8: When in Norway

HÅKON

The stupidly in love gets worse when we get to Norway. It's a short drive in relation to what we do on a weekly basis for work so we just buckle down and get it done, the girls and Leo, however, don't really do long drives often so they're a little wilder.

The stupidly in love steps up a notch when we settle down for an early dinner, planning on wandering the city and checking into a hotel before hitting a little bit of a pre-planned bar-crawl. Which, I can tell, Rocket is anxious about. I am too.

"I still can't believe..." he mumbles, staring down at the tacos in front of him. "Fish."

"Try it," I urge, getting a weird look from him and laughter from the rest of the table. "C'mon it's just cod."

He lifts a hand and I cut him off again.

"You lived in Boston for four years and you're telling me you don't eat cod?"

With that, he scoffs a little insult at me and picks up the soft-shell, going straight for it. "F'course I eat cod I just lived..." he swallows. "In landlocked states my whole life and then- yeah." He lets that flavor settle on his tongue. "It's actually not bad."

"Oh thank god." The group shares one basic response, then I get a slap on the back. "Alright, he's accepted, he eats fish!" Vera laughs. "Would've been a shame if your Swedish ass had brought home a guy that didn't like seafood."

"It's already a shame with him, our ancestors are rolling around in their graves thinking about him." Isa mumbles over a mouthful.

I turn to her, a little confused. "Being gay-"

"You're allergic to shellfish. You, a Swede, in a country that practically exists on seafood, half of you is from another country that practically exists off seafood. You're allergic to shellfish."

"Okay listen-" I start off but Rocket is buckled over laughing before I can get anywhere.

The next three hours are actually a ton of fun, Rocket and I don't get recognized at all and we manage to get around some of Oslo and show him things that we've seen before. He finds it to be an absolute blast, which, makes me happy like some dumb idiot. I'm just his boyfriend, and every time it crosses my mind to use his boyfriend I get a little giddy, I'm just his boyfriend and I'm getting to do normal boyfriend things with him, I even held his hand for a couple minutes before he jogged off to hop over a pylon on the side of the road.

Then it's time for the bar crawl that Vera has been overhyped about for a couple hours.

I'm staring at Rocket, he's staring back at me, we're standing just a few feet away from everyone in some weird little corner just like we did at Casey's in the winter.

"I don't know about you," he shouts, "but I'm really going to bank on the whole Norwegians don't watch hockey thing, if that's okay." He tips up his drink. "I wanna just be your boyfriend in one of the worlds most liberal places. For the love of god."

"What?" I ask. "That's so risky-"

"HÃ¥kon people only recognize you with a full playoff beard or a clean face. Your hair has never been that long, you're big, yeah, but you, unless looked at closely, are not exactly recognizable and I'm a backup fucking goalie. Nobody recognizes me anyway."

I think about it for a second, alcohol warm in my stomach. "Okay, but-" the but is barely out of my mouth before he's got my hand and he's dragging me toward the girls and Leo.

"Whatcha doing?" Isa asks me, specifically. "I know this is a little out of your comfort zone but-"

I tip up my drink. "When in Norway." I comment, then finish the sentence. "Being half drunk is a waste of money."

Isa bursts out laughing. "Makes you wonder why we came here for this."

I turn away from Rocket for a split second, "clearly it's Vera's thing for Norwegians."

Isa laughs and turns around to spot Vera already making out with some hot blonde girl wearing just a crop top and shorts. "Vera's Vera, we let her do what she pleases."

I just nod, then lean forward and run a finger up Rocket's back, he turns to me, just over his shoulder, hair a fucking wreck, lithe fingers around the core of a bottle, collared shirt somewhat unbuttoned. Six foot three of pro hockey and not letting me forget a damn centimeter.

"You gonna go slow with that?" I glance at the container. "We gotta last at least a little bit."

He grins before taking down more. "My tolerance is shit, HÃ¥kon, yours is worse, you know that." His hand weaves up into my hair, gripping a good handful and pulling me down to his lips. "Might have to get you another round, two hasn't gotten into that thick skull of yours."

"Two has definitely gotten into yours." I respond, catching him by the hip and pulling him back to me. "We're still in the first shift of this."

"Fuck, there's more shifts of this?"

"Yeah, three, actually." I comment. "This, then later we go to like the big stuff and if we had friends here, there's an afterparty."

His eyes go wide. "Norwegians are fucking crazy. How many drinks is that?"

"More than you and I can handle." I ruffle his hair. "A lot more. A striking amount more."

"Dear fuck, I haven't been sloppy drunk in years, last time I was I let Steph give me a hickey if he bartop danced." He grins up at me. "Doubt I could get you on a bar."

***

He wasn't right but he wasn't wrong either. I'm not on a bar, I'm leaning against one, drunk as all hell, watching Milo, my very gay boyfriend, dance in a not so parent-friendly way with Vera, my sisters very gay best friend. It's fucking hilarious. Leo's got one arm slung around my shoulders and one arm slung around Isa's and I'm trying desperately to make conversation with a Norwegian girl next to me but Swedish is my main language, English is my second, and I can only do conversational Norwegian if I focus hard enough.

"Lytte!" I shout at her over the music. "Jeg er homophil!" I don't know fucking anything but formal Norwegian so I'm pretty damn sure I just shouted 'I'm a homosexual' across the bar at her.

She responds something fast and from the four words I got out of it, she's asking about the guy standing next to me.

"Den fryen?" I point at him.

"Ja!"

"Jeg vet ikke?" I poke him on the shoulder and then point at the girl. "Kjenner du henne?"

He frowns, then looks at the girl, then back at me. "Kjæresten din?" He asks.

I take a second with that before remembering that kjæreste is supposed to be gender neutral. "Nei!" I manage.

I watch them fire like a hundred words a minute back and forth at each other in actual Norwegian and before I know it, they're out dancing next to Rocket and Vera.

"I'm a fucking fantastic wingman." I drawl out at Leo in Swedish. "Workin' magic per usual."

He laughs, then points out at my boyfriend who I temporarily forgot to keep an eye on. "That boy of yours is better at girls than I am and I'm straight!" He manages, half english, half Swedish, horrible grammar, all that jazz. I look out at Rocket and find him, grinning like an idiot, red across the nose, and arms around three separate girls, attempting to teach them a little foot dance while trying not to stumble and fall. I recognize absolutely none of them and by the blonde hair and tall statues, they're probably from here.

ROCKET

"No! Fuck no!" I holler. "Like this!" balance, baby, hol-ey shit.

One of the girls pulls on my collar and shouts something foreign sounding into my ear.

I respond in Czech like some dumb fucking idiot because my drunk brain really thought we were just playing fun and games with different languages or something. I have no idea.

She just giggles and I go back to trying to teach them the Cotton Eyed Joe foot jig that was drilled into my brain by force two proms in a row. Thank you, Steph Sagamore, truly a man of culture.

I get a moment where I think that Cotton Eyed Joe would sound fantastic if I sang it outloud in Czech but that moment is promptly ruined by the first four lines being way too long or too short, and then a mop of white hair leaning over me.

"Hey baby," I blink up at him. "Fuck you're hot." He is. He definitely is. It's the fact that he doesn't look as refined and controlled as he normally is and-

I drop my arms from the girls and reach up to slam them into his wreck of hair, spinning and crushing my lips into his like some sloppy way too intoxicated mess.

HÅKON

I didn't expect this to get me drunk enough to dance. I'm shit at dancing, I'll fist fight, that's got slang as 'dancing' but fucking this is something else entirely.

Rocket clearly knows what he's doing which is horrifying in so many ways I don't even want to think about why he's able to control me with just a twist of his fingers in my collar or a tug on my hair or a bump of his hips into mine.

I say a lot of shit as he scrambles my brain, some of it includes 'motherfucker' and some of it includes long slurring heavy professions of love in Swedish to make sure he doesn't know I'm praising every damn cell in him.

"You're a menace, you know that?" I groan, feeling his hands tug me closer by the shirt. "A complete fucking menace."

He grins up at me and for a split second I think I'm about to say it but his lips stop me.

"I fucking love it here." He laughs, sucking a mark onto my neck. "I can grind on you in public and nobody is gonna give a shit."

My brain is absolutely fried with sensory detail and he's just making it worse with his lips and the scratch of his scruffy little beard that I can't tell if I hate because it looks weird on him or hate because it makes me want to drag him into a bathroom and get on my knees.

"Don't pull a Nico on me." Is the last thing I remember saying to him while still in dark lighting.

Next thing I knew, which, hopefully I didn't do anything too embarrassing between the bar and the hotel, I was on top of him. Then he was on me. Absolutely goddamn free to be whoever we want without anything stopping us. It's a fucking wreck, really, all of it, the messy sloppy stripping of clothes and the absolutely disgusting make out session, then the sloppier hooking up and alcohol induced libido and all that shit that I've always wanted to do but never been able to and god I couldn't be happier that it's Milo's sweaty skin under mine, his sticky hair and alcohol flavored mouth.

Maybe I should've considered going after someone smaller. I only even think to consider that as I notice how proportionally enormous the two of us are compared to the bed we were given and that I can't get my head between his legs without my legs being off the side and he just gives up and gets on the floor and then we're on the floor and everything is so damn foggy but I'm in love. With a guy. And I'm in love with a guy in a place where I can be in love with a guy and where I can't be killed for being in love with a guy and where I can just be fucking all this.

Especially fucking all this. Definitely fucking all this.

***

you're gonna have to wait until Monday to find out if HÃ¥kon pulled a Fenrir on Rocket. ;)

also I'm somewhat convinced this song is like an actual norwegian kinda club song but like I'm not entirely sure so if someone from like honest to god Norway would like to tell me if this is accurate that would be much appreciated. ngl i listen to this song while doing anything. i have no idea what it says (yes i do i looked it up but i dont wanna get #roasted by actual norwegians) but i'll literally be driving to school at 7:00 am and subjecting my brother to this full blast. (don't worry he likes the song too and both of us can sing pretty much the whole thing from memory which is horrifying. rlly a good hype song for 7:30 am calculus, i be in the back trying to process derivates and my brain is like vi tar en pinne for Hemsedal og PINNE FOR TRYSIL, PINNE FOR HAFJELL EN PINNE FOR LANDET! all while i'm out here tryna force myself to do f'(x) stuff, rlly makes the day manageable)

-rabid