Sonata for Siggi - 5. Andantino Part 1 - Fathers

Important note: This chapter is the first of a two-part special to celebrate Siggi's birthday (he's turning 22 today, 17 of June). The story starts in 2019, almost exactly 6 years ahead of where the plot of the main story currently is. In this alternative universe world, those 6 years brought a lot of character development to Siggi, Gunni, and Dmitri, and they're now in a poly triad, living in their own cosy house together.

This plot is not meant to become an indication of what the future of the main story will be like, though people's reactions to it might help me shape future plots.

Lastly, the there are quite a few trigger warnings here: rape, miscarriage, pregnancy, death talk, and some gore.

(...)

Dmitri started our pre-concert rehearsal by taking over the conductor’s podium. “You are the most supportive colleagues I could ever wish for, so I want you all to be my witnesses to something that is very important to me.” All eyes were on him. He obviously enjoyed keeping us hanging for as long as he could. “As you know, I’m turning twenty-nine today. Next year, I’ll be thirty. I’ll be old enough to be called a responsible adult.” I was not the only one who laughed at that mental image. “I know, I know… I’m not quite the perfect adult role-model right now, and I don’t really want to become one. But there are some things about me that need to change, and I thought turning thirty might just be the right kind of incentive to finally get on with it.”

“What do you have in mind?” Dmitri was being so mysterious about his plans that not even Gunni knew what they were. If not even his partner of five years had a clue, Dmitri was either having some serious trust issues, or he wanted Gunni to be as surprised as everybody else. Neither option sounded particularly appealing from my point of view.

“I want to be completely sober by the time I turn thirty. I want to give up alcohol for good. I’ve been drinking a bottle of vodka a day for almost nineteen years now, and I know this can’t be good for me in the long run. I need to stop before it kills me. And I need to be sober if I’m ever going to be a good dad.”

None of the eighty musicians on stage made a sound for the first few seconds following Dmitri’s revelation. They mostly glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. Dmitri turned to look at Gunni, so I could not see his face, but an uncomfortable feeling began to unravel in my chest. It did not help that Gunni had that kind of fake smile on for when he really wanted to be happy about something, but was in fact worried.

It took me a while to figure out that the uncomfortable feeling was actually a mixture of guilt and anxiety. I knew what motivated Dmitri’s sudden decision to sober up. I had caused it. Everything suddenly made sense, even the reason why he had not said anything to Gunni.

‘I had a nightmare.’ I woke Dmitri up in the middle of the night. ‘It wasn’t like the usual ones, and I can’t figure out how I feel about it.’

Dmitri turned on the light on the bedside table and hugged me under the covers. ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

‘It wasn’t anything about my father, or Kresten, or anything based on an actual memory. But it was just as bad.’ I could still see the scenes created by my mind, even as I looked at Dmitri’s worried face. ‘I dreamed I got so sick the doctors couldn’t heal me. I died, and you and Gunni were there.’

‘Oh, Siggi…’ Dmitri pulled my body closer to his. I felt my eyes sting as the made-up memories became more vivid with my retelling of them.

‘Then I turned into a ghost and looked at you two. You were crying, and saying that it wasn’t fair, that I was way too young to go. You two were in so much pain I couldn’t bear to watch. And then I woke up.’

‘A nightmare about your death became unbearable when you saw Gunni and me in pain? Really?’ Dmitri looked into my eyes with a worried smile and brushed his thumb on the corner of my eye. I had not realised it had become wet. ‘I don’t know what to say to this.’

‘Me neither.’ I looked away. ‘When I was a child the doctors thought I wouldn’t live more than ten years. That’s one of the reasons my mother left, she thought I wouldn’t be worth the trouble if I wasn’t even going to be around that long. But then I lived past ten, and so the doctors said it would be a miracle if I got to twenty. I’m already twenty-four, twenty-five in less than four months. I’ve always felt like I was living on borrowed time, that my life could end any moment now, but I was ok with that. I’ve come so close to dying so many times before that death doesn’t scare me. I know I’ll run out of luck sooner rather than later. And I thought I was ready for it.’

‘But you’re not?’

‘I don’t know. That nightmare… I think the reason I found it so scary was because it made me see that my death wouldn’t be just about me. People I love will suffer when I’m gone. And it disturbed me more than I expected. I don’t think it’s fair on you, Gunni, or on Arnar.’

‘Wow, I can’t even… I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think we meant that much to you.’

‘I used to think that dying would be a relief more than anything, that the good things I had in life were just enough to even out the bad ones, so that I didn’t particularly care if I kept living a little longer.’ I had to give Dmitri a warning look to prevent him from interrupting. ‘But what I’m beginning to see is that… that ever since you and Gunni got me into this triad I… I think the good things are finally out-weighting the bad, and it’s making me wish I didn’t have to wonder if every new day was going to be my last. I still can’t picture myself as a thirty-year-old, but you two are making me feel bad that I won’t be here to see your grandchildren.’

Dmitri started to cry halfway through my speech. ‘Have you ever told Gunni about this?’

‘Of course not. Gunni is going to cry at the mere mention of the word death.’ Never mind that the two of us were crying too. ‘I can’t talk about this morbid stuff near him. I think it’s going to be too much for him.’

‘I think Gunni would be so happy to know that he’s making such a difference in your life that he won’t care.’

‘Maybe, but I still can’t do it. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s unfair on him. He’s only just turned twenty-two, and he’s almost certainly going to lose one of his partners by the time he’s twenty-seven. He’s too young for that shit.’

‘Yeah, you’re right about Gunni being too young. He doesn’t deserve to be left alone after spending so little time with us…’

Dmitri’s words had made little sense for me at the time, but listening to him talk about how much he needed to sober up before his body suffered irreparable damage put everything into perspective. Dmitri was worried he too would die before his time, leaving Gunni completely alone. We had had this talk less than a week earlier, so Dmitri had probably been thinking about it since then. He would not have been ready to share his worries with Gunni if he had had so little time to think things over on his own.

Judging by Gunni’s face, though, he knew something was up. I was still getting used to the fact that he was a lot more perceptive than I gave him credit for. Even if Dmitri was careful enough to mention their plans to have children in the near-future, Gunni would have picked up on the fact that it was not his main driving force.

“I’m planning to sober up gradually throughout the year. I know it’s probably going to be the most difficult thing I’ve tried so far, and that’s why I wanted to make this announcement.” Dmitri ran his eyes over the whole orchestra. “I’m counting on you to help me keep going. You can chain me to a chair if that’s what it takes to keep me away from the bar after concerts. You can hit me on the head to shut me up if I get too annoying. Just please, help me make sure that at this time next year I’ll be making a happy announcement that alcohol is no longer part of my life. Can I count on you for that?” This time, there were many cheers and some enthusiastic clapping. “Great! So you guys get the honour of seeing the last time I do this…” Dmitri pulled a bottle of vodka out of nowhere and drank half of it in one go. There was more clapping, more cheering, and one string of obscenities coming from Karen’s mouth. “Thanks for your support, everyone! It means a lot to me!”

Dmitri took his seat under an enthusiastic cacophony of supportive sounds. He managed to get the ISO on board, or at least most of it, seeing as Gunni kept looking at his own knees and did not cheer his partner on.

A storm was brewing, even I could tell. And it hit later that day, when we were already at home, and Gunni had convinced the two of us to cuddle with him on the couch.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to stop drinking? I thought we were going to discuss everything together that had to do with our children.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Dmitri caressed Gunni’s hair to mark his apology. It was kind of cute how he could tell Gunni had been upset from that one question. “I just thought that we didn’t have to discuss something so obvious. I refuse to be a drunken father like my own father was, so if we’re ever going to have kids, this would have to happen sooner or later.”

“But why now?”

“It’s like I told everyone; I’m going to be thirty in a year. That’s the kind of age when I should become more responsible about my life.” What he meant was that it was time he did something if he wanted to be alive at forty, but he was most likely not ready to talk to Gunni on those terms yet.

Gunni let his body relax against Dmitri’s. “Ok. But I really wished you had talked to me sooner.”

“Now I know. Sorry, it won’t happen again.” Dmitri leaned against Gunni too, and they looked like a scene from one of those annoyingly adorable Valentine’s Day cards with cheesy hearts popping from every conceivable angle. Then Gunni noticed I was on the couch too and pulled me closer to him.

Even the cheesy adorableness of group cuddles had its upsides. For one, Gunni actually made for a comfortable body pillow. Most importantly, though, this was my partners’ way of saying that I belonged with them too, that they loved me as much as I had come to love them.

(...)

Dmitri’s sobering up was a gradual process. He had to slowly decrease his alcohol consumption to minimise the withdraw side effects, but his careful planning was not fool-proof. That year was the first time someone got more sick leave than me. Dmitri suffered physically and mentally, but he did not give up. I watched him suffer, and watched Gunni suffer too when Dmitri and I happened to be sent to the hospital at the same time. Dmitri could say what he wanted about his main motivation being his as-of-yet non-existent children, but one look at his guilty face when Gunni came to see us proved that my suspicions were right. Dmitri was doing this for Gunni. Everything else came second.

One year later, Dmitri once again started our rehearsal with an announcement. “I would just like to say thank you to everyone who had to put up with me this past year. I’m sorry for the times I stepped over the line, for the times I was too moody to realise I was being rude, and for any offensive things I said when I wasn’t really being myself. If it wasn’t for your support and your understanding, I don’t think I would be standing here today to announce that it’s my second month without drinking any kind of alcohol. So really, really, thanks, everybody!”

The obligatory cheers, clapping, and shouting started. Dmitri bowed to us, but before he could leave the conductor’s podium, I felt compelled to say something. “You know, putting up with your mood swings wasn’t that hard. You’re talking to the people who have been putting up with me for eight years. You were really easy to deal with in comparison.”

It was a statement to the festive mood the orchestra was in that my words resulted in widespread laughter, including Dmitri’s.

(...)

With Dmitri finally sober, he and Gunni could now concentrate on the one thing they had wanted to do since Gunni turned old enough to qualify as an adult: get a collection of sickening adorable offspring. My sole condition for turning our relationship into a triad and agreeing to move into a house with them had been that I would have zero involvement on anything concerning their children. I had no wish to be a parent, and since Kresten’s episode, the whole subject had its fair shares of triggers too. My partners kept their end of the deal at first, and for a month after Dmitri’s birthday I heard nothing about their baby plans apart from a few whispers amongst the cello section alluding to the fact that they had started such plans for real.

They came for me in the music room on a Sunday morning. My partners stood side by side and their anxiety vibes were so intense even I could immediately see what was going on. “Siggi, can you come with us for a bit? We want to talk.”

“What’s going on?”

“Not here. Let’s go somewhere more comfortable.” Dmitri and Gunni led me up the stairs to their bedroom and made me sit on the bed between them. They did not let me ask questions until everyone was dully comfortable, and my two partners managed to hold hands behind my back.

“Now can you tell me what this is about?”

Gunni and Dmitri looked at each other in silence for a long time. If they were trying to make a point of showing to me how nervous they were, it was working wonders. But knowing they wanted to talk about something that made them so anxious only put me more on edge and brought my defensive survival instincts back. This could not be good for anyone.

At last Gunni managed to open his mouth. “Before we do this, I just want to say that we know we’re about to ask you to do something that might make you feel really, really bad. We’ll be here to help you calm down if it happens. We’ve been discussing this for weeks now. It was my idea, and Dmitri has always been against it, but I convinced him we should at least try to ask you. So if you want to feel angry at someone, please keep Dmitri out of it.”

“What is it? And why do you want to ask me for something you know is going to trigger me?” I did as Gunni asked, ignoring Dmitri for the time being to concentrate all my annoyance and instinctive nastiness on him. He knew this was coming. It would not be surprising if he had asked me to keep Dmitri out of it because he knew this was coming.

“It’s because I love you. I love you more than anyone else. Two years ago, you made me the happiest man on Earth when you said you loved me and wanted to see what it would be like for the three of us to be in a relationship. I love every minute we spend together, but… ” Gunni took a deep breath. “But I know there are things worrying you that you don’t tell me about. And I think I know what those things are.” And Gunni once again proved I still severely underestimated his perception skills. “I know you think you’re not going to… that you’re not going to stay with us for much longer. I can’t even begin to imagine what it is like to feel that death might always be sneaking around the next corner, but every time I think about it… every time I realise you might be gone before we have had the chance of spending a lifetime together, it hurts so much I can’t bear it.”

I could not find words to answer Gunni. His eyes were wet, but he kept the tears from falling and his voice did not falter. He had come a long way from the kid I used to hate, though in a way, I had come a long way too.

Dmitri picked up where Gunni left off, but I did not look at him. “I never told him anything. Gunni knows how you feel about leaving us behind so soon after we all got together, but he figured it out on his own. And that’s why I agreed we could try to ask you for something we know might be too much. You’re under no expectation to agree, and if you feel triggered and want to say ‘no’, please do so, and we’ll be here to cuddle the bad feelings and the flashbacks away.”

“Ok, let’s get on with it.” It was hard to prepare to be triggered when I did not know what kind of trigger it would be. All I could do was put on a front of cold detachment and let some of my old survival instincts take over. I trusted their promise that they would help me recover afterwards, but it did not make this any easier.

Gunni took over once again. At least he kept his word about leaving Dmitri out of the worst part. “I love you so much I don’t know what I’m going to do when you’re gone. It hurts just thinking that I should mentally prepare for when it happens. So I tried to think of ways that could make it easier for me and for other people who will miss you, and that’s how this idea came to be. I thought that, maybe, if you leave something behind it might help us cope better, or rather, if you leave someone behind to remember you by, it’ll be easier for us to pull ourselves together and find meaning in a future that doesn’t have you in it.”

To Gunni’s credit, he managed to keep looking me in the eyes for his whole speech. Too bad I realised what his plan was by the first cue. Or at least I thought I did. “No. No.” My abdomen contracted painfully. I could not breathe. More contractions. Blinding pain that was too strong to be just a memory. If I looked down, I would surely see my trousers and the bedsheet covered in blood. I could not breathe. Dmitri hugged me from behind, his hands carefully pressing the areas that hurt.

“I’m not asking you to get pregnant!” Gunni tried to reassure me, but that word said out loud made everything worse.

Pregnant. Me. Carrying someone’s parasite inside my body. Carrying Kresten’s last ‘gift’ without realising it until my body tore itself apart to get that bundle of intruding cells out. Waking up in the middle of the night in painful agony, only to find my bedsheets covered in blood. Red liquid gushed out, contractions kept happening. Arnar was panicking, calling the ambulance. It was his house. It was the weekend we should have enjoyed together after my solo concert, the days that should have dissipated the darkness of the worst months in my life, but ended up creating something even more horrible. The paramedics had not yet arrived when the thumb-sized thing came out. It already looked too human. As small as it was, there was no way it could be mistaken for anything else.

“We shouldn’t have brought this up after all.” Dmitri’s arms around me were not enough to make the memories stop.

“I’m really sorry, Siggi.” Gunni hugged me too. They laid me on the bed. Their combined body heat covered me. “You’re safe. You’re with Dmitri and me, and you’re safe. Nobody is going to hurt you.” Gunni’s hand found my hair. Soothing. The memories faded slowly, but the phantom pain took longer. And the fear that I would find the would-be-human that Kresten created staring at me between my legs never really left.

The search for a comfortable cuddle position ended with me burying my head on Gunni’s chest. I wanted to muffle the voices of the doctors, their confused whispers of the word miscarriage that followed me through that day and added another sharp stabbing pain to what was already my worst possible torture. But the voices were in my head now, so the only way to dampen their effect was to speak louder than them. “What did you really have in mind, then?”

“Do you really want to know? I thought you didn’t want to–”

“I want to stop thinking about that first assumption I made. Prove me wrong.”

Gunni took a deep breath. His hands found my hair again, and the vibrations of his chest as he spoke felt safer than they should. “I wanted to suggest that you, well… that you donate the other half of the genetic material we needed for our children. Karen has agreed to be our surrogate. We would get a bunch of cells from you, then combine half of them with Dmitri’s and half with mine, and put the embryos in Karen.”

“Why half-half?” The distraction was working. I could tell that Gunni had thought about his choice of words carefully to avoid further triggers. He must have memorised this whole speech so that he would be able to explain everything in a safe way. Shame that in a moment of panic he forgot about it, and ended up saying one of the trigger words.

“Dmitri and I don’t really care who the real biological father will be in the end, but that meant we couldn’t decide who should be the one to donate the ‘material’, so we settled for going half-half and letting luck decide.”

“That’s actually an amusing idea.” If I could ignore everything else, anyway. “But if you make me part of this, that means I’ll have to be a parent too.”

“Not really. Dmitri and I will be the ones named on the birth certificate, and you won’t have to become a parent unless you really want to.” Gunni giggled like a schoolgirl. The ridiculousness of it lightened our overall mood considerably. “You can be Uncle Siggi, the brooding soul who lives in the attic and sometimes comes down for meals he can’t eat.”

The way Gunni phrased his idea was not only effectively keeping further triggers at bay, but was making it easier for me to talk about it too. Maybe I should thank him once this conversation was over. “You do know that if you use my genes on your children they’ll probably end up as sick as me, right?”

“I don’t mind. I’ve shared a house with you for two years; I’m used to you by now.”

“Yeah, we have the experience.” Dmitri finally decided to contribute to the conversation. “And there’s no question that no matter how many allergies they get, Gunni and I will make sure they know they’re not a burden to care for and that they’re very much loved. Just like you.”

“I suppose…” I tried to shrug off the casual reminder that I had found partners who loved me despite all my failures, but their intense hugging made it physically impossible to do so. “But assuming I actually agree to it, what would I have to do?”

“That’s the bad part. And again, I’m really sorry I’m asking you this.” Gunni tried to prepare me for another shit storm. “You would have to stop taking testosterone and take some other kind of hormone instead, so that you can produce the cells we need. It would have to go on for a few months.”

“So I would have to take the kind of hormones I’ve been trying to keep away from my body for the last five years? What will those hormones do to me? If they start to change my body–”

“Most of the changes caused by testosterone are irreversible. Your voice won’t get higher, and you won’t lose your beard. The things that do change will probably change again once you go back to taking testosterone.”

I looked at Gunni with my brows furrowed. He smiled sweetly. “Smartass. You did your homework, by the looks of it.”

“Of course I did. I needed to see if it was a viable idea at all before I talked to you about it.”

“So what you are proposing is that I go through some months of possible dysphoria and potential triggers so that you and Dmitri won’t feel like it’s the end of the world when I die?” Putting things that way, it sounded like they wanted me to actively live one of my nightmares in order to keep another nightmare from happening. But this way my partners would not have to suffer because of me. I would be doing something to pay back their ability to love someone like me.

“Kinda. I hope it doesn’t sound too selfish…”

“I don’t want to cause you that kind of pain.” And I did not want to talk about my feelings on the subject to Gunni, but apparently my mouth had other plans. “I do feel guilty that I’m leading you on a kind of happiness that we know won’t last long. We won’t grow old together. We won’t be able to plan our future the way most couples do. We might not have more than a few more years to enjoy this relationship we have. And I do feel bad for it. I think it’s unfair. You’re too nice to have to go through this shit when you’ve barely entered adulthood.”

“You don’t have to feel guilty about it.”

“But I do. I want you and Dmitri to be happy more than anything. I want to make up for the failures of my sick body, but… but I don’t know if I can pay the price you’re asking of me.”

“That’s fair enough. I wasn’t really expecting you to do it. I’m sorry we triggered you so badly.”

“It’s ok. You’re making me feel better already.” I proved my point by nuzzling my face on Gunni’s chest. He giggled again, and that ridiculous sound somehow encouraged me to go into potentially dangerous territory. “I’m afraid of the kind of memories that taking those other hormones every day would bring up. They would remind me of what my body is really like, of how some people took it to mean I was trying to trick them.” Gunni and Dmitri sensed the new wave of triggering memories coming and tightened their hold on me, but for these particular recollections the last thing I wanted was body contact. They let go immediately when I flinched and kept their distance when my body curled into a ball and started to shake.

The whole thing could not have lasted more than a couple of minutes, but for me it was like Kresten had locked us in that disabled toilet for three lifetimes. The hatred in his voice when he realised my body was not what he expected still petrified me. The weight of his body pressing me against the cold wall and the strength of his grip on my throat still hurt. The threatening whispers, relishing in letting me know how happy he was he could finally finish what he had started the day before, still cut through me like a sharp blade. But those memory fragments were nothing compared to the terror of realising Kresten was really doing what he wanted with me, that Dmitri was not going to burst through the door to save me this time. Once Kresten found out what my body was really like, he took a special pleasure in making me pay for the ‘deceit’ by invading the hole I tried to pretend I did not have, and then leaving his stuff there like some kind of sick mark.

He marked me all right. The mess he left behind triggered an anaphylactic shock that might as well have killed me. I would not have minded it then. But Kjartan had noticed Kresten’s long absence from the post-concert party, and Dmitri saw him leave the disabled toilet alone. Together they were able to guess what had happened and made sure Kresten spent the night in a police cell while I was taken to the hospital. Dmitri once again saved me in the nick of time, though stakes were raised for this one.

I crawled my way back to Gunni until I could bury my head on his lap. He and Dmitri held me tightly once more. I could not stop shaking. My memories followed the logical sequence of events, from Kresten’s attack to the bloody mess on my bed two months later.

“You’re safe. He’s in jail and can’t hurt you anymore. You’re safe.” Gunni repeated the same words over and over again until my body began to believe them. He kissed my head, my shoulder, and every part of me he could reach while Dmitri massaged my back. While they worked to bring me back to the real world, a new thought took hold of me.

“You’re making me think your price might not be too high after all.”

Gunni was quick to voice his surprise. “What do you mean?”

“The way you helped me just now. I know you’ll be here for me when this shit happens again. I trust you to rescue me from my memories. If you want your children to be like me so badly that you’re willing to put up with all this extra shit, then I think I can rise up to the challenge. I’ll give it a try. I won’t promise I’ll go through to the end, but I’ll do what I can. You’re worth it.”

My decision was followed by hugs, kisses, and happy tears. Gunni and Dmitri were so over the moon that I could not help but share their feelings. I would finally give something back for everything they had done for me. I would do something to make their lives as worth living as they made mine, and I would finally be able to stop worrying about abandoning them too soon.

(...)

My partners did not waste any time to get the baby-making process started. Or rather, I did not waste any time to get on with the daily injections of hormonal horribleness. The sooner I started, the sooner it would be over. As to be expected, every injection reminded me of Kresten, and the thumb-sized thing that, in a healthier body, might have grown into a human being.

My thoughts invariably turned to what would have happened if my body had been healthier and that parasite had survived in there for nine months. My fear of being in that situation was such that it made the worst case scenario seem like the only viable alternative. Logic said that I surely would have forced that parasite out as soon as I realised it was there. But my fears asked ‘what if it could not be taken out?’ I would send it to be adopted without even looking at it. But what if nobody could take it away? I would leave it under a bridge. Arnar would never let me do it. Arnar would probably take his grandchild and raise it as if its father was a long-lost son of his or some such. I would become the thing’s uncle, and would be forced to see it growing up. I would be reminded of Kresten every time I looked at it. There would be no escape.

Even though it happened every day, it was never easy to convince myself that none of those thoughts had any chance of becoming real. Only Gunni and Dmitri could do it with their cuddles and body heat, and with soothing reassurances that everything was fine.

But there was another sort of nightmare coming, one that my partners were useless against. The hormones changed my body to such an extent that I no longer felt comfortable taking my shirt off, whether for fucking or taking a shower. I could no longer bear to look at my body, to feel how soft and round it was becoming. There was nothing anyone could do about it other than hope all those changes would go away again once testosterone flowed in my blood again.

Finally, a few days before Christmas, the doctor managed to collect all the cells she needed from me. The procedure was humiliating, triggering, and all the horrible stuff I had come to expect from this ordeal. But this time around we found an easier way to make me feel better: I went with Gunni and Dmitri to the room where they were supposed to masturbate into a plastic cup. I became the sole person responsible for making sure they succeeded in filling said cups. And I did a good enough job that even asexual Gunni had a good time. The fact that we were so close to Christmas and to Gunni’s birthday actually meant this became a sort of special gift to him, one that, if everything went according to plan, would endure longer than his own lifetime.

The confirmation that my sacrifices had not been in vain came a few days after the new year. Karen was expecting twins, and my partners could not be happier. With my mission accomplished, I concentrated on building up my testosterone levels again, and flushing away all physical reminders of what I had done for my partners’ sake.

But the cheerful celebration mood did not extend only to the parents-to-be. The rest of the ISO and Arnar acted like the children were as much theirs as they were Gunni and Dmitri’s. Not that anyone was surprised. The ISO had ‘adopted’ me long before I entered their ranks because I happened to live with their leader. Now their new leader was having his own children, and he managed to involve three other orchestra members in the process of getting them. I would not put it past our colleagues to find a way of having Icelandic Symphony Orchestra listed in the children’s birth certificate as their ‘parent’.

As soon as Karen began to have the tiniest bump in her belly, everyone began to line up at rehearsals to touch it and talk to the foetuses as if they expected the little creatures to come out and be able to recognise them from their voice alone. Dmitri, being the parent who ‘coincidentally’ sat next to Karen in the woodwind section, used every moment he was not playing to ogle at that growing bump. And he used every moment he and Karen were not playing it touch said bump.

“Doesn’t it bother you that everyone invades your personal space like that?”

“Don’t be silly, Siggi, I love every minute of it.” Karen winked and inched towards me, like she wanted me to go ahead and touch her body too. I pointedly took a step back. “I have no interest in taking care of children, being a mother and all that stuff. But I was always a little bit curious about what it feels like to be pregnant, so when Dmitri said he and Gunni were going to try to have children I offered to help out. I love the attention! Everyone here is so nice to me now!”

“Really?” This was not the kind of reasoning I would ever be able to understand.

“Yeah! And have you ever seen how much Dmitri’s eyes shine when he looks at me and when he interacts with the babies mid-rehearsal? I’ve never seen him so happy and so proud. He obviously loves them so much already! I think more than anything else I’m glad I’ve been able to help him feel that way.”

That was something we could agree on. “Gunni is like that too. He’s always looking towards you and Dmitri, sometimes even while he’s playing. His eyes shine too when he sees Dmitri getting close to you.”

“See, Siggi, it’s all our doing. We made it possible for these babies to exist, and we should be fucking proud of it.”

“I’m trying to forget I was ever involved in this. Don’t take this personally, but those children are not mine. I just did a favour to my partners as a way of saying thank you for everything they’ve done for me. But just like you, I’m not going to be a parent.”

“That’s fair enough. But even if you don’t relate to these children as a parent, you can still be happy that your partners are having their dream come true.”

“Yeah, I can live with that.”

Not entirely by coincidence, Gunni and Dmitri caught up to us at that precise moment. Gunni smiled at me, at Karen, and let his gaze linger on the protruding belly much longer than necessary. “Are you ready to go for the ultrasound, Karen?”

“Of course! We have an excuse to leave the rehearsal early, why shouldn’t I be?”

“Is this the exam where they tell you what the babies’ genitals look like?” That was all I knew about what ultrasounds showed, though I was not really keen to find out more.

Dmitri had a suspicious grin when he answered. “Technically, yes, but only if we ask for it, which we won’t do.”

“You won’t? I thought it was a thing that all parents did, like some sort of creepy ritual.”

Dmitri’s grin turned into a full smile. “Nah, parents only do that so they can decide whether they need to buy pink or blue stuff, but we know better.” He winked at me. “We know the genitals won’t tell us anything about the babies’ gender, so we have no reason to find out anything like that.”

I smiled too. It seemed my partners had learned a thing or two from sharing their lives with me. “Good luck with that. What are you going to do about names, though? The Naming Committee doesn’t let you use ambiguous names.”

This time it was Gunni who jumped on the answer. “We thought about it already. We’ve picked two boys’ names and two girls’ names, and we’ll match them to the babies once they’re born.”

“You’ve chosen the definitive names, then?” Karen asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“We settled on them last night so that we could have them in time for the ultrasound,” Dmitri answered. “Which is kind of pointless since we won’t let the ultrasound tell us how to name our children, but still. We picked Nína and Rósa as girls’ names, and Hrafn and Nikolai for boys’ names.”

“Hrafn would be named after my father Hrafnkell, and Rósa was my grandmother’s name. Dmitri’s oboe teacher was called Nikolay, and Nína comes from–”

“It’s not exactly my mother’s name, but it’s close enough. She wasn’t a very hands-on mother, but I don’t hold it against her. She spent all her time working to put food on the table, since my father did nothing but drink on the couch the whole day. So she never had much time for me, and we were never really close, but I admire her hard work. I think she deserves some recognition for it.”

“So you’re naming your children after people who were important to you?” That sounded horribly cheesy and cliché, but I managed to hold my tongue and not tell them that. Their children, their choices, none of my business.

“Yeah. It just seemed like a nice thing to do.” Dmitri shrugged. The subject of baby names died there, and the three of them headed for their ultrasound. They came back in time to catch the last ten minutes of rehearsal, which they turned into a ‘pass-the-picture-of-the-two-things-that-are-supposedly-tiny-humans-but-nobody-can-really-see-for-sure’ session, to everybody’s general delight.

And then, because it was not enough to hijack the rehearsal, Gunni drove us to Arnar’s house afterwards. Not that I would complain of being taken to see my father, it was just that…

“Oh, you have new pictures of my grandchildren? Can I see them?” It was just that Arnar had been declared the children’s grandfather despite my non-involvement in their life. And he was a very enthusiastic grandfather. “Aw, they’re so beautiful! I can’t wait to hold them and play with them and spoil them rotten!”

“Arnar, behave!” Ágústa shot a warning look at her husband, though a minute later she was sitting next to him looking at the pictures too.

Arnar turned his attention to me after he had seen everything there was to see and asked all the questions he could possibly ask. “Thank you for letting me be their grandfather.”

“It was the logical choice. Dmitri hasn’t spoken to his parents for ten years, and Gunni’s father is dead, so those babies could do with a few more family members.” I knew Arnar meant to say something along the lines of how he understood I did not consider the children to be mine despite half their genetic material coming from me, and how grateful he was that I had still allowed him the pleasure of relating to those children in such a close way. “I know you like children, and I know better than anyone how good you are with them.” And of course, Arnar would be another loved one I would leave behind. He had as much right to be comforted by the existence of those children as Gunni and Dmitri. “Enjoy your well-earned grandfatherhood.”

(...)

The summer brought an end to our regular concert season and signalled the beginning of our tour season. This was the time of the year when I regularly starved in foreign hotels because they could never come up with food items that were completely safe for me to eat. In my eight years playing for the ISO, I had never once been in a tour where I did not get food poisoning of some kind (though most cases had been of gluten poisoning rather something that could give me anaphylactic shock. Much less lethal, but my bowels made sure they were just as dramatic and traumatising). This year, our schedule included two weeks in July playing in Denmark.

Most of the orchestra liked those foreign tours. It was probably easy to enjoy the break in routine and the new scenario when one did not have to worry whether their next meal would come with a dose of accidental deadliness or bowel explosion. Karen in particular liked those tours so much she decided she could not miss this one, even though she was twenty-six weeks pregnant by that point. Everybody agreed that, since it was only for two weeks, it would be perfectly safe for her to go along.

I had never seen so many people being so spectacularly wrong at the same time.