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The air in the carriage was... uncomfortable. Onni sat on the seat opposite Emil, arms crossed, keeping his gaze soft and out of focus to avoid inciting conversation. Lalli had been unable to meet Onni at the port, and now they rode together to the small village of Hanaskog where Lalli and Emil had made their home for the off-season.
Emil now slouched in his seat, and while he was a full adult, something about the way he moved still echoed loudly of the impudent nineteen-year-old who first crossed paths with the Hotakainen family. The bumps in the road jostled them both, and the rattling of the carriage was a dulled rubbing against Onni’s eardrums.
“My family vacationed out here a couple times when I was really little. That’s how I’d heard of this place,” said Emil.
“Hmm,” answered Onni.
It took Onni a long time to warm up to Emil. He’d found Emil vain, shallow, and most of all loud from the moment they met in Iceland almost six years ago. In the back of his mind, Onni had doubted Lalli and Emil would stay together; it seemed absurd that Lalli would become so attached to someone so different from himself. Back then they didn’t even share a language. But, here they were, six years later, happily spending the winter seasons doing freelance exploration and the summers lazing about in whatever country took their fancy.
Onni shifted deeper into his seat. It was not a lifestyle that appealed to him. But, as he grew older, Onni had begun to learn the difference between a life he didn’t want and a life that was objectively bad.
“So... how has Iceland been?” asked Emil. His arms were crossed loosely in front of him in an accidental mirror of Onni’s posture. Onni dropped his arms.
Onni glanced at Emil out of the corner of his eye. His still spoke with a heavy Swedish accent, though at least his words were intelligible enough.
“Fine.” Onni answered, and then paused. “I’m officially working with the Academy of Seiður. I’ve been involved before, but it’s actually an official collaboration now.”
Emil’s eyes widened. “Really? What does learning about Icelandic magic do for you?” he asked, seemingly sincere in his awe.
“For me personally? Not a lot,” answered Onni. “My connection to the gods and spirits is strong, I don’t need any help from other gods. But it’s good to know how your people do magic. Our arts don’t overlap often, but we might be valuable collaborators someday.”
Emil nodded gravely, eyes drifting out the window distractedly. Onni had kept his answer simple; really, there was a great deal more to be uncovered, and learning about Icelandic magic had influenced his own abilities, and he wondered how this might improve military cooperatives, mental and spiritual defenses, and provide protection to children who might one day become mages...
“Maybe we’ll figure out what happened to you some day,” said Onni, bringing his spinning thoughts to a sudden stop. Emil looked back at him at this, something shifting mysteriously in his eyes. Emil laughed softly.
“That would be interesting, for sure.”
An awkward silence ballooned inside the carriage. Onni knew he should say something else, but he couldn’t find the right words. Thirty-two years old, and he still couldn’t quite get the subtleties of small talk right—let alone small talk with a sort-of family member that he didn’t really know.
“How, how has work been for you and Lalli?” asked Onni. Work was a safe topic. Something Emil liked and Onni understood.
“Good! Good. We’re already booked for next winter. We’re going out with Sigrun and Mikkel again, and I think one or two more,” said Emil.
“Reynir’s not going this time?” asked Onni, narrowing his eyes curiously.
“No, I think he’s caught up in teaching magic in Dalsnes. I’ve heard he likes it,” said Emil. His tone was a bit tighter; of the entire original crew, Emil had never quite managed to get along with Reynir. Apparently that hadn’t changed.
Onni tapped his toes invisibly inside his boots. Thinking of Lalli going out into the Silent World for weeks at a time still sent flame-bright anxiety spiderwebbing through his, even though the last five expeditions had been almost entirely uneventful.
It made him tense, though. To know that one day they might leave and never come back.
“How long are you supposed to be gone this time?” asked Onni.
“Just a month,” said Emil. He sat up a bit and crossed an ankle over his thigh. It was clear that he did enjoy this work as much as Onni hated to see him doing it. If memory served, Emil had joined the military on purpose, which explained his general demeanor towards the Silent World expeditions.
“It’s a shorter one,” Emil continued, “mostly to cover territory that’s been pretty thoroughly explored. We’re just there to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
So they’ll be staying closer, thought Onni. But, at the price of being in a city the whole time, no doubt.
Onni replied with a wordless, neutral sound. There was no keeping Lalli in the Known World, just as there had been no keeping Tuuri in Keuruu. Generations of Hotakainens who played it safe, and he’d been stuck with the ones who couldn’t be contained.
“Do you want to go with us?” asked Emil. Onni stared at him, taken off guard by the suddenness of the question. Emil met his gaze, face relaxed and shoulders slack. He meant it. He was actually asking.
Onni shook his head and took a conscious breath.
“No. I have no interest in probing into the Silent World for such long periods of time.” It felt strangely violent to say, even though Onni’s opinion on long-term expeditions hadn’t changed in years. He swallowed down a lump in his throat and tried to shake off the pricking at the back of his eyes.
“That’s okay,” said Emil, sitting back again. “I get it. It makes sense. I just wanted to ask. I wanted to ask a while back, but Lalli said you wouldn’t be interested.”
“And he was right,” said Onni. Did Emil always have to slouch like that? Onni looked out the window abruptly, feeling the heat of the enclosed carriage creep painfully up his neck. Outside, empty fields pierced by the charred remains of trees rushed by, framed darkly by the false dawn light.
“I wanted to ask anyway, though,” said Emil.
Onni frowned, but didn’t look back.
Lalli had never adapted to life in Keuruu as well as Onni. Onni liked Keuruu for its stability and safety, two things he had sorely needed when he was a terrified child newly in charge of his only living relatives. The grief and the fear clung to him for years, and still clung to him, sticky and cloying. For most of his life he’d clung to these companions as much as they stuck to him. But now? They’d become nuisance he didn’t know how to shake. Onni rubbed his thumbnail rapidly with his index finger, feeling the irregular smoothness.
“I don’t get you and Lalli,” said Emil suddenly, slicing through the silence. He stared, half-frowning, into some indeterminate corner of the carriage seat, hands clutched tightly in his lap.
“What?” stammered Onni.
“You care about each other so much, but you never talk. You don’t ask each other things. I know you’d do anything for each other but it’s also like you’re constantly afraid the other is going to, I don’t know, stab you? Burn you? It’s weird, and dumb.” Emil still didn’t look up, but there was enough distress in his voice to suggest he’d thought about this topic extensively. Onni blinked.
Emil’s bizarre, apparent obsession with Onni and Lalli’s relationship aside, his words were strange. Lalli wouldn’t hurt him. Truthfully, Onni didn’t really think Lalli could hurt him, even if he wanted to.
And even if he could? Onni wasn’t sure he himself would care.
“Lalli needs space,” said Onni, letting the words fall slowly and carefully out of his mouth. He was articulating things he’d always known, but never had there been someone who interacted with both himself and Lalli enough to prompt this kind of conversation.
“No, he doesn’t,” answered Emil, surprisingly emphatic. Onni actually laughed a little in response before he could catch himself.
“I trust that you know Lalli pretty well,” said Onni. Iciness crept into his tone, an instinct that he kept at bay, but didn’t extinguish. “So I will assume that it is your powers of observation that are lacking.”
Emil shook his head. His body language was largely open, shoulders relaxed, legs uncrossed, but there was a guardedness to his tone beneath the earnestness.
“No, I know what I’m talking about. It happens all the time. Lalli doesn’t talk easily, and he doesn’t like a lot of people, so he doesn’t get attached super easily. And the people he is attached to don’t have to do much to keep him around. If he wants to be around, he’ll be around—but he expects everyone else to do the same thing.” Emil leaned forward slightly, his face catching a different shade of early morning light with the movement. “You want to be around, don’t you?”
The question caught Onni off guard. “I... I don’t know,” he answered. Was that true? Onni wasn’t sure. His mind raced as he looked for a recovery. “I don’t think I know what that means.”
“Lalli still worries about you sometimes,” said Emil. Onni shook his head slightly, trying and failing to keep up.
“What?”
“He doesn’t usually say it. You know how he is. But it’s... it’s in the things he doesn’t say.”
Onni sighed quietly. “Yeah.” Worry pricked at the back of his mind, whispering that Emil might be right. Onni had never quite found his balance with Lalli after the original Denmark expedition. Things had been better, much better, but never... right. And, for all of Emil’s many faults, he was the one Lalli spent the most time with now.
“Why... does he worry about me?” asked Onni hesitantly. He didn’t want to antagonize Emil, and, despite himself, he was genuinely curious.
“Are, are you serious?” asked Emil, drawing his chin back in a look of disbelief.
“What?” asked Onni, beginning to feel pedantically repetitive.
“Oh, uh... Well, first of all, you’ve done some pretty reckless things before,” began Emil, trailing off slightly. Onni grimaced, and the expression clearly registered with Emil. His foray into Finland was not his finest moment, but neither was it one he regretted.
“I know it’s been a while since then!” Emil continued, speaking just a bit faster to compensate for his obvious discomfort. “But, well, it still feels like it’s fresh sometimes, you know? But, but more than that... he really cares about you.”
Well I know that, thought Onni with some measure of irritation.
“Huh,” said Onni quietly. He switched to tapping his fingers on his arm, hard enough to feel the impact on his bicep through his tunic sleeve. “What did you ever see in Lalli?”
Emil smiled slightly, but there was a surprising measure of sadness to his expression. His over-groomed appearance always suggested a disproportionately small emotional range.
“You’re not the first person to ask me that, you know,” said Emil.
“Really?” asked Onni.
“Yeah. I think there are a lot of people out there who thing we’re not well-matched. They’re wrong, though.”
Onni raised an eyebrow. He shouldn’t have been surprised at Emil’s certainty, but something about his self-assuredness still caught Onni a bit off guard.
“He’s so precise. I just... I love the way he loves. That’s what it really is. Like, there’s an infinite list of other things that I love about him, but that’s the most important one.”
Onni stared at Emil, and Emil stared back, expression still gentle, but almost like he was trying to hide a much bigger smile than he currently held. After a moment Emil looked away and leaned on the wall of the carriage to stare out the window.
Maybe Lalli did choose well, Onni thought softly. He’d written Emil off quickly—not without some examination, it wasn’t a frivolous move on his part—and assumed that one day Lalli would either realize the same things Onni did or else grow bored of his Swedish plaything.
But there was far more to Emil than Onni had ever cared to notice.
Pulsing waves of release and emptiness traveled down Onni’s arms. There was far more to Emil than Onni had ever cared to notice, but more than that—there were things Emil knew about Lalli that Onni didn’t. Emil saw things in Lalli that Onni had never been able to notice, let alone appreciate.
“I think you’re good for Lalli,” said Onni quietly.
“I hope so. I think so, too, though.” Emil cocked his head and took an extensive pause. Onni waited curiously for whatever words were about to emerge.
“What if you stayed a little longer this time?” asked Emil.
Onni pushed his tongue up against the roof of his mouth before replying. “Hmm, maybe.” He automatically resisted making that kind of commitment so quickly. And he didn’t want Emil to make an offer that he and Lalli would regret.
“You can stay as long as you want, you know that right?” asked Emil.
“Of course,” said Onni.
“No, I mean it. Lalli and I both like having you here. This can be your home, too, if you want.”
This hadn’t occurred to Onni. He had a complicated relationship with home. Home was someplace where your family was, where you were safe, and where you didn’t have to worry as much as you did out in the world. For now he’d been thinking of Miðdalur as home, even though that thought didn’t quite sit right in his chest...
Perhaps home could describe Lalli and Emil’s house as well.
“I would like to ask Lalli, but I will consider extending my stay,” said Onni. Emil smiled.
“Great!”
Little more was said for the remainder of the ride. It felt like they’d used up all the words available to them, but not in a bad way—there was simply nothing more that needed to be said. Emil mostly stared out the window, a light smile typically enveloping his resting expression.
Near the end of the journey, Onni made a decision. He decided that he had been thinking of it all wrong. He was waiting around for Lalli to be... ready. To be the person Onni understood exactly. To stop doing things Onni didn’t like and wouldn’t want for himself.
He didn’t want to think of Lalli like that. Perhaps it was time to find a home.