40: Nice Room

LMAO sorry guys I completely forgot to post

ROCKET

Eventually I do have to end the conversation out of sheer exhaustion and how burnt out my brain is from switching suddenly and rather violently back to Czech after ten full years of only using it with Mom. And from talking about exhausting things, and from taking in so much information all at once.

The staircase is thinner than I remember as I work my way upward, approaching the hallway at the top. I stop and look at the wall, a photo hung up of my parents at their wedding. I look at my dad, mildly amused to find that the picture just looks like me.

I put my hand on the wall and drag my finger across the wallpaper, the same ugly floral pattern Mom was working on finding a replacement for when she left.

I don't look up, I keep my head down until I turn sideways, looking down at my bare feet, framed in the opening to a door, the door, however, shut.

I lift a hand, setting it on the brass knob, then push. It creaks on it's way open and I'm standing, a foot taller, ten years older, staring at my old room.

I can barely keep myself put together enough to step inside, placing my travel bag on the hook that held my backpack so I could do homework in here. Everything is clean.

There's drawings all up all over the walls. Action poses and pencils and pens and I even appear to have used red crayon in a few of them. I gave up drawing when we moved, but looking back at all of these, stuck up on the walls, I had talent. Quite a lot of it, actually.

I push open the door to the closet, looking in, spotting my old board games up on the shelf, binders next to it. Hung up are only a few things, a suit coat, two pairs of jeans I don't think I'd fit in if I tried as hard as I could, a couple graphic t-shirts I remember absolutely loving and wearing to death. There's a hoodie from the IIHF, five years before I attended for myself. There's a pair of shorts, my beat up sneakers in the bottom.

I guess I didn't realize that everything would really still be here, in the same spots. I thought he would've moved on, changed things, used this room for something else.

But it lies as is. My sheets are fresh, my pillow somewhat fluffed, my desk is clear, my closet is organized.

I guess it was like mourning a death, two deaths. A father who lost his son due to divorce but was still in contact with him would have changed things, maybe made the room more age-appropriate for if he came to visit.

A father who was cut off, a father with a lost son, he would've kept everything the same as the very hour he left, preserving a memory of something he won't get back. Preserving his son as he was when he was lost. Preserving what they remember knowing new memories aren't an option and memory in itself is so fragile that you lose it as time draws on. So you keep what isn't memory, what is real. Because real things don't change so dramatically, cannot alter because of your own mind.

So he kept my room exactly the same. He kept my drawings, he kept my goalie stick, he kept the pictures of us, he kept the action figures on the windowsill, he kept the jersey hung up on my wall. He-

I stop and stare at the little figure on my shelf, stepping toward it, my hand reaching out and wrapping around plush before I can stop myself.

It was the one thing I was most destroyed about losing in the exact moment, though no thirteen year old boy would admit out loud he still needed his favorite stuffed animal. It was the thing that made me cry on the way to the airport, not losing my family, that hadn't settled in and wouldn't for a few years, not losing my country, that either, none of the big things.

It was this. My tattered purple elephant. With the one eye that was just a little lower than the other.

I set him back down again, stunned. My head twitches a little to the side and my nose scrunches at the same time. Involuntarily. I'm fucking exhausted. Beyond exhausted.

I toss my phone on the bed, grabbing the back of my shirt. I'm halfway out of it when HÃ¥kon picks up.

"Hi," he yawns.

"Hey, keep me company while I change." I yawn back, pulling the sleeves of my shirt back out of themselves, wondering if my old room has any opinion on the tattoo on my ribs. It's tiny but it feels like something that thirteen year old me would go wild about. It's tiny and it's coming true.

"Not even a facetime call? You voice called me while changing?" He lets out a soft laugh. "The audacity."

I laugh, tossing my shirt onto the chair, head ticking again, then lean over, hitting video and tossing it up toward the pillow on the bed so it's at an actual angle.

"I wasn't expecting you to actually do that." He mumbles. "Nice room."

"I know, right?" I lean over to my bag, unzipping it. "You can look around at the drawings I did when I was thirteen."

"Nothing changed in there?"

"No," I yawn, rooting through it. "Everything is exactly the same."

"Cool," he mumbles. "I'm in your hoodie, you left a second note down the sleeve, it was itchy."

"Mhmm," I grin, pulling out what I brought to sleep in, basketball shorts and his IIHF Sweden shirt. I slip the shirt on and then drop my pants right there.

"How did it go with your dad?"

"Good, I guess," I respond, picking up the phone and grabbing my toothbrush, walking toward the bathroom. He's clearly cozied up in bed, light creeping in around the corners of the window, dimmer now than at the wedding.

I stick my toothbrush in my mouth and he raises his eyebrows.

"M'not talking wif thss in mm mmth." I try, brushing as I go.

"I don't speak toothbrush." He responds, smiling, face lit up by the screen.

"Y'look fmking adormmble." I stare at him. His hair is a wreck, strewn out over the pillow, the cover is up to his chin, the pillow looks soft as hell. He's fucking cute as a button.

"Thanks."

"So you do speak toothbrush." I say, spitting my toothpaste out before going back in for a second brush through. "Liar."

He frowns, nuzzling a little deeper into his covers. "Shut up."

I wiggle my eyebrows, rinsing out my mouth. "I feel like you'd like it here."

"You do?"

"Yeah, I feel like you'd really like Prague-"

"I've been to Prague, you know that, right?" He smiles. "We were in the same IIHF tourney. I was in Prague for that."

My eyes go wide. "Wait you were?"

"You played against me. I remember it because you were the wildcard goalie. Canada or the Czech Republic? Nobody knew where you'd end up."

I grin. "This is where you tell me you liked me since seeing me there."

"This is where I tell you I actually hated the fuck out of you becuase we were playing Canada first and all of a sudden everything went up in legal flames because Czechia lost their goalie and suddenly wanted you and I needed to know if I was playing against a Warren Reed Canada or a Milos Stojanovic Canada."

I smile down at him, pulling my door shut and then looking at the bed. "I love that."

"So much drama for the IIHF. I hope you know you were a common grumbling in the Swedish locker room. If they knew you were proudly wearing their colors right now you'd be toast."

"And I look hot in their colors too. Hmm, sucks they aren't here to kick my ass for it." I grin.

"You're insufferable, I love you."

"I love you too." I'm still staring down at the bed. "God I don't really wanna sleep here."

"You don't have to."

"No, no, I do because, I dunno, but I also don't."

"You're exhausted, you can have an existential crisis over it in the morning." he yawns.

"You're right." I sigh, sitting down and then slipping my legs under the covers. Dad said he changed them about a week ago to get the dust off so they should be fine.

I wiggle under. "Guess what?"

"Vad," he mumbles, yawning. I've noticed that about him, little things slipping in and out of his vocabulary. I've also noticed that I know all of them. Vad means what.

"I'm too tall for this bed."

"Means I'd be smushed in there if I were there," he yawns. "I wish I was."

"Why? It's too small for both of us."

"Mhmm, no, I could improvise. I'd wrap my arms around you and smush real small to fit both of us in there."

"I left barely 18 hours ago," I smile at him. "How are you already touch starved?"

"I'm always touch starved," he yawns, stretching an arm out. "You could be laying on top of me, touching as much of me as your little raw spaghetti body allows and I'd still want you closer."

"Ow," I mumble, wrapping myself up in a cocoon and bringing my knees up. "HÃ¥k?"

"Yeah?"

"If you were here right now I'd want my hair scratched."

"Damn, I thought you were going to say something romantic."

"That is romantic."

"Sure," he smiles. "When I see you again you can nap on my thigh and I'll scratch your hair as much as you want."

"Oh, good." I mumble. I've napped on his thigh before, on the warm inside crook of his body, my arms around the rest of his leg, his other heavy thigh resting against my back and holding me up against him. It was fantastic. He was reading so he wasn't scratching my head but if he was I would be on cloud 9.

"How's your sister?"

"She's literally just Mom with Dad's sense of humor. It's the weirdest thing." I mumble. "She's definitely in love with Jan, though, and I find that absolutely hilarious."

"Well," HÃ¥kon shrugs. "Is she wrong to be? No."

"Right," I snort. "Except it's Jan."

"Right, ew, same effect as Steph." He shakes his head. "You need to sleep, I can see it in your eyes."

"Shush," I yawn. "I'm fine."

"Mhmm, says the man ticking." He lets out a little laugh. "I love you, dear, with everything in me, and I want to keep talking to you, but you need to go to bed."

"Loser." I mutter. "I'm awake enough to hold a conversation!"

"I love you."

"I love you too." I respond, staring at his little face on the screen. "You give me courage."

"You give me bad fucking ideas," he responds, smiling. Missing teeth, just his organic beautiful smile. "Lots of bad ideas."

"You give me butterflies in my stomach and encouragement on bad ideas."

"You make me horny when I should not be and you spark controversial conversations around my family."

"Do I now?" I challenge, yawning again.

"You make me feel a lovely list of feelings and you should know that your kisses come back to me when they should not."

"That sounded vaguely sexual."

"It was, but I was thinking about the ones you put on my upper back when you're falling asleep, and the little one on the inside of my wrist, and then the one on the hook of my elbow." He yawns. "I need you to sleep."

"M'not tired."

"Yes you are."

"I want to keep hearing about-" I stop to repeat his yawn. "The kisses."

"I can keep telling you about them but promise you won't try to stay awake for it?"

"No."

"Rude. I'm gonna just hang up. Here I go, hanging up!" he brings his hand forward.

"No no no," I stop him. "Fine, I'll fall asleep."

"Good."

I'm out in 10 seconds flat.

***

yeah idk why i forgot about this. it literally just escaped me that it was thursday night and I needed to post.

anyway

-rabid