The Orchestra - Sinfónia Lifsins - 60. 58 - Impressions

Thanks Lisa for the editing!
 
Siggi is heading to another melt-down, but this time around his friends are determined to not let it happen. Particularly Gunni.
 
 

“You know that Dmitri is not coming home again until after Monday’s rehearsal, right? You don’t have to leave now too.”

“The only way you’re going to keep me here is if you shove Gísli’s cock so deep in my arse I can’t move without tearing my intestines in half. I’m done with this place.”

Karen gave up her observation post by the door and marched into the bastard’s bedroom with her eyes on my stack of dildos. “Please, Siggi! We really miss having you around!”

“Do you?” My bag closed. The pile of shirts, underwear and socks still on the bed would have to stay there. “Do you really miss having to sterilise the kitchen every time you cook? You miss me dumping chemical hazards into the toilet just before you have to go make yourself pretty? And you miss me ranting about how much my life sucks compared to yours every time I don’t feel like living another day? You really miss all that?”

Karen’s lips twitched. “I miss my housemate. Everything you said and much more.”

“You’re the wrong kind of masochist.”

She grinned. “Maybe. But things in this house haven’t been the same without you. It’s so… boring now. Sometimes Gísli and I feel like we’re back to our years as university students sharing a tiny flat with just each other for company. We miss the noise, the bickering that’s really your way of saying how much you like us, or even just listening to that peaceful cello sound coming from the music room.” She got too close for comfort. And she should have grabbed the ten-inch dildo instead of my bag. “Living with you has never been about kitchen hygiene or your fussy intestines. We actually like you, you know?”

“You’re speaking like Arnar. Stop it.”

“What? You don’t believe we like you?” Enough with the grinning. “Even after, you know, we invited you to live with us in the first place?”

“You invited me because that fucking bastard wanted a fuck-toy, and Gísli was not horny enough for his needs. I was here so that his monster cock would have a warm hole to pound into every night. But now he won’t fuck me even if I land on his lap with my arse more stretched than Gummi’s patience at drunken rehearsals, so what’s the point?”

“The point…” Karen looked up to me so close that her breath lifted stray hairs off my face. “The point is that… sure, it was Dmitri who officially invited you to live here with us once you joined the orchestra for real, but Gísli and I had a say in it too. The three of us discussed it before he even mentioned that possibility to you. If we didn’t want you here, you would never have moved in.”

“But now he is the one who doesn’t want me around.”

“What makes you say that?”

If I kept my hands in my pockets they would be less likely to go for her neck. “Seriously? Do I have to spell it out? I thought I was the one who had trouble understanding indirect communication. The bastard knows how much I hate the kid, but they’re here every day, shoving their happy, sexless, and doomed relationship in my face. He knows I would rather eat peanuts than have to talk to the replacement, but he expects me to be civil and not hurt his little darling. The bastard made his choice. I’m making mine.”

“But this is so wrong! I’m sure Dmitri wants you around! He’s just… distracted!”

“He doesn’t even notice when I’m not here! He stopped caring a long time ago!”

“But you haven’t!”

“What?”

Her hands dragged the bag to her side, where she knew my arms could not reach. “You say Dmitri doesn’t care about you anymore, but you clearly do. You’re arguing with me and acting all hurt because you’re not the centre of his universe anymore, so obviously you still care about him. Please give him another chance. Stay here, play your cello to cool down, and on Monday have another, quieter, chat with him. Please? If not for us, then for the orchestra?”

“I can’t.”

If Karen wanted my bag so badly, she could keep it. I needed none of it at Arnar’s.

At home.

 (...)

Arnar got up from the couch as soon as he saw me go through the door. “You’re back far too early. Did you and Dmitri have an argument? And where are your things?”

“I’m going to my room.”

Arnar did not follow me. He knew better. Just like he knew what I was about to do. The cello had been in my hands for less than five minutes when loud piano chords floated in through the open window. Minor chords. Mirrors of the melody that escaped my fingers.

The door to the music room was open. Arnar’s bandaged arm invited me in.

“Since when can you play the piano?”

“Since I can no longer accompany you with the violin. This is something our counsellor suggested.” He played a C major chord. “Since our relationship started with me supporting and reaching out to you through music, she thought a similar thing on the piano could work as well. What do you think? Do you want to play something together?”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“It certainly won’t be the same. I’m going to need time to get used to playing with just my right hand, but you’ve waited enough. We need to do this kind of thing again. I miss it. And I can see in your face that you’ve needed it for a long time.”

Arnar said nothing while my chair landed next to him. His good hand patted my shoulder before he gave me the A to tune the cello. And he smiled even as the music started and he was no longer supposed to look at me.

Arnar’s hand struggled to form the chords he wanted at the speed he needed. Some notes were clearly the result of misplaced fingers. But his strong block chords gave my melody a rhythm and a direction that gradually shifted from minor to major. His unexpected modulations kept me on my toes and built up anticipation. He never took the lead like this before. His supportive harmonies used to mean literally that: support during the shittiest points of my life.

So he wanted to guide me now? See me through wrong notes and sad melodies all the way to the bright and cheerful?

He finished on a deceivingly simple C major chord. My finger considered stretching to switch the E natural to an E flat and bring my sound to a dissonant minor. Anyone else who presumed to know how to turn my life around should be permanently shoved arse-first into a cactus.

But for Arnar, my finger stayed on the E natural.

 (...)

Monday’s rehearsal started with the usual disgusting routine of the bastard taking the kid to his seat like a clumsy toddler, only to kiss his lips and remind us all of the kind of relationship they really had. The replacement’s face stayed in its usual shade of deep-red-shame until the music started and he (hopefully) directed his thoughts on things that actually mattered.

But at the first break, the bastard did not come for his little darling. He was dragged away by Karen and Ugla without so much as a glance towards the string section. The woodwind’s shenanigans should have nothing to do with my life, but with the bastard out of the picture, his little lost puppy somehow found it appropriate to come to me.

“Siggi, can I talk to you for a bit?”

“I don’t have anything to talk to you about.”

“It’s about Dmitri. I asked Karen to distract him during the break so we could go somewhere alone. Please?”

“You want to drag me alone into a secluded corner? I expected that kind of invitation from anyone else, not from the kid who turns into a walking beetroot at the mere mention of the word ‘fuck’. What’s the bastard doing to you?”

Cue his transformation into said vegetable. “That’s… that’s not what it’s about. Please, Siggi, it’s important.”

“Fine. But be warned that my dick doesn’t get it up for guys barely out of the nursery.”

The kid made no comment, but his ears turned a neon shade of red that should not be humanly possible. And he finally stopped staring at my face. He did not look up even after he found a suitably hidden corner of the Harpa to do as he wished with me.

“I’m worried about Dmitri. He doesn’t want to be away from me, like it hurts him to do it. Everything he does is about me, about trying to make me happy even when I don’t need anything like that. I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t know how to stop that.”

“And you think I know?”

“He told me about your argument last Saturday. He couldn’t understand why you were so upset with him, but he told me enough that maybe… maybe I know.”

“Really?” Since when did spoiled brats know anything about doomed friendships? “Tell me, then.”

“I don’t think Dmitri realises how much he’s alienating himself from everyone else. He’s like… obsessed with me, and that can’t be healthy. I don’t know if you’re upset, disappointed, or jealous, but I understand it’s hard to see your best friend ignore you. And I guess… I guess you see me as your enemy, so it’s even worse.”

“I’m only going to let you keep talking because I refuse to live in a world where a child has more emotional maturity than the guy who used to be my best friend. I need to hear you screw up at some point, so I can stop my urge to drown in the toilet.”

The kid winced and his lips shook. If he wanted to please me so much he could have shown me the face of his suffering. “All I want is to ask for help or advice. I don’t want to be the one to break your friendship. I know you still mean a lot to him, and I’m sure it’s the same for you. Please, Siggi, help me get Dmitri back to normal. Help me bring your friend back!”

This would have been so much better if he was looking at me instead of his shoes. “Then make him stop loving you. Break up with him, do something horrible, hurt him. It’s his feelings for you that are making him be that way. Stop those feelings, and Dmitri will be back.”

“I can’t do that! I don’t want to hurt him!”

“You’re going to have to. He doesn’t realise what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. All I did was tell him his feelings were clouding his judgement. That’s what he asked me to do when he told me about his disastrous love life, and look where that got us.”

“He doesn’t listen to you anymore.”

“No. We had a deal. He made my life worth living while impaled on his cock, and I was supposed to prevent him from falling in love again. He knew what he would be like once his feelings took over, but now that he’s in the middle of this shit he doesn’t realise it’s happening exactly as he feared.”

“He didn’t believe you when you told him?”

“He thinks he’s going to be fine because you’re not like his previous boyfriend. He thinks you’re safe and so he can be free to enjoy his love.”

The kid finally looked up at me. Eyes wet, hands closed into fists, he almost looked like a grown-up. “I try to be! I don’t want to hurt him!”

“And that’s the reason we’re in this shit! You trying to be nice and safe to him made him drop his guard and let the obsession take over. Stop being nice. Stop making him feel like he can trust everything to you.”

“There must be another way to do this.”

“You wanted my advice? That’s my advice. If you want to do something else, that won’t be any of my business.”

The kid turned on his heels. But of course, at the last possible second, he denied me the pleasure of being rid of his company. “Do you really want Dmitri to get hurt? I thought he was your best friend.”

“He was before he kicked me out of my own bed so that he could have lovely cuddles with you all night long every fucking night.”

“He said you didn’t mind that.”

“Your boyfriend is a liar. What did he say about me moving back to Arnar’s? That I was looking forward to it?”

“You moved back? So you… You don’t live in Dmitri’s house anymore?” His shocked face was even more fun to look at than the colourful blushing. “He said you just went over to Arnar’s when I was around!”

“I don’t think your boyfriend noticed my absence at all. He doesn’t want to fuck anyone anymore, so he has no reason to want me in his bed whenever he happens to be alone. I took most of my things back home ages ago. Whatever is left is only there because I can’t be arsed to get them.”

The kid spent ages looking at me like I had pulled the whole floor away from his feet. The amusement was almost dying down when he decided to speak again. “I… I want to say so many things, but–”

“That’s not my problem. You can–”

“Dmitri’s not having sex with anyone else?”

Hearing the kid talk about sex out loud should have been the most amusing thing of the day. But this time his face remained the same freckly-pale tone and he stared straight into my face. Some sex talks were more embarrassing than others, then? The kid had no consistency.

“He’s been repulsed by the idea of it ever since Your Pure Sexless Highness professed to having such feelings. You have no idea of the amount of influence you have on him. If you tell him you want to jump off the bridge, he’ll think it’s the best idea ever and jump with you. So, by all means, jump, but don’t let him know about it.”

“Look, Siggi, I…” The kid bit his lip. The words took their time, like he finally realised he was the problem behind this whole mess. “I knew Dmitri was fine with us not doing anything… anything like that…” The schoolgirl blushing came back. So the kid was only a prude about his own sex life? That explained a lot, and yet was not at all surprising. “But I had no idea my coming out changed him so much. I didn’t mean for it to happen, and I’m worried now.”

“Welcome to the club. Or rather, not welcome, since the club only exists because of you in the first place.”

The kid took a deep breath. This conversation was going on for too long without something properly amusing happening. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think any of this would happen when I agreed to be his boyfriend. But that’s why I’m here talking to you and setting myself up to be hurt every time you speak. I want to help Dmitri, and I know you do too. So can we have a serious, adult conversation that’s not about me hurting my boyfriend?”

The kid stared at me. Even my lack of body language awareness knew that look: the one I gave my father on the day I ran away from home, the one that made him smash my head against the wall.

“Very well. You want to be treated like an adult, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Do you have a plan?”

“I came to you because I don’t. Didn’t.”

Eyebrows raised. “Now you do?”

“You said Dmitri will listen to anything I say, so if I tell him I don’t mind him having sex, maybe he’ll go back to doing that with you?”

“His biggest problem is not whether he’s fucking half the world or not. This shit is the way it is because he’s been blinded by this belief that you’re so safe he can give up all his independence, his self-awareness, and his free will because you will take good care of him. He’s put his life in your hands, and he can’t see how that would be a problem even if you were not some kid seven years younger than him who doesn’t know what surviving abuse is like.”

“You’re right. I can’t imagine something like that. This last month has been… suffocating, in a way, with him not wanting to be away from me, missing me after only a day apart, putting a lot of trust in me for things that I… that maybe I’m not ready for.”

“So you acknowledge you’re just a kid playing with a grown-up?”

“No. All I’m saying is that I can’t do this alone. I need you. I’m going to ask Dmitri to listen to you. I’m going to have to find a way to tell him without hurting his feelings that you’re right about him placing too much trust in me. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that, but once I do, he’s going to need you to be that best friend who looks out for him and says all the harsh words that need to be said.”

“So you’re going to be his mummy telling him he’s in trouble and needs to talk to daddy Siggi to get a punishment? What weird family dynamics shit are you trying to pull me into?”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t think about it that way…” Finally more blushing. “I didn’t mean… a family… not like that…”

“I almost believed for a second that you could be a mature grown-up. I’m glad the illusion is gone.”

“Fine. Believe what you want. Just, please, don’t give up on Dmitri yet. I’m sure he still values your friendship, and he’ll hate himself when he realises what’s happening. If this works and Dmitri is himself again, I’m sure we can all get into an agreement about our relationship that doesn’t force you out of your bed, your house, or your… fuck-buddy.”

The kid’s face blushed more than neon signs for cheap sex shops. But he made a point to stare into my eyes and grin like his bastard boyfriend when he was about to tie me to the bed and be an evil master until I could not take it anymore.

“Your balls are growing. I like that.”

“Then maybe you should get to know me for who I am. You might find other things you like.” He turned around and walked away.

Well played, Gunnar, well played.