this is also long long long

HÅKON

I buckle and call Milo about ten minutes later. I was going to leave him out of the loop for a little longer, just until I got home, because he's off having fun and I didn't want to pull a big storm cloud into it before I got myself together, but I need him to say something, anything, to make this seem less of what it is.

"Hey," he picks up. "We're at the lake today and I miss your ass in swim trunks. Anyway I convinced my Dad the sailboat wasn't going to sink and so it's back out in the yard and I'm trying to clean it just a little so we can, like, flex seal the whole thing and-" he stops. "You're being quiet."

"Yeah,"

"Are you okay? Are you tired? Have you eaten anything today?"

"M'okay," I mumble. "I just got into a bit of a tussle with my parents, that's all."

"Oh," he says. "Let me stand up and get out of here, I can walk and you tell me everything. I don't care if you think I shouldn't listen because I'm supposed to be having fun. Talk about it."

"It wasn't," I pause. "It honestly wasn't bad, it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. They asked if you were in a relationship with me and I said yes and we got into a bit of a screaming match over it but I told them I wasn't hiding it anymore and eventually they came to the conclusion that they weren't going to distance from me so there's that. It's better than I thought it was going to be. After that we argued a little about whether or not they care about me and that's... you know."

"So it wasn't the worst, but it still wasn't good."

"Yeah," I mumble. "I think I'm going to be okay about it. Did you know they didn't know I was missing those teeth?"

"No? They didn't? How?"

"I don't know," I sigh. "I guess they just never noticed."

"What are you doing now? What's the plan."

"M'going home. To Canada, that's the plan. I'm gonna go jump in on the summer stuff back there and wait until you get back and then next season. You know. Just like last summer."

"I might go back a little early, just because I think you need a hug."

"No, Milo, don't cancel plans because of me, you should stay."

"Håkon, I'm not staying here if you're not doing well, this family is new in my life and you've been around longer, you're a little more important than them right now. Especially if you're not doing well and they are."

"Milo," I stop him. "I'm okay, I'm really just relieved, this is the same as normal with them. You should stay and get to know that part of your family a little better and I think maybe a little time to myself would be good just to recenter and work with what I'm feeling."

"Are you sure, or are you saying that because you want to curl up into yourself and stew on it?" He pauses. "That was a little condescending, what I meant to say is are you trying to toughen up on the topic or are you going to use the time to let yourself work through it all the way?"

"Uh," I breathe. "I think I just need a little bit of a reset on everything and I don't know."

"Okay," I hear him shift the phone to his other ear. "I just want to make sure you're taking care of yourself."

"I'll be okay," I mumble. "It really was a long time coming and it went better than I thought it would, it's still just a shock to the system, having gone through that and had that... sorta conversation."

"How are you feeling?" He asks, softly. "Physically."

"I'm shaking, still," I respond, holding my hands out to see for myself, watching them. I lean over and press video, it opens and relief eases its way down my spine. He's clearly soaked with lake water, hair slicked back and drying.

"Look," I say, holding out my hands for him to see.

"Yeah, that does look bad." He responds, squinting down at the phone. "Adrenaline, probably."

I nod, setting them back in my lap. "I assume as much," I stop, watching the woods out the window. "I feel all weird and gooey. I hate it."

He gives a little unexpected laugh. "Have you ever had a panic attack before?"

"Not that I know of."

"There you go, that's probably the same body reaction to a panic attack." He pulls in a breath. "Just sit and breathe for a while, I'm right here, but I wouldn't suggest driving until you stop shaking so hard."

I just nod, mentally focusing on breathing. In and out and-

"Do you want me to talk to you a little while you calm down?"

I nod again.

"Mmhmm, okay," he pauses, breathing in. "So I was thinking about parasites."

"That's not a great way to begin things."

"No no but it's justified. Our lake here is under parasite watch this year and so I'm not supposed to put my head underwater-"

"Your hair is wet and you're not helping my panic attack."

"That's because I just got soaked with a hose, don't worry, I'm not risking myself to brain eating bacteria."

"Brain eating?"

"I should not have started with this," he lets out a nervous laugh. "Okay let me try again-"

"No no, you explain that first."

"I'm okay, I swear I'm okay, I just got doused with a hose, that's all." He laughs. "So anyway I'll get back to talking about more important stuff that doesn't involve me dying a horrific death via brain eating parasites. Including the fact that I had a great night of sleep despite being slightly cramped, that everything here looks almost exactly the same for some weird reason, and that my Czech is rusty as hell. I didn't realize how uncomfortable it is to switch back to thinking in Czech. I can speak it, sure, yeah, I know what's going on, but I've got so much lag time because I'm still off frolicking in my english speaking bliss with you."

"My Swedish is going to decline indefinitely because I'm not spending summer here like usual. I guess I'll need to suck it up and talk more to people to keep it up to date."

"Ew, talking to people." He laughs. "Sometimes I talk with Dvorak but he's from a different region entirely and we have nothing to talk about other than just being from the same country in origin."

"Also Dvorak's teeth are a mess so he's a little hard to understand."

"No thanks to you, asshole."

"He was on my nerves."

"I also forgot how much goddamn drinking they do here," he lets out a little laugh. "S'probably why I'm a little hazy right now, despite it being 3 in the afternoon."

"You've been drinking?"

"Not a lot, I can't hold it that well and it's way different here than most places. Canadian's drink to party, American's just fucking drink because let's face it that country is gold-plated hell, you up there don't drink that much and when you do it's an everyone thing, and then this, I dunno, mostly beer."

"Summer training is going to hit you like a fucking plane." I let out a little laugh. "You're going to look both ways before crossing the street and get hit by a UFO with this."

"I know," he lets out a laugh. "I'm getting squishy."

"I'm okay with squishy. Nico is going to kill you."

"Good thing she's in Colorado."

"Yeah, probably." I look down at the screen again, no longer focusing on rubbing my hands up and down the seams on my pants like he does when he's overwhelmed to try to get a sense of calm. He's sunburnt across the cheeks and nose, glowing a little and absolutely drenched in sunlight. "I should keep you in warm sunny places, you look good."

"Thank you," he smiles. "I should keep you in the complete dark as I'm pretty sure you could burn under LEDs."

"Would you be surprised if I told you I have burnt under LEDs before?"

"No, I would not," he sets his forearm on top of his head and I notice how much color he's gotten over the last few weeks just by being outside all the time, the underside of his arm is paler than the rest of him. "Do tell."

"S'not much of a story to tell, I was in school and I came out with a sunburn."

"Awh," he smiles. "I burn a little but the one time I got a horrific burn was a couple years ago I was in Maine with Steph and I burnt the back of my knees. I have not stopped thinking about how absolutely awful that was."

I let out a soft laugh. "Can't imagine. I've burnt the insides of my elbows before and that was bad."

"Probably the same feeling. I could barely bend my knees for weeks. Made for bad summer training."

"You're burning a little now, but that might just be the light."

"Hopefully it's the light." He pulls back his arm and squints up at the sky. "Yeah, maybe I am, maybe it's the alcohol buzz, I dunno, it's whatever."

"No it's not, go put on sunscreen."

"Mmph." He grumbles. "Later."

"You tan fast." I comment. "I don't think I've ever tanned."

"You haven't a drop of melanin in you, of course you haven't tanned." Haven't a drop. He's drunk. Or more tipsy than he should be for mid-afternoon on a weekday.

"Rude," I mumble. "I mean, you're right, but ouch. We're going to have to be careful taking photos together in the next months because you're going to completely wash me out."

"Proudly," he laughs. "I've got a ton of greek in me, what were you expecting, I fucking love the sun."

"I thought you- you know what it makes sense."

"I'm a lot of Czech too but that's the little gene combo." He smiles, tipping his face back into the sun. "How are you feeling?"

"Less shaky." I sigh. "More like I want to sit in the sun with you somewhere random in central southeast Europe."

He smiles softly at me for a couple of seconds before seeming to remember something. "Hey, hey," he sits up. "I found something out this morning that I hate."

"What?"

"They only have a military and an air force here. Nothing else."

"What other branches would they have?"

"I dunno."

"They have no need for a navy, nor a coast guard, you're landlocked. So air and land would be all you'd be required to fight on."

He leans back in his chair. "Right, right, yeah. Anyway."

"Milo, if you don't drink some water soon you're going to get a little worse than tipsy."

He rolls his eyes at me. "I'm not drunk."

"Mhmm."

"I'm just excited, it has the same effect." He lets out a long breath, relaxing back into his chair. "Do you want to keep talking about the conversation or do you want me to keep chattering over here."

"I-" I sigh. "I don't know, I don't even know if I'm happy with how it turned out, with what I said."

"What did you say?"

"I just, I brought up stuff that doesn't really matter to me just to prove points and I didn't want to bring attention to those things and I don't know." I set my head down on the steering wheel. "I just said things that I didn't really mean just so I could prove points to them."

"Which points, if you don't mind me knowing."

I sigh, pulling my hands through my hair. "I was trying to prove-just-dumb shit. I was trying to tell them that I wasn't at fault for drifting away from them and the thing is, I am. I stopped calling and stuff and I stopped asking for them to do stuff for me but I just brought up things that don't matter to me, like how they don't come on parent trips and then I brought up shit that happened to me when I was nine. I don't care about that anymore, I just wanted to hurt them. And I feel like shit for it because, what, I dunno, I'd be mad if someone brought up something they didn't care about just to hurt me."

He stays quiet for a moment. "But... those things do hurt you."

"They shouldn't."

"But they do." He retorts. "I know you don't want them to, I know you want to be unbothered about the parent trips, but you were almost crying about it a couple separate times, I felt awful about it, it was just you, Håkon, everyone had their someone and then you. You can play tough about it but that hurt, I know it did."

"But they shouldn't," I restate. "I know they're not coming. They've never gone. It doesn't matter to me, I can expect it, I know it's going to happen so- so why does it- fuck why does it hurt?"

He runs his hand through his hair. "Because they're your parents," he says, softly. "Parents were always supposed to be your biggest supporters, your first friends, all of that, they're supposed to be right there for you, always. And they're not. Emotionally, you need them there, that's how parents work, how they should instinctually, and they're not there, so it's going to hurt. Even when you don't want it to."

"But it doesn't matter, it doesn't mean anything to me, I don't mind it, I don't-"

"You do, and that's okay, that's alright." He says. "It's alright that you feel like that, it's completely okay for you to feel like that and have that type of reaction to something like this, you're around other people and their parents and it's being rubbed in that you don't have yours there on those days, I know in normal times you'd be alright with that but your response to it is completely normal and okay."

I rub my hands through my hair, over and over. "And I brought up other stuff too."

"Like what?"

"Like, I dunno, old punishments they used to do when I was little that were fine, I knew that they were punishments and they made sense but I brought them up because I was struggling to get any leverage against them."

"What did they do? If you're alright with telling me, of course."

"I dunno, they just, they weren't normal, regular punishments, you know, like your mom hits your hand with a spoon when you're trying to eat stuff off the tray too early, she tells you off if you do something wrong, it's normal, it's what you see often. My parents used to not let me do stuff for long periods of time, I didn't make the best team once, even though I should've, there's no reason I should've played badly that day, and I didn't get to go to family dinner for a while, that was, I dunno, it was alright, they didn't yell at me or anything they just didn't let me eat with them for a while. And then I failed a couple quizzes in a row in primary school and they gave me the silent treatment until I got my grades back up, just so I could focus on school, you know, it's not orthodox, but it made sense, and it- I dunno, it worked. But I fucking- I dunno, I brought it up, I made it worse than it actually was-"

He cuts me off. "Worse than long periods of being ignored? What?"

"Yeah?" I look down at him. "It made sense."

"No the fuck it doesn't." He lets out a little nervous laugh. "Håkon, that's not normal punishment, nothing should last longer than the initial infraction and if it does it's got to have one long actual reason, like getting grounded-"

"This was getting grounded."

"No, Håkon, it sounds like psychological, fucking, psychological abuse. Another level of not good. You would've forgotten about it if it hadn't given you a large amount of damage. I don't remember the specific instances of getting hit in the hand with a wooden spoon, cookies? Sure, I dunno, yeah. I just know that she's gonna do it if I get my hand too close to the sheet out of my own safety, to not get burned and because she wants me to leave some for the rest of everyone. What happened to you could've been solved with anything else, help on your schoolwork, reassurance that you're good at hockey even when you don't make a team, all that type of stuff, not weeks on end of silent treatment and-"

"You're exaggerating what actually happened," I respond. "It wasn't like that."

"Even if it wasn't directly like that, there's no reason to hole up a, a what, you were how old?"

"Nine."

"There's no viable fucking reason to tell a nine year old they can't speak to you or join you during family goddamn dinner because, because what, they're having a bad week? That's fucking ridiculous!"

"Milo," I mumble. "Don't get worked up about it, it's alright, it happened years ago."

"No, no, I'm mad." He responds. "I'll simmer down for you but I'm fucking pissed."

"Milo," I look over at him. "S'not important."

"I know, okay, I just don't like the way you've been treated." He sighs, running a hand through his hair. "So you brought up things you don't care about to make a point."

I nod.

"Uh," he pulls in a breath.

"You can just say I did the wrong thing, I know I did."

"But you didn't, not really." He responds. "To prove points in essays you bring up points that the main characters might not care about to prove things. So that's what you did, you referenced past experiences in order to prove points."

"I shouldn't have done it."

"It's okay that you did, though, you proved a point."

I shake my head, looking down at my hands. "I didn't want to prove that point, I didn't want them to realize they don't really make a lot of appearances in my life, I don't want them in here. I don't like it. All I did was give them an excuse to get closer and nitpick me."

"You can say no to them showing up, if you want to." His voice is almost too soft for me to hear it through the phone. "You're old enough to be in complete control of who's in and out of your life, if they become too much, you can step away for a little while."

I turn to look at his little frame on my phone, his sunny environment, tousled hair, all of that. Sweden looks like it's going to rain.

"Did you want to bring up anything that you didn't?"

I shake my head, then stop. "No, no I didn't, but I wish I could've told them more about what's been going on with me. Like you do with your mom. You go over and you do something with her like eat dinner or fix something and you tell her things. I don't remember the last time I got to share something with them."

"You can always tell me about it?"

"It's not the same," I set my forehead down on the top of the wheel. "You're supposed to care and you do, so much, but they're supposed to care too, in a different way, and they just don't. I love you and I tell you everything, but they're supposed to love me and they didn't even know I was missing my teeth." I stop and think. "I guess I just really- I don't even know, I don't know why I still want them there, I don't know why I can't just drop them like I should, they're awful to me, always have been, I just can't- I can't-"

He lets out a little noise like he'd put his hand on my cheek if he was here, that's one of his go-tos and there's nothing I wouldn't give to settle my head in his hands and let him pull me into his lap. But he can't; because he's halfway across Europe.

"You can't let them go because, somewhere, in you, you're still a little kid that wants them there, you might really want to drop them, to get rid of them, to never think about them again, but somewhere in you, your ten year old self just wants to make them happy with you."

"Can I get rid of it?"

"I don't know, I don't think so." He sighs. "I had a little bit of that with my dad, doing things that I knew he'd've liked even though I wasn't even in the same country, basing some decisions on what he would think would be manly enough or whatever. I got the worst concussion of my life doing that, shootout, split second decision to choose the tough guy route and ensure the puck went over the top of the net by bouncing it off my helmet."

I shiver. "Ow."

"Yeah, that was one of the ones where I could