DenNor MPREG: Circumstances 17

It was a week before Emil and Lukas met to talk. Lukas went out to the Oxenstierna residence to meet him. Berwald was out again with the children so the house was left to just Lukas, Emil and Tino alone.
“So,” Tino started as Lukas sat down beside his brother on the couch. “Are we comfy?”
Lukas nodded lightly. The family cat, Optimus as Peter had lovingly named him, seemed to like Lukas and had quickly come to lie on his lap. He happened to look a lot like the cat that visited their fire escape and taunted Fox from the window.
Emil nodded as well, although he seemed more reluctant. “Can we just start?”
“If you’d like to start, you can begin the conversation,” Tino said. “What would you like to talk about?”
Emil frowned and crossed his arms. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to talk to Lukas.”
“Well, he'd like to talk with you,” Tino said. “Does this not demonstrate that your brother is willing to understand you?”
“Maybe,” Emil said. “Or he's just trying to make me come home so that his guardianship isn’t in jeopardy.”
“That's not the only reason I'm here but even so, is that so bad?” Lukas asked. “That I'm worried about you and I'm trying to help you stay in this country? Do you want to go back to Mør?”
“I don’t know, maybe. Maybe I could go back to my Dad,” Emil said. “You're the one who wanted to run away from Móðir.”
“Emil, you asked to come with me!” Lukas said. “I've been doing my best to help you stay here with me. Do you know how difficult that has been? How hard it was to get Mør to sign and allow me your custody? How hard it was just to keep us legal in this country?”
Emil locked his jaw and did not respond.
“Okay, fine,” Lukas said. “If you don’t want to stay here, then be my guest. Move back. It'll be easier for me anyway.”
“Lukas,” Tino cut in. “Don’t start saying things you don’t mean or might regret.”
“I do mean it. If he can’t see what I've done for him, why should I keep him around? If he wants to go, he can go,” Lukas insisted. “I don’t want to be the one holding anyone back. Go if you want to go, Emil. I'll be here.”
“I don’t want to go, Lukas!” Emil growled. “You just make it like I owe you something, being here with you! And maybe I do a little but you wouldn’t have asked me to come with you if you hadn’t wanted me here! No one forced you to take me to Canada!”
“I'm not trying to get compensation or anything; of course I wanted you to come with me. I just feel like I'm taken for granted sometimes,” Lukas said. “You don’t seem to recognise how hard it has been for me.”
“Of course I do!” Emil said. “It’s why I don’t ask you for anything. I know you’re busy and I try not to get in the way.”
“What? Emil, you’re never in the way,” Lukas said. “If I didn’t have time for you, I wouldn't try to help you. I wouldn't be asking you how you are. I wouldn't be offering to help with homework.”
“It’s going to change though, with the baby,” Emil said. “You're not going to have time.”
Lukas blinked and put a hand on his stomach. “Is that what this is about? Are you worried you'll be in the way when the baby comes?”
Emil looked away. “It’s not a matter of worrying about it. I know I will. We don’t even have enough bedrooms and I don’t want to share with a baby.”
“I'm not going to make you share a room with a baby, Emil,” Lukas said. “That kind of thing isn’t for you to worry about. That’s for Mathias and I to sort out and we are. We're looking into finding a new place with space enough for soon to be the four of us.”
“We can’t even afford unlimited internet.”
Lukas sighed. “It’s not that we can’t afford it, it’s that we don’t need it. It saves money. And it’s off topic. The baby isn’t your responsibility. Mathias and I are handling it. I just want to know that you’re alright and that you’re on the right track.”
“I am!” Emil expressed. “Yes, I broke up with Leon. But I'm going to recover from that and continue on with my life! You ask a lot of questions I don’t know the answer to. I don’t know what my love life will be like in the future, and I don’t really think it’s your business, but I do know I don’t want what happened before to happen again any time soon!”
Lukas looked at him, then turned to Tino and frowned. “You haven’t said anything.”
Tino blinked and then shrugged. “This was going well. You're definitely listening to each other. Not much is being withheld either. Although the volume's getting a little high. You understand what Emil's saying, right?”
“Of course I do,” Lukas said. “But I don’t want him to think I'm unavailable if he needs me.”
“I don’t think that,” Emil said. “I just want to be the one to determine when I need your help or not and not have you asking me all the time.”
“I can stop asking, but I only ask because I care,” Lukas said. “You've been so evasive. Mathias and I will be a family and I want you to be a part of it.”
“All hands on deck, right? Now I have to change diapers and babysit, right?” Emil grumbled.
“You don’t have to help with the baby if you don’t want to, although it'd be very nice of you,” Lukas said. “Just come home and we can sort it all out. I want what's best for all of us.” He tilted his head. “And you babysit for Tino all the time. What’s the problem with that?”
Emil frowned. “He pays me.”
“Do you know how expensive your laptop was?” Lukas asked.
“I'm going to stop you there,” Tino said, putting his hand up. “That's something a parent or guardian says that really gets their teenager to resent them.”
“Tino, it was—”
“It was a gift, though, wasn’t it?” Tino interrupted. “The laptop.”
“Of course,” Lukas said. “For Christmas.”
“Then you can’t really use it as payment for services in the future,” Toni said. “It’s not how gifts work. As much as the computer may have cost, it isn’t right to ask for anything in return later on.”
Lukas gritted his teeth. “I get that. Just never mind. I'm not asking Emil to babysit anyway.”
“I'm not saying I won’t,” Emil mumbled. “I mean, like in situations where you really need it…”
“We'll try not to need it.”
Tino smiled to them both. “This is much better I think. How do you guys feel?”
“Tired,” Lukas said.
“Hungry,” Emil said.
Tino sighed. “I meant about each other and you knew that.”
“I'm fine with what Emil has told me,” Lukas said. “I just want to know if he’s coming home.”
Tino turned to the other. “Emil?”
Emil wrinkled his nose a bit. “Sleeping with toy robots really hurts… So I guess I can go back.”
Tino smiled. “Is there anything else you'd like to say to each other?”
Emil shrugged but Lukas placed a hand on his brother's head. “You know, I still love you, right?”
Emil sighed. “I know…”
“Why don’t you ever tell me you love me back?”
“Because it’s weird for brother's to say it.”
“No it’s not. It's perfectly normal.”
“If I might,” Tino said. “Emil might be referring to how this modern time perpetuates social affection as reserved for romance. While the bonds between brothers can exist platonically, the observation of such may be fetishized and Emil does not want to give the impression that he is in love with you romantically, despite you and I being the only audience and knowing the intentions.”
Emil tilted his head. “Um…Layman’s terms?”
Tino sighed. “You don’t want people to think you’re in love with your brother even though you do love him as your brother.”
Emil nodded. “Yeah, that.”
“But it really is just Tino and me here. What does it matter, what other people think?” Lukas said.
Emil shrugged. “I don’t know… I love you doesn’t sound right… Do I really need to say it for you to get it?”
Lukas sighed. “No… I guess not… I know they say actions speak louder than words…”
“And a lot of people say it without meaning it,” Emil said.
“But it sounds like it means a lot to you, right Lukas?” Tino said.
“No… It’s just that he used to say it a lot when he was younger,” Lukas said. “And I noticed he didn’t much anymore.”
“Were you worried you had done something wrong?” Tino asked.
Lukas scratched his head. “…Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe I just miss feeling like the idol. Now I feel like the parent and I never wanted to be that for Emil.”
Tino looked to Emil. “You've expressed similar feelings to me. Do you think Lukas assuming your guardianship has changed your relationship as brothers?”
“Probably,” Emil admitted. “I thought it was going to be cool, living with my brother in a new country, seeing knew things, hanging out.”
“I wanted it to be like that too,” Lukas agreed. “And it was, for a little while. But, then you still had to go to school, and I had to finish school, and it was all a bit more expensive than I might have forecast. So things got complicated and I'm sorry about that really.”
“Well, you were still young, Lukas,” Tino added. “Being responsible for your own well being at the age you were when you came over is hard enough, even without being responsible for a teenager on top of that.”
“It was.”
“Look, I get it,” Emil said. “It was hard. Raising me forced you to be a parent or whatever and neither of us really wanted that kind of relationship but it happened and I'm not mad at you for it, just that it had to happen… I'm good. I already agreed to come home.”
Tino smiled warmly. “Well if there's anything else you’d like my help with talking through, we can definitely pick this up another time.”
“Thanks,” Lukas said sighing then looking to Emil. “Do you want help with your stuff?”
Emil shook his head as he started getting up. “It’s not much.”
Lukas watched him go upstairs then leaned back, sighing again.
Tino tilted his head. “How's the babe treating you?”
Lukas shook his head patting his stomach. “Don’t even get me started…”
“And how's Mathias?”
Lukas raised his hands and then let them fall beside him. “He's still Mathias.”
Tino chuckled. “Do you want him to be anything else?”
“No…”
“You'll be okay, Lukas.”
“Will I?”
“Yeah, you will.”