The Orchestra - Sinfónia Lifsins - 31. Jónas, Júl

“Good morning, Sleepy Head!” Dmitri gently whispered as I opened my eyes. He hugged me tightly from behind and covered the back of my head with kisses. I snuggled against him, enjoying the warmth of his embrace. “Don’t go back to sleep! We have a lot to do today!” He kissed me again.

“I don’t plan to, though it’s definitely tempting,” I told him. Dmitri laughed.

“Aw, now would be the perfect moment for me to make some kind of lewd joke about tempting you…”I expected Dmitri to continue talking, not entirely sure I wanted to hear that joke, but my boyfriend just let the sentence hang in the air. Instead of finishing it, he changed the subject of our conversation entirely. “How are you feeling? Did you sleep well?”

“I did, actually. Thank you for being here with me, I think it was because of you that I slept so well.” Being around Dmitri made me feel safe and calm. I was still worried for Little Isaac and sad about everything that happened to him, but Dmitri’s presence helped to lessen those feelings. I couldn’t say for sure what it was about my boyfriend that made it so, but I was sure that being around him was the best thing I could do for myself now.

“Aw, you’re welcome!” Dmitri nuzzled against my hair. I turned around to give him a peck on the cheek. “And yay, I got a kiss too!”

“I can give you more if you want…” I offered, my cheeks burning because I dared say something like that. I wasn’t necessarily proposing to make out with Dmitri, but I wanted to see what it was like to wake up beside my partner and have a cosy, intimate time together before facing the real world. It was the kind of stuff I saw all the time in movies and novels, but had never had the chance to experience myself.

“More kisses? Or more than kisses?” Dmitri asked, kind of surprised. My blushing was probably not helping his confusion.

“More kisses. But if you want more than that…”

“Don’t you start. If you want to kiss me, you’re more than welcome to, but we’re not doing anything else until you’re one-hundred-percent sure you want it.” Dmitri smiled. I should’ve seen that answer coming, and I felt embarrassed for not realising he wouldn’t try to push my boundaries. My face heated up even more because of that.

“We can kiss,” I told him, though even after I made my intentions clear, Dmitri waited for me to take the initiative. I kissed him on the lips. We hugged, there were more kisses, and somehow we ended up rolling over the bed until Dmitri was on top of me. When he realised that, he tried to back away, but I held on to him. “We can keep kissing,” I said, letting him know he didn’t need to worry. We were still wearing only our underwear, our bodies were very close together, and I wanted to explore this situation as much as I could. It had been fun so far, and without the pressure of having to have sex afterwards, I was really enjoying this new level of intimacy with my partner.

Dmitri grinned. “You sure?” He looked suggestively towards our ‘privates’ (how can people write about those things and not feel embarrassed?), but I just nodded and smiled. I wasn’t entirely sure where I wanted to take this, but so far we were having a good time, and I was willing to trust that Dmitri wouldn’t carry on if I told him I’d had enough.

Dmitri kissed me on the mouth again. I tried to use my tongue, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it, and it felt awkward. My boyfriend laughed, declared my attempt at French kissing ‘cute’, and went on to show me how it was properly done. There were lots of demonstrations, and then he convinced me to try it again. By that point we were so close together that our bare torsos were touching, though Dmitri’s body wasn’t crushing me because he somehow managed to support all his weight on one arm planted on the bed near my head. His other arm switched between grabbing my hair and touching my neck and shoulder. I got so distracted by his touching and his kissing that I barely paid attention to what my own body was doing.

Dmitri suddenly broke the kisses and stared at me with a worried face. I became conscious of the rest of my body once more, and quickly understood why he had stopped. Dmitri kept his body perfectly still, but I could feel a bulge in his underwear that definitely wasn’t there when we started.

Actually, his wasn’t the only one, but just thinking about it made my whole body boil in embarrassment. Having this kind of thing happen in front of Dmitri made me extremely self-conscious, and a little bit nervous about what he would think of it. My body was telling him I liked what we were doing, but would he take it as a sign that we should keep going? Did I see it that way too?

“Do you want to carry on?” Dmitri asked me. He definitely seemed worried. “This might be a good time to stop if you don’t want to go all the way…”

“I don’t know,” I told him. Even my body’s reaction wasn’t enough to make me feel ready to do anything more sexual, but it felt so good I didn’t want it to end.

“Then it’s better if we stop.” Dmitri kissed my forehead gently and sat on the bed beside me, so that our bodies were no longer touching. “Did you have fun at least?”

“I did.” It was true, though saying it out loud while my body seemed to answer by itself was kind of embarrassing. Now that Dmitri was no longer on top of me, I felt kind of exposed, and I wanted to hide away. I didn’t want him looking at my body while it was like that. I wasn’t sure why I felt so embarrassed about it (I knew this kind of thing happened, it was kind of to be expected, and wasn’t anything bad), but it was a strong feeling I couldn’t just shake off. Thankfully, Dmitri noticed my discomfort and turned away from me.

“Good. I had fun too. Now let’s get dressed and find some stuff to eat. I’m starving!” Dmitri grabbed his clothes and got dressed without looking at me. I felt mostly grateful, but also a bit guilty that I couldn’t handle letting my own boyfriend look at me after we were having such a good time.

(...)

“Now, Gunni, I need to tell you something about today’s rehearsal before you get there and freak out,” Dmitri announced as soon as we finished breakfast. We were still sitting at the table with Eiri and Jó, and thus the three of us turned to him with similar expressions of surprise and worry. What was so special about today that needed a warning? Dmitri smiled at his audience’s reaction, winked at Eiri (they both seemed to enjoy the harmless, yet constant, flirting), and turned to me again. “When we have rehearsals after festive days like yesterday, the rehearsal becomes what we like to call WTF Rehearsals. They’re called that way because, usually, half the orchestra will show up to work either drunk or badly hungover, and the other half will have spent the entire night awake at wild parties. So, naturally, we are not at our best in terms of concentration and motor coordination, which means we spend more time laughing at each other’s attempt to play music than actually rehearsing anything properly.”

Jó and I let our jaws drop to the ground in a mixture of surprise, amazement, and horror, though Eiri just laughed. “So you musicians are like normal people after all!” my cousin exclaimed, prompting Dmitri to join him in more laughter.

“Yeah, I know, I find it hard to believe it sometimes too!” Jó and I watched with eyebrows raised as my cousin and my boyfriend carried on laughing like they had just heard the best joke in the world. We ended up joining them after a while, because laughing is contagious, and because Eiri and Dmitri looked kind of silly. “Though what I find even harder to believe is that I’m not hungover or under-slept after New Year’s Eve. It must be a first!”

“Are you always drunk?” Jó asked my boyfriend. I had mentioned to him that Dmitri often went through bottles of vodka like they contained water, but I hoped my cousin-in-law wasn’t going to be too hard on him because of that.

“Not drunk-drunk, unless it’s a party like New Year’s. I just have a very high tolerance to alcohol,” Dmitri explained, putting his hands up in the air like he was surrendering a great secret (or admitting a personal flaw). “I’ve been drinking vodka since I was ten, so by now I don’t really feel its effects until halfway through the second bottle.”

“That’s impressive and scary at the same time,” Eiri commented, staring at Dmitri with a mixture of shock and awe. “Do you still have a liver?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Dmitri shrugged. I tried my best not to look like I was scared of my boyfriend’s drinking abilities, even though I was actually worried about him and his health.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did that come to be that a ten-year-old had access to so much alcohol?” Jó asked, disguising his worry in a polite tone of voice.

“My father did nothing but sit on the couch and drink the whole day, so it wasn’t that difficult, really,” Dmitri answered in the same polite and slightly impersonal tone that Jó had used. We took it as a sign that he didn’t want to say anything else, and so we changed the main topic of conversation to the latest artwork Tjúlli’s nails had crafted on the legs of the living room’s armchair.

But this short conversation made me realise that I knew next to nothing about Dmitri’s life before he joined the ISO. Judging by his reaction to Jó’s question, though, I probably shouldn’t try to ask any more. I was curious about his past, but I had to respect Dmitri’s wish to keep his privacy. Maybe at some point he would offer to tell me, or give me some kind of signal that I could ask about it.

(...)     

“Thank you all for coming today. I know most of you aren’t exactly fit to perform, but as long as you are in top form tomorrow, it shouldn’t matter,” Gummi greeted us from the conductor’s podium. He had dark circles around his eyes, and his clothes and hair were slightly more dishevelled than usual. If I didn’t know better, I would think he had been one of the people partying the whole night long. “Now, I don’t know how many of you keep checking work e-mails during the holidays, but a couple of days ago I sent you all a message.” A few people, all in the string section, lowered their heads. Most of the others seemed intrigued or confused. At least I wasn’t the only one who had been neglecting work during the break.

“Gummi…” Santa called. To my surprise, his eyes were watery. Gummi nodded to him and turned his attention to the rest of the orchestra.

“It seems most of you haven’t seen it then. It is with great sorrow that I have to tell you that our friend Isaac Anatolyevich Krylov and his wife are no longer with us. His life was taken in a tragic train accident in Siberia, along with his wife’s.” Those who had not yet heard the news were shocked; most of those who already knew looked towards Gummi as if to give him moral support. “As you all know, Isaac was a very close friend of mine. We knew each other for over ten years, and it was always a pleasure to have him perform with us. Our concert in November was, in fact, his last public appearance.” The orchestra was completely silent. Those who were not looking at Gummi seemed lost in their own thoughts, probably absorbing the meaning of Gummi’s words. “So I talked to our management, and we decided to make some changes to tomorrow’s concert. We’ll change the programme slightly: the last half will be just Beethoven’s Eroica. The scores should be in the folders in front of you.”

“Are we going to do it especially for him?” Santa asked. He looked like he wanted to cry, but wasn’t doing so out of a sense of professional duty.

Gummi nodded. “We’ll celebrate Isaac’s life and his great contribution to the ISO. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I think we don’t need to drop the acts for the first half. What do you think?” Nobody in the orchestra said anything, so Gummi nodded again and indicated we should get our instruments ready.

With Gummi’s last minute changes to the programme, its first half would now consist of Verdi’s Triumphant March as the opening number, followed by Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, and a Clarinet and Bassoon Concerto by someone called Valeria Winter performed by our principal clarinet and a guest bassoonist. The second half now would be entirely taken over by Beethoven’s third symphony, nicknamed Eroica because three of four movements were heroic celebrations of Napoleon’s triumph in France. The remaining movement, the third, was a Marcia Funebre, or ‘funeral march’, which probably explained why we were playing this particular piece to mark Isaac’s passing.

Because this was a special concert, we wanted to do something different for the opening. It turned out that Gummi would not conduct us during the Triumphant March. Instead, our principal trumpet would stand up, signal for the music to start, and walk to the front of the stage while playing. Then he would pretend to conduct us, and turn to the audience during his short solo. While all this was happening, two percussionists would march across the stage playing snare drums at a specific section of the music. Only when it was over would Gummi appear and make a short introduction speech to the audience and the cameras. We would then play through the Royal Fireworks, but as soon as that was finished, real indoor fireworks would to go off from the four corners of the stage (hopefully safely away from musicians, cameras, and other electronic equipment).

At first I thought that the only thing special about the Clarinet and Bassoon Concerto was that our own clarinettist was going to be the soloist, but as it turned out, it was special for a different reason: the concert had been composed for Vác and his bassoonist friend almost ten years ago, when Vác was an actor in a TV series called History Walkers. I had heard about the TV series (it was still going on, though obviously Vác was no longer part of the cast), and the movie that came before it, but I had never watched it. History Walkers came out when I was too young to understand it, and by the time I was old enough, I was too busy practising violin to watch TV at all.

“When we were recording the first season, Valeria, who was the composer for the show’s soundtrack, heard that I played clarinet and suggested we made my character’s theme be performed by me,” Vác explained to me at the end of the rehearsal, when I finally felt brave enough to ask him about all of this. I had never realised that our principal clarinet had been a TV celebrity in his teenage years, so I felt kind of ashamed of having taken two months to ask him about it. “Then, when we were going to shoot my third and last season on the show, she turned that theme in a full concerto. By that point, another member of the cast had started learning the bassoon and was getting quite good at it, so she made it a Clarinet and Bassoon Concerto for us to play together. They actually made a special extra episode about it. Our characters had to pretend they were musicians who had to perform it for a full audience…”

“Wow, that sounds really cool!” I told Vác. My enthusiasm made him blush though, so I tried to tone it down. “So it’s going to be a return to the past to play it tomorrow, then?”

“Yeah. In 2013 it will be History Walkers’ tenth anniversary, so there will be lots of celebratory things happening all over the place.” Even though Vác was blushing (much like I did when people put me in the spotlight), he seemed genuinely happy and enthusiastic. “I’ll take a two-week leave at the end of January to film a special episode that will be a massive reunion of the whole cast from all the seasons.”

“That does sound exciting.” I smiled at Vác, hoping to make him feel less nervous, and he smiled back.

“Yeah, it is. For the concert tomorrow, the bassoonist is the other guy whom the concerto was written for. We’ll both be dressed as our characters, and Gummi told me the ISO is negotiating whether the footage can be used in the History Walkers’ commemorative DVD set.”

Vác and I talked for another five minutes after that. Apparently History Walkers was a really big thing. The series tenth anniversary would be marked by a special TV episode; a special DVD box set with the best episodes from every season, plus out-takes, cut scenes, and likely tomorrow’s concert; a documentary about what happened to the original cast, and the re-release of History Walkers: The Movie. With all this going on, Vác was going to be very busy, the ISO would probably become targeted by international media, and tomorrow’s concert would definitely be full of History Walkers’ fans in the audience.

With all this going on, I felt I had an obligation to watch the series and finally see what it was all about. If the ISO was going to be featured in a documentary, I might as well get to know what this documentary would be about. And I was also kind of curious to see what Vác looked like when he was sixteen years old.

Come to think of it, if Vác had started his acting career at the age of sixteen, he was the same age I was when I started working with the ISO. And judging by our conversation, even ten years on, he still seemed a bit shy or embarrassed to talk about it. Maybe it would be worth talking to him about how he coped with his rise to fame and all the added responsibilities that came with his job. I could learn a thing or two from him.

(...)

My talk with Vác was cut short by Eiri coming to pick up Dmitri and me. It was a New Year tradition that he and Jó had dinner with Jó’s family on the first of January, and this year I had been invited as a ‘special guest’. As my boyfriend, Dmitri was also automatically invited.

“So, who’s going to be at this dinner?” Dmitri asked when we got in the car. He had been told of tonight’s plans during breakfast earlier that day, so he knew very little of what to expect. I didn’t know much more than him, only that I would be seeing the same people who had come for Jó’s birthday party in November.

“My father, my older brother and his wife and child, and my younger sister and her wife,” Jó answered promptly. “We’re not out as a couple to them yet, though,” Jó warned, probably thinking of the time when Dmitri accidentally outed me to Aunt Margrét.

“Why not? You just said your sister has a wife,” Dmitri asked, trying to sound polite but failing because of his surprise.

“Yeah, but that’s not the problem. My family knows I’m gay, they just don’t know Eiri and I are partners,” Jó answered. He was going to say more, but Eiri spoke first.

“When we decided to keep our relationship secret, we really meant it. You and Gunni only know because you stay at our house, and it would be too complicated to hide things from you.” Eiri didn’t seem too happy to discuss the topic, but Dmitri pressed on. He seemed to have a hard time understanding why someone would choose to stay in the closet when it was safe to be out.

“But if they always invite the two of you, doesn’t it mean they probably know already anyway?”

“They invite me along because Jó is living in my house, so it’s a kind of ‘thank you for taking care of him’ thing,” Eiri answered again, trying to make his discomfort a little more obvious so that Dmitri would take the hint.

“Fine, fine, whatever you say.” Dmitri rolled his eyes, but Eiri fortunately couldn’t see it because he was driving the car, and so he had to keep his eyes on the road. Dmitri mouthed to me that he was sure Jó’s family already knew, and nothing more was said about the topic.

(...)

We were heading to the house of Jó’s older brother Jóhannes. His house was a bit narrower than Eiri’s, but it had three floors instead of two, so it was hopefully big enough for the large family gathering. As soon as Eiri finished parking our car, Jó’s five-year-old niece came running towards us and jumped straight into Jó’s arms. She had bright red hair like her uncle and father (even if Jó’s hair was half-dyed blond), and acted like she was a bundle of joy and energy packed in a tiny body. She didn’t stop laughing and chatting until we reached the living room and her father ordered her to let Jó greet the other guests.

“I’m sorry about Katrín. She really loves her uncle,” Jóhannes told Dmitri and me. My boyfriend glanced towards Eiri and spoke with the most innocent tone he could muster without bursting into giggles.

“She isn’t the only one.”

Eiri either didn’t hear him, or pretended that he didn’t. Jóhannes raised his eyebrows and nodded meaningfully towards Eiri. Dmitri took it as confirmation of his theory about Jó’s family.

Once freed of his niece, Jó introduced his family to my boyfriend, and we sat in the living room to chat for a bit before the food was served. In order to get everyone a seat, the dining room chairs had been taken to the living room. Dmitri and I were politely forced to sit in the comfiest place available because of our status as ‘special guests’, and the others took their seats around us. We went through many general small talk topics, until the conversation landed on ‘children’.

“So, we´ve decided that we´re getting tired of having just Katrín to spoil,” Jó’s sister announced, pointing to her and her wife. Katrín, the little girl, made a cute offended face at her aunt, but said nothing. A second later, she had forgotten all about it, focusing instead on pulling Jó’s trousers to get on his lap. “So we’ve decided we’ll try to have kids too.”

“That’s wonderful!” Jó beamed, though he had barely had time to glance in his sister’s direction before Katrín demanded more attention.

“Are you going to adopt or try to have your own?” Jó’s father asked.

“We’ll try to have our own first,” Jó’s sister-in-law (I think her name was Nínna) answered. “We´ll see if the sperm I froze five years ago is still good for anything, but if it doesn’t work we won’t keep trying. There are plenty of children needing loving families, after all.

“I see. Best of luck to you, I would definitely love to have another grandchild.”

At this point in the conversation, Dmitri and I exchanged discreet but confused glances. We couldn’t make much sense of what we had just heard, but everyone else just carried on talking like there was nothing weird about it. According to Jó, his sister was a lesbian who had a lesbian partner. So they were both women. So they shouldn’t be able to have children by freezing sperm, just like Dmitri and I would never be able to have biological children by freezing eggs.

“Are you ok, Gunni?” Jó asked me. I was probably making some obviously confused face, but I didn’t want to say out loud why I was so confused. It didn’t sound very polite or appropriate for the situation, so I told Jó I was fine.

Dmitri, on the other hand, didn’t share my sense of politeness, so he turned to Nínna and asked rather bluntly, “How do you make sperm to freeze if you’re a woman? As far as I know, that’s a guy´s thing. And believe me, I know a lot about guy’s things.” Dmitri winked suggestively to Eiri, who winked back seemingly mostly by reflex, because he looked surprised by Dmitri’s question.

“Well, as it turns out, being born with a penis is not really a guys-only thing,” Nínna answered with all the calm and confidence of someone who has repeated those words countless times before. “I was born with one, and yet here I am, in my full female glory.” Jó and his family snickered in a weird synchrony, but Dmitri and I didn’t quite get the joke.

“I still don’t know how that can happen,” Dmitri pressed, though he sounded a bit more polite.

“It happens because what we have between our legs isn’t what decides what our gender truly is,” Nínna answered. She gave us some time to try to understand it before she spoke again. “Think about it this way: how do you know you’re a man? And if you think it is because you have a penis, then what would happen if it got chopped off in an accident? Would you become a woman, then?”

Dmitri made a hard face of concentration, and I probably looked similar. I didn’t want to imagine the graphic scenario she suggested, but I could try to think about what exactly made me sure of who I was. “I guess I just… feel comfortable that way?” I answered, though it sounded more like a question. “It’s kind of logical; I don’t really have to think about it.”

“Exactly. I’m pretty sure I’m a woman too, it’s just that my body happens to be a little bit different.”

“That’s weird,” Dmitri commented. He probably didn’t want to offend, but Nínna sent him a dirty look.

“You know what is weird? That some people who think of themselves as part of an LGBT community tend to forget the ‘T’ part. And it’s not even like we are a tiny minority. I bet there’s at least one person you know who is like me, but you have no idea.”

“So you’re a… T?” Dmitri asked, obviously not sure what ‘T’ was supposed to mean.

“It stands for transgender,” Eiri helpfully explained. Dmitri raised his eyebrows.

“Ok, sorry, I didn’t know.” My boyfriend turned to Nínna again. “In my defence, I came from Russia, and before I arrived in Iceland I didn’t even think women could have sex without penises involved. It took me an amusing drunken evening with Karen and a couple of dildos thrown in my face to learn that lesson, so I guess I’m still learning everything else.”

“Fair enough, but don’t expect me to be your main source of knowledge. I came here to have a family dinner, not to educate people I’ve never met before.”

“Fair enough, we have a deal!” Dmitri beamed, getting up to shake Nínna’s hand. “Can I just ask one more question, though?”

“What is it?” Dmitri´s enthusiastic performance on the handshake probably warmed Nínna up, because she sounded a lot more pleasant.

“If you can be a woman with a penis, can there be guys who don’t have penises?” Dmitri asked, and I felt embarrassed by the mental image his question created in my mind.

“Yes, of course. As a gay man, would you be interested in one?”

“I don’t know if I would know what to do if I met someone like that, though I am kinda curious now…”

Thankfully this potentially embarrassing conversation was cut short by Jóhannes’s announcement that dinner was ready to be served. We dragged the borrowed chairs back to the dining room and became faced with a magnificent banquet. It seemed Jó’s talent for creating amazing meals was a family trait. Dinner consisted of roasted chicken with potatoes and cranberry sauce, various kinds of vegetables cut in cute shapes (probably so Katrín would eat them), and a giant chocolate cake for dessert. We took our time eating and talking, enjoying the family occasion and the good company. Jó’s family was nice and quick to treat Dmitri and me like we were part of the family too. When dessert was announced, little Katrín tried to claim half the cake as hers, but her father told her she should be nice and share with the guests. She understood this as ‘give your slice to Gunni’, and grudgingly passed me her plate. I felt really sorry for her, and quickly reassured her she could eat cake too. After that, she started to like me just as much as she liked Jó.

After a little more talk, the topic of ‘children’ returned to the conversation, but this time with a different focus. “Do you ever plan to have children, Jó?” his father asked him after the family had spent the last five minutes discussing Jó’s sister’s plan to get pregnant. Jó almost looked towards Eiri, but caught himself just in time.

“I don’t know… I don’t even… have a partner yet…” The room fell silent, and Dmitri coughed discreetly. Jó looked like he wanted to punch himself in the face for saying such thing, but there was nothing he could do. Finally, his sister spoke.

“I don’t know, Jó, you and Eiri seem to be doing a pretty good job of raising Gunni. I think you two would be great parents.”

“No, but…”

“We’re not…” Jó and Eiri tried to say, but the rest of the family shook their heads in synchronised disbelief. Dmitri coughed a bit louder and grinned at Eiri.

“Jónas Egill Jónatansson, are you seriously going to keep denying it forever?” Jóhannes asked his younger brother, using Jó’s full name to make a point about his amused disbelief. “Look, Jó, we´ve been playing along because we figured you had a pretty good reason to not tell us anything, but you didn´t fool us, not even for a day.” Dmitri almost fell off his chair trying to keep his laughter in, but everyone else stared at Jó and Eiri, like they were waiting for them to reveal their ultimate secret at an interrogation table. “You can stop pretending Eiri is just your housemate.”

“But…” Jó tried to argue. Eiri looked like he was beginning to panic.

“We figured it out when you moved in together,” Jó’s sister continued, trying to calm down her brother with a soothing tone. “It was already pretty obvious by the way you spoke about him like he was some kind of god, but still, we weren’t entirely sure how serious you were until you gave up a really nice flat in central Reykjavík to live in a house in the suburbs with a guy you allegedly barely knew.”

“Oh, my God…” Jó looked mortified, and Eiri’s face had become completely pale. I wasn’t sure why they were reacting that way, and neither was the rest of Jó’s family.

“Is something wrong?” Jóhannes asked, worried.

“If you guys found out by yourselves, then potentially lots of other people could’ve realised too…” Jó explained. For the next fifteen minutes, he and Eiri told everyone about Aunt Margrét and why Eiri was so afraid of letting anyone know they were together. They finished their story with the re-telling of what happened when Dmitri accidently outed me to her.

“That’s really horrible!” Jóhannes’s wife voiced everyone’s opinion. “I can’t believe someone could do something like that!”

“You can count on us, ok?” Jó’s father said, patting his son’s shoulder gently. “We will keep your secret, but you can stop pretending around us. We’re glad that you are with someone you love, and we have considered Eiri part of this family for at least two years now, so you can both come to us if you ever need help.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Jó almost choked on his words. Jóhannes and Júlíana (the sister) got up to hug their brother, while their father took turns to tenderly caress their hair. Jóhannes’s hair was of a vivid shade of red and long enough to reach past his ears. Júlíana’s hair was long and blond, reaching the middle of her back. In between them, Jó’s hair was a near-perfect mixture of red and blond, to such an extent it was impossible to know what his true hair colour was just by looking. Seeing that Jó had the safety and support he needed with his family, I decided to hug Eiri and show him he wasn’t alone. To my surprise, Dmitri did the same.

“We’re here for you.” The father, Jónatan, kissed the top of his middle child’s head. It was all Jó needed to let his tears flow freely. He was relieved to finally let go of two years of lies, two years of hiding the fact that he had found the most important person in his life. I tightened my hug on Eiri, and realised he was crying too, though he was very quiet and discreet about it. I wondered if he was feeling relieved like Jó, or if there was some other reason for his crying.

Jónas, Júlíana, Jóhannes, and Jónatan, hugged for a long time. It was obvious they loved each other and would support each other through any hardships. Eiri, on the other hand, had to keep living his lies in front of his mother, knowing she would never accept who he really was, or support his relationship. Despite all this, Eiri somehow insisted he loved his mother. I couldn’t do anything about Aunt Margrét, but I could let Eiri know that I would be there for him too, no matter what.