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[breitzbachbea]

Day 1: Writer & Artist [TurGre]

The first entry of (hopefully) five for @hwsrarepairweek2022! "My door waited wide open for you. Why were you so late?" (From a translation of "Güz" by Nâzim Hikmet).

Ship: Turkey/Greece (Sadık Adnan/Herakles Karpuzi) Set in a Human AU (Modern Day Germany) Read it here on ao3

The AU this is set in was the product of an ask sent in by the lovely @needcake, which you can read here for more context!

There is no poetry featured in here, because I am far more comfortable with writing prose, but I was inspired by the poetry of Nâzim Hikmet. The title of this One Shot is a reference to his poem "Bor Oteli". You can read an English translation of it and listen to a reading by the author himself here.

Somebody With Green Eyes

The door opened during a round of applause and the subsequent steps into the basement were swallowed by it as well.

A straggler so late in the evening was rare, but every audience member was appreciated.

Actually not a bad idea to come late, then one could miss out on Gilbert’s delusions of grandeur – or any writing skill, was the last thought in Sadık’s head before he turned around.

Messy brown bangs that framed a beautiful, if often quite sleepy looking face. Clad in a long coat and with no attempt to remove it, Herakles sat down in the last row of chairs.

Sadık turned back before they could make eye-contact. Leah, the author who led the workshop and moderation for their public readings, was still talking to the last author. A young woman called Irina, recently joined their workshop, kid of Russian immigrants. Wanted to write children stories. Odd as the genre was for a room full of adults, Sadık had found it quite charming.

Now he couldn’t listen to a word said on stage, their voices fading into a background noise that was occasionally amplified by audience murmur or laughter.

He still had five minutes until he had to be on stage. Enough to excuse himself to one of the other writers and leave the entire event.

There were two problems with this plan – He wasn’t going to give anyone any idea that he wasn’t proud of his hard work and there was only one exit, which meant he had to pass by Herakles in his attempt to avoid him.

He looked down on his printed-out pages of poetry. He would have simply transcribed his messy pages of the writing process into a neater version, but Leah had insisted he have a digital copy of them somewhere.

He didn’t like the impersonal way the computer-generated letters looked, but it wasn’t shame or embarrassment that had made him resist Dilan’s suggestion.

“You should ask the twinsies next door if they know some German studies or whatever student who wants to get practice as editor in. Maybe that way it’ll look on a printed page like you chicken-scrawl it into your notebooks.”

He had felt no embarrassment when he had gotten the pages printed at the copy shop, by an employee who could very well read both languages, and he felt no shame to recite them to an audience who, at times, wouldn’t even appreciate the beauty in the lines of the one they spoke.

But instead of Herakles, his mother might as well had wandered in, to witness how her son was squandering his hard-earnt architecture degree and all of her high hopes that he’d take after her exceptional career-driven life instead of his father’s exceptionally unambitious househusband ways.

He looked back down onto his poems.

His head slowly lifted and he risked another look at Herakles. He knew he liked poetry; perhaps he had studied it as well. These deductions and assumptions he could make from their heated arguments and their quiet night time chats. Working for the Professor of Ancient History at the local university, the poetry Herakles’ was perhaps most familiar with would have been the poetry of epics.

Perhaps Sadık could broaden his horizons a bit.

He uncrossed his legs and got up when Leah had already started with his introduction.

On stage, he took a look around the room.

Most of the people looked at the stage; a few talked with the person next to them. The pattern was repeated with the other workshop members who sat in the first row. Poor Irina had been hogged by Gilbert, who was talking with a cocky and self-confident expression. Sadık snorted.

He thanked Leah after the introduction, before she settled back into her armchair and he behind the table next to her.

One last time, he glimpsed up from his writing and into the room. Herakles had lost his coat but donned a faint smile while he slouched in his chair.

Sadık cleared his throat and began to read.

It was a wild mix, not only of languages. He had written poems of different lengths and inspired by different styles. He even had sat down and familiarized himself with a few basics and variations of German poetry.

He had written about nature, about work and about homesickness. How the birds sang in a dense forest here and how different it felt to the ones of his home in the cold months; about how one walk past a coffee roast house during a warm summer evening would transport him right back to Anatolia.

He had written about being a stranger in a strange land; about feeling isolated and profound bonds with people of all sorts.

He had written about love. During and after each poem he often let his look wander around the room, but when he had written about the longing for another, nebulous person, his look was glued to the page. He didn’t want to risk looking up and locking eyes with Herakles. He didn’t even feel safe when it was Turkish he had used to express his feelings with, technically impenetrable for the other but bearing his soul with no cover to hide behind.

Afterwards, Sadık talked shortly with Leah about it –

“Did you find out yet if that one has been published in German translation yet?”

“No, not yet.”

- and took a few questions from the audience –

“Are the German parts you read translation of the Turkish ones?”

“No. They’re their own verses. The idea behind this was that every part of the poem should stand on its own. So you’ll get a different experience if you only understand the German parts and so will someone who only understands the Turkish parts. And then, of course, having both is yet another experience. But they’re all written to follow the same … overarching vibe or theme, so that there’s still cohesion.”

- before he sat down in the first row once more.

“If I had known that this kitschy shit gets attention, I wouldn’t have bothered and just brought my diary to read from,” Gilbert said.

“That would be a better mystery story than the crap you usually write,” Sadık replied and adjusted his belt. “An easy one, you know, ‘The case of the old virgin’, but still better than your usual shit.” He grinned at Gilbert, whose retort was cut short by Leah:

“Mister Beilschmidt, would you please come up?”

Thus, a peeved glare was Gilbert’s last message, Sadık’s reply a bark of laughter.

While Gilbert hopped onto stage, Irina leant over to him. “I really like your reading voice! Those were beautiful poems, but the way you read them!” The delight in her voice and the sparkle in her eyes behind the glasses spoke for itself and Sadık smiled brightly with some faux-humbleness.

“Thank you,” he replied. Gilbert had already begun to talk to the audience, but Sadık only listened to him with half an ear.

He forgot to return the compliment to Irina as well as he was in thought for the next ten minutes. Only once did curiosity win over and he looked over his shoulder.

While Gilbert was reading a tense hunt for clues in an old countryside hotel, Herakles’ eyelids kept falling shut. Sadık nearly broke into a laughing fit.

After Gilbert had finished his reading and the following short talk, Leah had wrapped the evening up. Once she had thanked everyone who attended, who had made the event possible and advertised future readings and events by herself and others, the crowd began to disperse.

Leah was talking to one of the other organizers, a few of the other writers talked to each other and some had been approached by audience members.

If Herakles hadn’t already left, Sadık could slip into the crowd and hit the trail without him noticing. He’d have to act fast, however, before too many people had left already –

“Hey.” Sadık stopped rearing his head and looked up at the person in front of him.

“… Hey,” he responded once he had caught his tongue.

Herakles had already put his trench coat on, but not buttoned it up. Around his neck he wore a puffy scarf that looked like Natasa had leant it to him.

“I didn’t know you wrote poetry,” Herakles broke their awkward stare-off.

Sadık chuckled. “Well, now you do.” He reached underneath his seat to pull his bag up and his writing away. He looked back up at Herakles with a roguish grin. “You think it’s good?”

Herakles’ head ever so slightly dropped to the left and the right while Sadık got up and grabbed his jacket. With a smile, Herakles said: “I enjoyed it more than the other guy’s crime story at least.”

Sadık gave a short bark of laughter. “Oh, you don’t know half of it, Gilbert’s been trying to make it work since forever.” Bag on the chair, he slipped into his jacket and glanced at Herakles. “You got time for a coffee?”

The smile grew a little. “Sure, why not.”

Sadık waved Leah goodbye while they waited for the aisle to clear up. There was a bit of commotion at the staircase and at first, Sadık thought one of the guests had forgotten something downstairs.

Once the man had made it down the stairs, he knew better and laughed. “I wonder why he didn’t wait for Gilbert upstairs, but you’d probably go grey if Gilbert found someone to talk their ass off.” He gently nudged Herakles with his elbow and then pointed at Ludwig, who currently looked left and right to scan the room. “That’s Gilbert’s younger brother.”

“Oh, I know him.”

Sadık looked at him. “You know Ludwig?”

“Yeah. He’s a STEM student, but he often shows up to Professor Tufter’s Ancient History lectures and the Ancient History colloquium.”

“I see,” Sadık answered. “What’s a colloquium?”

The aisle was more or less cleared, which Ludwig used to make it to the front. His eyes landed on Herakles and a second later, he stopped in his tracks.

“Oh, good evening, Mister Karpuzi.”

“Hello Ludwig,” Herakles answered and Sadık noticed Ludwig hold his breath for a second as cogs turned behind his startled eyes.

He was composed again within a moment. “What are you doing here?”

Sadık put an arm around Herakles’ shoulders and answered before he could: “He came here for my reading.”

Herakles glares at him, the relaxed expression now tainted with a noticeable furrow between his brows.

“Oh, interesting,” Ludwig said when a hand came down on his shoulder.

“Lutz, there you are! You’re late!”

Ludwig turned to Gilbert, who leaned onto his shoulder despite being the shorter one of the two. “Yes, sorry, but I was out with friends and it all got late. It was a bit spontaneous –”

“Awww, the boy is finally making friends!” Gilbert gushed with a grin and put an arm around his brother’s shoulder to squeeze him close, completely unaware of the annoyed frown on Ludwig’s forehead.

“You’ve made quite the assumption there,” Herakles told Sadık while the other two were busy with themselves.

Sadık still wore his cocksure grin. “What? Am I wrong?” He patted Herakles’ shoulder before he dropped his arm. “Come on, let’s get some coffee.”

Once they had made it upstairs and outside, the cold air hit them square in the face. Both of them groaned and Sadık pulled up the hood of his jacket. Herakles buried his face in his scarf.

The electric display at the tram stop told them it’d be twenty minutes before the next one came.

“It always takes so long to catch a ride home around here,” Sadık said.

“Especially around this hour,” Herakles agreed.

“How about we walk for a bit to the next stop? It’ll keep us warmer than standing around here and we’ll get home nonetheless.” Sadık frowned. “Did you come here without a hat?"

“Yes.” Herakles’ teeth chattered.

“You’re a dumbass.”

“Shut up.” Herakles hunched his shoulders and began to walk.

They walked in silence for a while, past several story high city blocks from all kind of eras. The few shops that were housed in some of the ground floors were all closed, nary one of them lit.

Herakles’ teeth still chattered. To keep his own from it, Sadık asked: “Where do you want to get coffee?”

“You were the one who suggested it,” Herakles mumbled and Sadık wanted to pull him close, press his head to his chest to ease the cold for the poor soul. “You should be the one to know where to get some.”

“I think there’s a bar somewhere down this street,” Sadık said. “Fancy, though. And pricey.” He wasn’t sure how fancy the place actually was, but definitely catering to another clientele than him. “Probably don’t know how to make a decent coffee.”

“I think the best bet would probably be Am Knoten on the way home,” Herakles answered.

“Yeah, yeah … maybe the bakeries are still open … “

“And there’s this one café …” Herakles sucked in air and Sadık wanted to put his arm around him and ruffle through his hair so badly. Press his gloved hands to the flaming red ears.

“Yeah, that’s probably still open … and I know they make decent coffee.” Sadık stared unabashedly as they made their way down the road towards the square with the next stop. “Or … We go home and I make us some coffee at home. Turkish coffee. The good stuff.”

Herakles, who seemingly tried to disappear into his coat like a turtle, didn’t react for a while. “Yeah,” he whispered at some point. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Sadık kept his thoughts at bay about helping Herakles out of his clothes and wrapping him in a blanket, how his hands would roam all over his body to help him warm up.

He flung his arm around the other’s shoulders and pulled him close. “I think there’s a kebab place around here, perhaps that one’s still open so you don’t have to wait in the cold, you icicle.” He rubbed his shoulder and laughed, but Herakles didn’t say a word. He only leant his head towards Sadık’s body and Sadık swallowed.

He tucked away his thoughts and feelings for a future poem.