Endlessly

Ville’s leg jostled restlessly as he stared out the window of the meeting room he was currently in. He couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to get talked into attending when so far he’d not been required at all. Seppo had dominated much of the conversation with the representative from the label and truth be told, as long as Ville could sing the songs he and his friends had written and there was a place for them to play, he didn’t give a damn about anything else. Burton’s hand shot out from under the table and slapped Ville’s knee, breaking his reverie. Ville lifted his head from his hand and looked around at the other people seated around the oblong table, all waiting patiently for him to respond to a question that he hadn’t heard.

“Sorry?”

The representative cleared his throat disapprovingly and Seppo sighed. “The label thinks it would be beneficial to play a few shows around Europe to promote the new album before we release it. Build up the momentum.”

Ville nodded. “Ok, when?”

“January through the end of February,” Seppo answered, clearly irritated that Ville hadn’t paid any attention in the last forty-five minutes.

“No extensions this time, though,” Linde interjected firmly. “Manna will be ready to pop by then and I won’t miss the birth of my daughter. She’s already going to kill me for missing half the pregnancy.”

“There won’t be. The album will be released in April, you’ll be touring this summer anyway,” Seppo affirmed, looking to the representative to confirm.

“Right, we don’t see any reason to keep you guys on the road for the entire year.”

Ville’s attention was ripped away from the conversation again when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled the device from his jeans and checked the screen to see that he had a text but not from the person he’d been waiting to hear from. Dejected, he returned his phone to his pocket and made a mental note to answer his brother later.

It had been a week since he’d last seen Emilia and just as long since he’d heard from her after the disastrous dinner at her parents’ house. He knew that she was dealing with a lot at the moment and that if his calls had gone unanswered after he’d stayed away for two days then she would come back to him when she was ready. It didn’t make the waiting any easier though.

“Well, I think we’re about done for the day. Ville is clearly somewhere else, anyway,” Seppo said quite pointedly and Ville tried to look appropriately ashamed though he’d had a delayed reaction to the comment.

“Get me that set list by Tuesday and I’ll send you the finalized schedule before the end of the week,” the representative instructed as he stood to shake Seppo’s hand. The band stood as well, each getting up to shake the man’s hand before he left, the entire time Ville could feel a disapproving stare on his back. As soon as the door closed, Seppo wheeled on Ville and suddenly he braced himself to be admonished as though by his own father.

“You really couldn’t have given us an hour of your time today, Vil?”

“I’m sorry, Seppo. I was just…somewhere else.”

“What he means is that he was on the other side of town with a certain brunette,” Mige commented smartly, earning a smirk from everyone but Seppo.

Ville watched as the white haired man crossed his arms over his chest and lines etched themselves in his forehead as his frown deepened. Everything about that look would forever remind him of times he and his brother had angered their father to the point of disappointment. Right now was no different. His manager was as much a father figure as a friend and disappointing him was akin to disappointing Kari.

“Ville, we’re not doing the Susanna thing again. I’m not putting the rest of these guys through that and you shouldn’t be either,” Seppo warned.

“Sep, it’s nowhere near that caliber of destruction, trust me.” Ville gave a grateful nod to Linde for his attempt at calming Seppo but it was to no avail.

“If this relationship is taking away from your band and your career then is it really best for you?” Seppo countered.

“Let’s be honest without his broken relationships we would have no songs…” Burton commented under his breath.

“Enough from the peanut gallery!” Seppo’s annoyance silenced all onlookers and all looked as guilty children and not the grown men they were. “My point is that if you can’t get your mind off this girl for an hour while you are in an important meeting concerning the future of the band you’ve been in for the past decade then maybe you should either reconsider your career or the relationship.”

“That’s not fair of you to say, Seppo. New love and all that, it will pass and soon he’ll be married and miserable. Don’t worry about it,” Mige clapped his hand on the older man’s back and gave Ville a meaningful look.

“It won’t happen again, Seppo. I promise,” Ville quickly added. Seppo seemed to consider the two of them for a moment and then rolled his eyes.

“You’d better hope not. We’d better head over to the studio now, we need to arrange that set list.”

A heaviness suddenly lifted from the room and all six men turned and headed toward the door, everything that had happened in the ten minutes all forgotten. Save between the two who trailed the rest of the group. Mige threw a friendly arm around Ville’s shoulders and pulled his friend close enough that he could speak low and no one else would hear.

“You still haven’t heard from her, huh?” Mige stated, already knowing it to be true. Ville wouldn’t have been so distracted otherwise.

“No, I’m starting to worry. What if she’s changed her mind about giving us a chance? What if she’s gone back to Germany for good and couldn’t face telling me?”

Ville felt dumb about his theories as soon as his friend laughed. “You really think she’d just escape the country after a family dinner gone wrong? She already knew she was going to fight with Tatiana over something stupid, she can’t even be mad about it at that point.”

With a shrug, Ville averted his gaze from Mige and pursed his lips. He hadn’t told either Linde or Mige the real reasons that the dinner with Emilia’s family had ended the way that it had. He didn’t feel right about lying to them about it, especially considering the fact that it concerned Emilia, but it wasn’t for him to tell and if Emilia wanted them to know about her forthcoming sibling then she would tell them when she wanted to.

“I know, but she’s so temperamental.”

Mige chuckled once more and released his grip on his friend. “That is the understatement of the century. Come on, we’d better go catch up with them or Seppo will probably decapitate you. Don’t worry about Em, she’ll come around. She always does.”



Emilia sat on the floor of Essi’s apartment and added another building block to the castle she and Osku were in the middle of creating in the living room. The little boy was growing steadily more excited as the tiny building began to take shape and he had started filling her in on all of the adventures his action figures were going to have in their new home. She smiled indulgently and looked to where her sister was enjoying a moments’ peace at the kitchen table, if taking a moment to pay the bills could be considered such.

“Auntie! This guy can be you,” Osku said as he handed her a small Batman toy. She chuckled and accepted the figure.

“Of course, he looks just like me.”

“No he doesn’t,” Osku answered matter-of-factly. “But we’re pretending.”

“Oh, you’re right. Silly me,” Emilia replied seriously and Osku seemed to accept this as an apology as he continued work on his tower. Emilia added another block to the section that she was working on and watched adoringly as the little boy worked diligently on his project.

Beside her, Emilia’s cell phone began to vibrate and wiggle its way across the floor with each buzz. She glanced at it from the corner of her eye and debated whether or not to answer the call or if she should continue ignoring the world outside the tiny apartment.

She knew it was likely Ville. After he’d chased her down following the fiasco at her mother’s house, she had asked him for a day alone to process everything. Between their budding relationship and a potential new sibling, she was emotionally exhausted. And as much as she loved spending time with Ville, he demanded a lot of her mentally and she wasn’t prepared to give any more just yet. There needed to be something left for her or she would break down entirely, of that fact she was certain.

To his credit, Ville did not attempt to contact her that first day. And he didn’t call her when the second day came and went. But now that it had been seven days and he hadn’t heard from her, she could practically feel his impatience from across town. She grabbed her phone and hit the button to answer it, just in time to hear a sigh on the other end.

"See, I told Ville that you would have to answer if I called," Mige's jovial voice began without so much as a greeting. Emilia smirked and balanced her phone on her shoulder as she continued building.

"What made you so confident?"

"Please, as if you could willingly ignore me. Besides, you know the consequences."

She shuddered. "You're seriously carrying on with that threat? It's been years."

"You were the one who decided to test me, now it's a matter of principle."

The threat to which they were referring stemmed from an incident that took place in September of 1991. It had been such a point of turbulence that the group put a permanent ban on giving the silent treatment as a form of punishment. Not that anyone besides Emilia ever used that particular tactic, but Mige had been the one to take it too far when trying to get her to speak to him again. After almost twenty two days of perfect silence from Emilia, Mige decided that the only way to get her to talk to him again was to piss her off more than he had when he'd initially earned her silence. Naturally, Ville and Linde had advised against this but he couldn't be deterred from his course once he'd begun planning.

Ultimately, Mige had succeeded in his attempts at angering Emilia further by scaring her at every available opportunity: hiding around corners, in closets, and in one particularly memorable drop from the rafters in Ville’s garage. That was the last as Emilia had given him such a scolding for almost seriously injuring both himself and Linde who got caught in the head with a flailing limb and that was the end of ‘Silent September’ as it had been dubbed. Although Mige did promise Emilia that if she ever took to ignoring him again, he would use the same tactics to retaliate.

The part that worried her was now he had a disposable income, plenty of resources, and an abundance of spare time in which to dream up new and terrifying ways to exact revenge.

“You still took it too far. You could have put Linde in a coma.”

“Unlikely,” Mige countered. She could hear some growing impatience in the background and knew that Ville was likely crawling out of his skin with anticipation.

“You were wearing Frankenstein boots, he’s lucky he still has all of his mental faculties.”

“Hey! That’s not fair, I loved those boots.”

A brief struggle could be heard and Emilia’s next comment was silenced by the sound of two men fighting over the phone. She heard a few choice words from Mige before the sound of a breathless Ville became the dominant voice on the other end of the line.

“You should probably get your inhaler. And cut down on the cigarettes, I can’t imagine it took that much effort to get the phone away from Mige.”

“I’m fine,” Ville breathed. “And he’s a lot tougher than he looks. He has a grip like a python.”

She chuckled and placed the final block on her tower, gesturing for Osku to examine it. He grinned brightly and handed her more blocks. “Make the bridge now so we can visit each other!” He ordered and she saluted him with her free hand.

“Take up architecture while we’ve been apart?” Ville asked, being not subtle at all with regards to his displeasure at her absence.

“Mostly just a hobby but Osku seems to think I could really go places with it. I think I’ll keep it simple though, block castles and pillow forts all the way.”

Ville’s smile widened. He was glad to at least have her on the phone, even if it had involved a bit of subterfuge on his part. While he wasn’t exactly pleased that she had immediately answered the phone when it had been Mige’s number to pop up, he decided that was best left for later.

“I’ve missed you,” he confessed lamely and kicked at Mige who was making mocking kissy faces at him from the other side of the room.

“I’ve missed you too. I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. I’ve been trying to deal with my family and let me tell you, that has been a nightmare and a half.”

“What’s happened?” Ville asked, somewhat worried about what she’d encountered without him. Not that he didn’t believe she couldn’t handle times of crisis but he still would have liked to have been there to support her.

“Nothing yet, really. I went over to apologize to Mum and Elijah. Elijah accepted it pretty readily but, well, my mother is still my mother.”

“I’m sorry, kulta.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. I should apologize for icing you out again though. I guess I don’t know how to have you back, I’m so used to just dealing with things alone now.”

He pursed his lips and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. “Well, can we have a thaw? We’d all love to see you and I have some things to tell you.”

She looked up at Osku as she built the bridge connecting the block towers. “Not tonight, I have a date.”

Emilia could hear the hint of smile in Ville’s voice as he replied. “A date? Cheating on me already?”

“Don’t worry, there’s quite an age difference to consider and the fact that we share DNA. I doubt it will work out.”

“Well, as long as I’m still in the running then I guess I can concede. Can I reserve you for tomorrow though?”

She sighed dramatically and smirked. “I’ll have to rearrange my busy schedule but I suppose I could squeeze you in.”

“I’m honored,” he answered. He looked up to see Burton gesturing from the doorway to the studio that he’d better wrap his call up quickly, apparently their break was over. Not wanting to earn further ire from Seppo he took the warning seriously. “Listen, I have to go. I’m at the studio right now.”

“Ah, recording something new?”

“Hopefully, but I have to swindle them into it. I’ll call you in the morning?”

“I’m waiting with baited breath,” she teased. “I love you.”

His heart fluttered like a caged bird. Nothing had changed and he had just been overthinking things, he knew that now. He looked over to Mige and considered for the briefest of moments that maybe his friend had a little more insight into females than he often lead on.

“I love you too,” he replied as he hung the phone up. He smiled to himself and ran his hand through his curls once more. Looking up, he found Mige standing closer now and he handed the phone back. With narrowed eyes, he appraised the wide grin that was currently splayed across Mige’s face and grew suddenly paranoid.

“What?” Ville asked, checking first his clothing and then feeling around his face for anything that didn’t belong there. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his friends had allowed him to walk around with some stray bit of food on his face or with his eyeliner smudged all over the place.

“Just good to see you happy, man,” Mige replied simply as he gently pushed Ville into the studio. “Now get in there before Seppo gets more irritated with all of us.”