Gunesi Berklerken Zeyker drabbles

Golyzi Apple

Drabble after car/bluff scene, when Kerem takes Zeynep home and almost kisses her when she's sleeping.

An apple sat on the edge of his desk.

It's rosy sheen imitated the red of his bruises. Every single one ached as the numb haze he had let engulf him earlier slowly wore thin. He shifted his gaze back to the incomplete drawing before him, his hand resuming its thoughtless motion.

He took refuge, as always, in the inked lines of the world he created. A world he could control. He drew and redrew the world and people who disappointed him again and again, each time wondering if he would finally solve the puzzle and find a way to shed the black shadows that gathered in the corners. Counting down the hours of his resistance, as patient and relentless as the tides. A funeral shroud that never quite lifted.

His phone was silent tonight. Baris was angry at him. He had been angry before, of course. Kerem Sayer hadn't yet met a person he couldn't tip over that line, except perhaps his father. Ahmet's way was ice, instead of fire, and yet, it burned just as deeply, spreading tendrils of hurt through his body. Frost bite of the soul. No, he was no stranger to his friend's outrage at his more repugnant behaviour, yet this time... there was a new weight to the silence. It lay like a fog over the room.

The apple caught his eye again and he turned a well-practised glare at it. It had as much effect on the offensive fruit as it did on her. The girl. The one who had tipped his life upside down in a matter of days. The one who looked at him with such defiance, he longed to wipe the expression off her face, even as he struggled to meet her straight-forward gaze.

There was something wrong with her, clearly. Apparently growing up in the country had deprived the poor thing of the basic common sense to know you don't mess with the owner of your school. You don't mess with Kerem Sayer, full stop. She still hadn't learned that simple fact. She still looked at him with fire in her gaze, the one that begged him to answer her silent challenge. She still angled that obstinate chin at him, the one that begged to be cupped. Her mouth still pursed at the sight of him, her disapproval painted across lips too full and soft looking to be so downturned. Of course, he was the only one who was the recipient of her unrelenting dislike. A tightness crept into his chest at the thought of those very lips turned up in a smile. A smile for Baris, a scowl for him.

Golyizi apple.

He raised the apple to his mouth, and bit through the thin flesh, letting the sweet juice rush into his mouth. He thought of the feel of her arms around him, comforting, despite her dislike. Twice now. How pathetic to be finding comfort in the arms of a girl that couldn't stand him, yet, she hadn't pushed him away. The thought satisfied him more than he cared to examine. His eyes drifted to his page, and the bold, confident lines of his drawing. Careful, dark eyes watched him. Her. The eyes on the page weren't accusing however, and in that way, the first picture of Zeynep he'd ever draw was not faithful to the muse. She'd never looked at him the way the girl in his picture was looking at him, and he wondered for a moment, how it would feel if it were real. He wondered what it would take to make it so. The moment was fleeting, like the urge to taste those lips that looked so soft in her sleep. To approach the gentled wild creature, and capture it before it knew the danger. But he had frozen, on the cusp, unable to take something from this girl that she hadn't allowed. It wasn't just her the taste of her lips he had longed for in that moment, but her surrender. For that disapproving look to change to a smile. That smile that Baris received would do nicely. In his mind's eye, he saw them together at school, side by side in the hall, teasing each other in the gym. He wondered how long it would be after he was gone that Baris filled the hole he'd left with her. She would have cast him from his home, and exorcised his memory from the only person who would have missed him.

His thoughts turned dark back to the endless anxious spiral that the thought of going to America evoked. He went to crumple the picture, but something in those eyes stayed his hand. She was too real to discard. Too beautiful. Too out of reach. Too angry. Too sad. He smoothed the paper, and closed his eyes. A familiar heavy hopelessness slid over him, and he let it. He was tired of fighting it. He would leave, and everyone at school would eventually forget him. Worse, they would be glad he was gone. He hardly expected anything less from them, sheep, every single one, except Baris... and her. An exception, after all this time. Now, at last, when it was already too late.

He left the drawing on his desk as he got into his bed, his body tired from the long day, the beating, the alcohol. The grinding futility of it all. He fancied he could feel those eyes on him, as he lay his weary head on the pillow. He chalked it up to his earlier indulgence. Nonetheless, in his quiet, dark room, in his silent, tomb-like house, where the mourners kept their solitude, he felt less alone.