to you (the both of you, but especially Halil, who could barely handle cough syrup as a kid without going loopy). Eventually you’ll hand the cup off to Halil and drink his instead, but for now you place your lips on the wet spot where his mouth has just been and grin at the pink that flushes his sleepy face.
“When does our plane leave?” He asks, half-interested in your answer and half in trying to wrestle the mug back into his own hands. You give up and lean back against the pillows beside him, staring at the top of his head where it just peeks out from the covers.
“We have to be on the bus at twelve,” you answer. It is only 10, and there is nowhere to be except maybe the hotel restaurant if Halil gets hungry later. There is nothing to do but card your fingers through your brother’s hair, giving him a scratch behind the ears just because you can. Surprisingly he doesn’t bat your hand away like an angry kitten, he just snuffles kind of sweetly through his nose and continues to drink his coffee.
~
You definitely didn’t get enough sleep last night. This is well proven by the fact that your forehead now has a red spot where it bumped against the window of the plane when you fell asleep against it. You’re trying to keep awake now because the seat beside you is empty, meaning there is no brother to use as a pillow. Halil left to speak to Christian a half hour ago and hasn’t been back since, leaving you with a neck cramp and no one to complain to. You eye Kevin, seated in the aisle next to yours, but he’s listening to his mp3 player and Rafi is snoozing beside him, so you leave them alone. Everyone on the plane looks like they had a little too much fun the night before, but after a match against Bayern you know Mirko will turn a blind eye.
Your coach is currently playing a game of cards with young Özil, who came along to watch but wasn’t called up. He is the only member of the team who doesn’t look the least bit under the weather, but then you aren’t entirely sure he is even of age to drink yet. You turn away as Mirko laughs at something the boy says, looking around for your wayward brother. You spot him with Pander, their heads together like plotting little children-- except that’s your job, and it’s rather stupid that seeing Halil whispering and laughing with another makes you a little jealous. But it does. You sigh and lean your head back, closing your eyes and hoping for just a few minutes more of sleep.
~
Once when you were children Halil went away for a week without you. It was some art camp thing, something you weren’t even remotely interested in. The night he left you felt too sick to eat, and your mother held you that night while you cried. You refused to tell her what had upset you, too full of shame at missing your brother at the age of eleven, but your mother was never one to be fooled.
“Shhh,” she whispered in your ear. “Your brother would never leave you, my love.”
But despite her reassurances you still dreamt that Halil never came back, that you were forever reduced to sleeping alone and drinking entire cups of hot cocoa by yourself.
~
You receive a call one evening from a scout. A scout from Bayern München. He wants to speak with you, and you make a date for a week later.
You don’t tell Halil. You tell yourself it will probably come to nothing, no reason to bother him, no reason to make him worry.
There is a man in a dark suit waiting for you at the restaurant. He greets you with a genuine smile and a strong handshake. His hands sit folded on the table as he explains. There is a confident ease with which he does everything, which you hate, because you’re shaking and nervous and this feels something like betrayal. There are papers suddenly in your hands, neatly typed with certain sections highlighted. Everything is set up for you, you come to realize, and before you can stop yourself you ask him if it can really be that simple.
Yes, he answers. All you have to do is sign.
You tell yourself Halil will be okay. He always was the stronger of the two of you. Gelsenkirchen is good for him; he loves the Northern wind, the smooth lines of green field, the reflection of the rising sun on the Rhein river. He hears the arguments between you and Mirko after practice, sees your tired look when you walk together back to the car.
The smog of industry always made your nose itch; your teeth grind against the coal-heavy smells of the city.
~
You never were very good at hiding your feelings from Halil. You return home, toss your keys onto the hall counter, shrug out of your jacket-- and in that time Halil has seen you, watched the expression on your face, and decided there was something seriously wrong. He sits you down at the kitchen table.
His calm concern is quick to be replaced by anger.
“You didn’t tell me! You went to see a scout and you didn’t tell me!” He isn’t asking, but you know he’s demanding an answer anyway. He yanks his hands through his hair, and you cringe knowing he’s ripped out more than a few hairs in the process.
“I’m sorry,” you say, very quietly, head down and shame churning in your stomach.
There is a long pause, and you dare to look up at your brother for just a moment. His head is in his hands, and your chest does a funny pitter-patter that makes you suck in a quick breath.
“You aren’t happy anymore,” Halil says quietly, and you open my mouth to protest. He shakes his head, all visible signs of his previous anger gone; now his face is all sympathy, and in some ways, that is worse.
“You aren’t happy,” he repeats. “I can tell. All I want is for you to be happy, Hamit.” His voice becomes softer as he speaks and by the time he says your name, it is choked. You reach out and wrap a hand over his shoulder, letting your palm fit the curve that you know so well. He sighs and leans into you, in until his forehead rests against your collarbone, and the scent of his hair gel is all you can smell.
“Do you think--” Bayern is the place for me? You do not dare say it. Instead you let your hand slide from his shoulder to his back, and let your other one do the same, until he is encircled in your arms: as natural as on the field and in the locker room, or when you were children and snuggling in public was still considered acceptable.
There is no public now. You let your head rest upon his, and savour the rise and fall of his back under your fingertips. You hold him until the hitch in his breath evens out, until his muscles relax and his body is soft against yours. You hold him for longer than you normally would dare, and still he doesn‘t move and you don’t let him go.
Finally his face lifts from your shoulder, his eyes moist and his lips glossy with spit. His mouth is right there and suddenly it’s there, against yours; you’ve kissed him and this isn’t even close to brotherly anymore. He pushes against your shoulders with as much force as he can muster through his shock; it probably isn’t necessary, since you pull back the moment he starts to struggle.
“What the hell,” he starts, wiping his mouth. His eyes are turning dark, his lips curling into an angry frown. “What are you doing?”
You aren’t sure what answer will cause the least amount of trouble. It is too late to pretend it was a joke. The alternative, to tell the truth, is obviously a bad idea. You sit there silently, hoping he will leave or yell or throw a punch, so you can just take what you deserve.
“Are you crazy, Hamit? Are you--” he doesn’t finish, because there is a knock on the door. Halil goes to answer, throwing a look at you: a mixture of suspicion and warning, as if you were planning on pouncing him in plain view of--
Christian. Christian Pander is at your door and suddenly you feel incredibly stupid and ill, and you back away as Halil smiles nervously at him. Christian doesn’t even notice you, and Halil isn’t looking at you in any way, anymore. Which isn’t any better than yelling, apparently. You back out of the room and close the door to the study as quietly as you can.
All you have to do is sign.
The papers sit on the desk and you don’t think as you pull them out. The pen is heavy in your hand and you sign them all quickly. You hear two voices in the other room and there would be something disturbingly poetic about your tears making the ink run, but when you stuff the contract back into the envelope your eyes are dry.
~
For the next few days you revolve around each other, speaking but not talking. He is friendly to you at practise but avoids eye contact in the locker room; at home, he dodges around you so you’re never likely to touch. You feel disconnected in a way that is completely unfamiliar to you: for as long as you can remember even when you were apart there was a place inside you that knew you were never alone. You were always one part of two, but now it feels like the thing that held you together has been ripped away.
He still cries when you tell him you have accepted the offer. He cries and at first he tries to hide it, behind his smiles, behind his hands, and finally behind the door that closes between you.
You knock first to be polite, but when you turn the door handle it opens easily, and you know you are welcome.
Halil is sitting on his bed with his back to you, cradling his head in his hands. You crawl over the bed until you can sit behind him, close enough to hear his soft breathing but not touching. The back of his neck begs you to reach out and brush it; a caress you know will calm him in seconds, but you don’t dare to do it, not without his permission, not anymore.
You may not have ruined everything with your stupid, perverted attempts at kissing him, but that does not mean he feels comfortable with you yet.
“You love me, right?” he asks suddenly, and you swallow thickly. He likes (used to, used to like) telling you he loves you whenever you were upset, liked to snuggle you in his arms and tickle you until you were smiling again. He never asked, though. And you never did know how to comfort him.
“You know I do,” you answer softly, so softly you aren’t even sure he hears it. He turns around, giving you a full view of his puffy eyes and wet lashes, and inside the place where he has been torn from you aches.
“I love you too,” he says. Then he leans forward and kisses you. You don’t move, just sit there, your mouth open slightly from shock. You don’t move when he tilts his head and his nose slides against yours. His lips are soft and gentle against yours, and when they are gone you open your eyes, not even realizing they have fallen closed. Hamit looks sad and maybe disappointed, but you can’t imagine what your face must say. You feel so broken inside that you aren’t sure how you’ll be able to pick yourself back up when Halil walks away again.
“I love you, Hamit,” he says again. You nod, and maybe now those tears are going to finally appear. You figure you’ve held back for a long time, now. Maybe this is his forgiveness, or his goodbye-- but whatever it is, it hurts like hell.
“Please.”
At first you think you’ve accidentally said it, but you aren’t one to beg, not even for this. You look at Halil, really look, and maybe the pleading is in his eyes.
When he kisses you again you wonder how he thinks this will help. If he thinks you could ever get him out of your system, when you are one and the same: identical flesh and synchronized mind. Maybe some of that thought occurs to him because Halil pulls away. His breath is coming fast and his damp face is more beautiful than you have ever seen. When he takes another breath and leans back in, you move forward to match him, curling your tongues together, and soon after, your bodies.