Even though he'd been expecting it - indeed, he'd been pacing up and down his flat, watching every minute tick by - Sören still jumped and made a startled little "meep" when the knock came at the door. Sören ran a nervous hand through his curls and over his beard, muttering, "oh god, oh god," under his breath, heart pounding. He hoped Magni hadn't heard the ridiculous noise he'd made.
Sören did a quick once-over of his flat, even though he'd just tidied a short while ago, and then a quick glance at himself in the mirror. He was wearing all basic black - T-shirt, cargo pants - neither wanting to look too dressed up nor too dressed down. While this wasn't officially a date, Sören nonetheless wanted to try to make a good impression, and truth be told, he was hoping that Magni might spend the night. Just thinking about the possibility of having sex with Magni later that evening made Sören's hole twitch, starting to go slick. Calm the fuck down, Sören scolded himself. He doesn't need to smell that. Yet.
Sören took a deep breath, opened the door, and flashed his best grin. "Hej," he said. Then his grin became mouth-open surprise when he saw Magni standing there with a bouquet of a half-dozen fireflower roses, red tips fading through a sunset orange to deep golden yellow. "Oh my god, flowers, thank you." Sören took the flowers and went right to the kitchenette to get a glass and pour a bit of Sprite, setting the flowers in the glass on the counter. "Do you want anything to drink? Food is almost ready."
"What do you have?"
"Water of course, chocolate milk, orange juice, Sprite. Beer."
"I think a cold beer sounds nice."
Sören grabbed two bottles, one for Magni and one for himself, while Magni unstrapped his acoustic guitar case and set it down on the floor next to the armchair. After sitting for a few minutes in awkward silence, not sure how to break the ice, the timer went off, alerting Sören that dinner was ready.
Sören had made breaded cod, roasted potatoes, and peas. Nothing fancy, but something he enjoyed. He handed Magni's plate to him and then came back for his own plate and sat on the couch. "Thank you for coming," Sören said.
"Thank you for having me." Magni took a bite of his fish. "This is good. You should work in the kitchen of your restaurant instead of as a waiter."
Sören laughed and shook his head. "I would be working even more hours and for not a lot more than what I'm making now. Then I'd get so tired of making food that I'd stop feeding myself properly and live on crap. More than I do now. Anyway, I'm glad you approve. I wanted to be a proper host but I never have company."
"I'll have to return the favor and cook for you sometime."
Sören's cheeks burned and he felt himself grinning like an idiot. That implied Magni wanted to see him again.
One thing at a time. Get through tonight.
"So, what have you been up to this week?" Sören asked, feeling like he was terrible at this.
"Not much. Making music. Reading." Magni shrugged.
Sören raised an eyebrow. "Don't you have a job?"
"I'm independently wealthy." A wry smile. "Inheritance. Then investments. For example, I own stock in Tesla."
Sören felt himself bristling a little - while he was a socialist and believed everyone should live in comfort, he didn't care much for rich people, especially not when Iceland was having an economic crisis - but he didn't want to dislike Magni, so he reined in his judgment. "Ah. That explains why you told me you didn't need my money." Sören remembered what Magni had said at the pub. My mother was a sculptor and I was very close to my father who was a bit... eccentric. An artist, a linguist, an inventor.
Magni nodded. "The thought was touching, though."
"So that's what you do with your time, is music."
"It's something of a calling."
"I guess so. You're fucking good at it."
Their eyes met. "I could say the same about your art. It seems a bit of a crime you can't pursue it full-time."
Sören snorted. "Doesn't exactly pay the bills. I've sold a few paintings, but not many." Sören decided not to mention his reservations about dipping back into Reykjavik's art scene, where his Alpha ex was prominent.
"Judging on what I saw when we went to the park, I might tentatively be interested in commissioning you."
Sören snorted again. "Don't say something like that till you've seen more of my work, you might regret it."
"I doubt that." Magni gestured with his fork, to Sören's right arm, then his left. "So, you said you designed your ink?"
Sören nodded solemnly; he had orange flames going all the way up his right arm, and blue ocean waves going up his left arm. They led out to two phoenixes on his back, one made of fire, one made of water. Magni hadn't seen his back - yet. "Like I said, it's based on one of my paintings."
"I'd like to see it."
"We can start with one. ...It's my first painting." Sören swallowed hard; that painting was especially personal and intimate, but something told him he could trust sharing it with Magni. That he wouldn't be mocked for it, as his Alpha ex had.
When they were finished eating, Magni insisted on doing the dishes, which made Sören slightly uncomfortable being it didn't take that long to rinse and load the dishwasher, and he wanted Magni to feel like an honored guest, not a servant, but while Magni worked at the sink, Sören took the opportunity to go into the hall closet and retrieve a stack of canvases, each carefully wrapped in plastic. He made several trips from the closet to the couch, and when the dishwasher was running, Magni sat beside Sören on the couch - the proximity of Magni's body, smelling his Alpha scent more clearly, got Sören going, but he made himself concentrate on the task at hand. He unwrapped the first canvas, showing Magni the first painting he'd ever done, the fire phoenix and the water phoenix with their tails twined, on a background of space nebulas.
"That's beautiful," Magni said, staring at it, eyes wide, voice hushed.
"It's all right for just starting out. It isn't my best painting, my work has improved in quality since then, I think. But it has... personal significance."
"Sounds like there's a story behind it, if it inspired your ink."
"Jaeja." Sören pursed his lips and took a deep breath, hoping he wouldn't sound completely nuts. "When I was four, I started having recurring nightmares, of burning to death, going up in smoke and ash. I would wake up screaming. I hadn't seen anything like it on TV or in a movie, there were no fires in town, so it's not like it was influenced by anything I'd watched or witnessed. And then... I remember telling my mamma, 'this is how I died.' I'm agnostic, actually, I don't want to believe there's a god because if there is he's a fucking asshole, and I don't want to believe in shit like past lives. But those dreams have been with me ever since then."
Magni didn't react - mostly - but Sören noticed him twitch ever so slightly and Sören thought to himself oh shit, I've blown it, here we fucking go. Nonetheless, he felt compelled to go on and get to the crazier part - if this was going to develop into something more, Magni might as well know now what he was getting into. "My mamma died when I was six, and I was raised by my father's sister and her husband. They were... not good people. Drank, got violent when drunk. My mamma died of an aneurysm, I found her body. I decided I was going to become a doctor, to try to save more mothers from dying, more kids from becoming orphans like I was. And... I lost a patient during my internship, who looked a lot like my mamma, and I just... broke. Ended up trying to kill myself, ended up in the hospital. They had us do art therapy and I made this. Like I said I don't want to believe in gods, believe in past lives, believe in anything, but... it felt like I was doing some sort of magic with my art, bringing in the water to temper the fire, so I don't burn myself out."
There was a long silence. Again, Magni kept neutral, and Sören's heart thundered, but before he could start apologizing for saying too much, Magni took the painting out of Sören's hands, put it down on the table, and pulled Sören close, holding him tight. Sören felt tears sting his eyes - he'd bared his soul, and there was such relief to feel that acceptance, that comfort and support - and he buried his face into Magni's shoulder, trying not to cry as Magni gently pet his curls.
"I'm glad you're still here," Magni said softly. "The world needs more people like you in it, who carry the fire of creation." Magni picked up Sören's chin and looked him in the eye; Magni's own eyes were too bright, misty. "You've been through so much ugliness, just in the little bit I know about you, and you still bring beauty to the world."
"Jesus, I don't even know what to say." Sören gave a nervous laugh and wiped his eyes.
"Don't say, do." Magni smiled. "I want to see more."
It felt easier, after that, to show Magni his work.
There was a painting with a waterfall in the heart of a forest, with a rainbow shining in the falls, cascading into a lagoon. The forest itself was lush, many shades of green, with many ferns and old dead forest and new growth growing around and even from the dead parts. Close to the lagoon, there was a small stone circle that was also ringed with mushrooms, and gold glowing wisps that seemed to dance around the circle - the same small gold wisps flittered through the forest.
The next was a seascape, a grey gloomy day, grey-green tides rolling into sand and scattered shells. In the bottom right corner of the painting, there was a close-up of a spiral shell in a pale, weathered palm... and within that shell was space, stars and nebulas. A few stars floating up from the shell, shimmering in the air.
"Edge of the World" featured a sole figure at the edge of a mountain, with a view of coral-peach-scarlet sunset clouds and a town or city below, tinged with the dying golden light. The figure on the mountain wasn't just looking at the clouds or what was down below, but another human figure that was flying in the clouds, smiling, wild and peaceful all at once.
"Turtle" was a large sea turtle, swimming underwater; the turtle's eyes were starry space again, and the turtle's shell had glowing knotwork and runes, and the turtle seemed to be swimming towards a glowing portal. The other aquatic life, as well as the ripples and bubbles in the water, was lovingly detailed.
"This is called 'River of Endless Tears'," Sören said, pointing to a painting of a river with several ships sailing down it, through a frozen landscape, against the backdrop of a wild, stormy sky. It was relentlessly bleak, save for the flaming star banners on each ship - a recurring motif in Sören's work - and lanterns hung from the ships, "carrying the fire," Sören said, borrowing the phrase Magni had used.
The next one was a large horizontal painting of an aurora in the shape of a phoenix at the black sand beach of Reynisfjara, and something shimmering in the waves, a hint of a glowing orb.
Then there was a painting of a woman with fiery red hair and bright green eyes, dancing ballet in a tutu that looked like it was made of fire, wearing a cloak of fiery feathers, and a rainbow of jewels on her wrists. As she danced, colors swirled around her like energy.
"Someone you know?" Magni asked.
"Not exactly. I dreamt about her." It always feels like I know her, but I have no idea.
There was a man with long silver-white hair, green eyes, and a fierce scowl, clad in black leather armor and a dark grey cloak, wearing a silver pendant set with an emerald, holding a sword, while fire and blood raged in the background.
There was a scene of ships burning, which reminded Sören of Viking funerals, but these didn't look like Viking ships, and they hadn't felt like Viking ships - Sören had been furiously angry the day he painted the burning ships, pouring out all of the madness of his wrath into the painting, like he was burning the ships himself with every stroke of his brush.
There was a scene of two trees, one made of silver light, one made of gold, with the Milky Way in the background.
Magni had refrained from commenting up to this point, just quietly watching, observing, but he spoke after this one. "Have you ever read Tolkien's works?"
"I've read, ah, the Lord of the Rings trilogy but that was a long time ago. He wrote more, yeah? I haven't read anything else of his. Why?"
"Just wondering. Anyway... these are all amazing, so far. You have a gift."
"I've saved the best for last. Well... there's more, but if I show you every single painting ever, we'll be here all night."
The last one was an erotic painting of three men laying on rumpled silk sheets in a candlelit boudoir, nude and debauched, painted with each other's cum; two of the men had long black hair and the third had long blond hair. One of the black-haired men had intense blue eyes that Sören even more than his sculpted body. The one with dark hair and silver eyes - like Magni's eyes - was laying in a puddle of his own slick, and the blond was sensually licking cum off his stomach, while the blue-eyed one sucked the blond's fingers.
Sören worried again after the last painting. Magni had expressed some interest, and the flowers seemed to reinforce that, but now Sören felt self-conscious again, like he was blatantly advertising sex, and Magni had been reserved enough thus far - not handsy and aggressive like many Alphas were wont to do - that Sören worried the painting might be off-putting.
But instead Magni's eyes were wide again, a blush to his cheeks, and he let out a low whistle before he said, "Very nice."
Sören chuckled. "I have a filthy imagination, what can I say."
Magni bit his lower lip, which Sören found charming and adorable. They sat there for a moment, looking into each other's eyes, and Sören wondered if Magni was going to kiss him. Hoped. But then Magni said, his voice a bit husky, "Would you like me to play for you now?"
Sören nodded. He wanted sex, but of course Magni had come here to play his original songs in exchange for seeing the art. And Sören had been looking forward to hearing that lovely voice again.
Sören took the armchair this time to give enough room for Magni and his guitar on the couch. Sören grabbed another beer for both of them and when he sat down, Magni did some scales to practice, and at last, began to play.
The first song was instrumental, with a dreamy, ethereal feel - not something Sören had been expecting from the guy who played Metallica in the park. Sören found himself relaxing after all of the earlier anxiety.
Relaxing, and entering a meditative state. Sören frequently "saw" things when he listened to music - colors and patterns, mostly, sometimes brief visions of landscapes, like the song was a window into another world. Now Sören's mind's eye saw clearly - like being transported into that world, not merely seeing it. Sören had the vision of golden light through trees in a forest, golden sparkly light in a garden, flowers opening and nodding. The feeling of peace, contentment, safety. A frisson went down Sören's spine, arms breaking out in gooseflesh, hair standing on end like he was witnessing a miracle. The chords were like liquid gold, shimmering, flowing the dream world all around him, creating a safe place, a happy place.
Sören got the intense urge to paint, to preserve the magic somehow - maybe painting it all for himself and hanging it up, as something to look at when he was feeling upset, to bring him back to this safe space. But then the song changed.
This one was livelier, brighter. Sören saw rolling hills, endless blue sky. Wildflowers. Now Sören got up, and went back to the hall closet. Magni gave him a confused look but continued playing. Sören dragged out his easel, a blank canvas, his oil paints and brushes. He began to set up, cleaning his brushes and preparing his palette, priming the canvas. When he was ready, the song changed again.
Melancholy minor chords, slower tempo, and Magni singing in a language that wasn't Icelandic, wasn't English, or any language Sören recognized. Sören guessed Finnish, from the vowels, but he knew he could be wrong about that. Sören didn't have to know what Magni was singing to understand, though - there was sadness in Magni's voice. Aching loneliness and grief. The vision of the hills and sky became wandering endlessly, through different landscapes. The feeling of alone. Bitterness. Tears unnumbered.
Sören painted, letting the muse flow with Magni's song. Or, rather, the song was a series of songs, a cycle that linked together by a recurring verse or chorus. Sören painted with tears in his eyes, a tight ache in his chest, feeling Magni's ache, whatever deep sorrow was being expressed through his voice, the chords. Sören didn't know Magni well but he wished he could fix it. For now, all he could do was let Magni be heard - and this painting seemed like a testament to that, acknowledging whatever it was. I hear you. So be it.
As the painting took shape, it manifested the strongest of the visions: a zoomed-out view of high cliffs, a violent red-and-black stormy sunset sky, choppy dark waves, with Magni looking out to sea, his long black hair blowing in the wind, face taut and pensive.
Like their afternoon at Tjörnin, time slipped away and all that existed was the vision and the song. Usually when Sören worked on a project for hours and hours he made himself stop to take short breaks to stretch, hydrate, and use the bathroom, but this time there was none of that, the fire inside him burning and burning, witnessing Magni's grief and honoring it, one survivor to another. In his sketch at the park, Sören had drawn Magni the warrior, like he was seeing inside Magni's soul. Now he was going even deeper, to the vulnerable, sensitive core the fierce warrior protected.
Sören felt protective of him as well - strangely so, since he was an Omega, and Magni was Alpha.
At long last Sören's bladder protested, and the painting was more or less done - Sören often spent many hours if not days after a painting was "finished" to outside eyes, to make a thousand little adjustments probably nobody else would notice, wanting to get it exactly right down to the smallest detail... but for here and now, it was complete. Sören got up to go to the bathroom, and when he went to the kitchenette to get himself some water - and Magni too, who had stopped playing finally - Sören noticed the time. It was almost four in the morning. Sören's shift at the restaurant started at one and he had his alarm clock set for eleven AM. Best-case scenario if he got to sleep by five, he'd get a grand total of six hours of sleep before he had to get ready for a long shift; he worked till close.
"Jesus," Sören said. He couldn't believe how late it was.
"Yeah, I know. I feel like I should apologize -"
"No, don't you dare apologize." Sören shook his head. "You... you lit my creative fire like nothing else has in a long time."
"Can I see it?" Magni cocked his head to one side. "I'll understand if you're sensitive about letting others see works-in-progress -"
"Well, it's done, or just about done - any changes at this point would be very small, very minor... I'm kind of an anal perfectionist when it comes to my art..." Sören gave a nervous grin. Then he walked over to his canvas and carefully turned the easel around, so Magni didn't have to get up.
Magni's jaw dropped. Before Sören could start worrying whether or not Magni hated it, Magni said, "Eru."
Sören wondered what the hell language that was - he assumed it was some sort of swear, probably in Finnish, like what he thought Magni was singing in. Sören knew exactly one word in Finnish, thanks to tourists. "Perkele."
Magni's eyebrows shot up and then his laughter rang out. He shook his head, then he sighed. "Sören... that's... incredible. When I said you have a gift... that feels almost like an insult, now, what you have is beyond a gift."
"Thank you." Sören lowered his head, heat flooding his cheeks. As exhausted as he was now, he restrained himself from dancing around the room screaming you like it, you like it!
"I feel like I should pay you -"
"Consider it a present, for your music." Sören put a hand on his heart. "You may not need money, but I still feel like I owe you for sharing something so beautiful with me."
Magni got up, and in three quick strides he gathered Sören into his arms and hugged him tight. It felt so good to be back in those arms, and Sören wrapped his arms around him, hugging him back, just as fiercely.
Sören looked up, and Magni looked down - Sören felt so short, compared to him - and their lips brushed for the first time, gentle and sweet. Magni's Alpha scent was stronger, intoxicating, like the sea breeze of the stormy ocean in his painting. Sören's lips parted, wanting more, but then Magni looked at the clock on the wall, frowned, and looked back at Sören.
"Yeah, I have to get to bed soon," Sören said, and quickly added, "to sleep." He had wanted sex - he still did - but even if they had a quickie, which Sören didn't want for their first time, that would tack time on Sören unwinding enough to get to sleep. He was already going to be tired when he got to work tomorrow. "Long day."
"I understand." Magni ruffled Sören's curls, and kissed his brow. Sören swore internally as his hole twitched and he felt himself go slick, craving Magni's touch, his kiss, but he did indeed have to be a responsible adult.
Magni packed up his guitar and Sören walked him from the apartment to the lobby of the complex. Magni lingered, looking at Sören like he wanted to kiss him again, but anything more than a chaste kiss would probably end up with Sören dragging Magni back to the flat and having to call out tomorrow, and Sören couldn't afford that.
"When is your next day off?" Magni asked, folding his arms, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"A week from now."
Magni cringed, and Sören said, "I know."
"They work you to death."
"I have another night free on Monday, I go in Tuesday afternoon and work late, if you... want to come over. I'd like to hear more songs. Or the same ones again." I'd like to hear you scream my name as you come. Sören's hole twitched again and he fought the urge to maul Magni right there.
"I'd like that." Magni smiled, taking Sören's breath away. He booped Sören's nose, and said, "Good night. Well... good sleep. Sweet dreams."
Sören stopped himself from saying, you are my dream.
As Sören walked back to his flat, he felt the leaden weight of disappointment... but what they had shared tonight was intimate, in a way it was deeper than sex. They had touched each other's minds, hearts, and souls, and that was the beginning of something very special.
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