Endlessly

Helsinki looked like a scene from a Christmas card. The streets were blanketed in a fresh dusting of snow and illuminated by twinkling lights in the store windows. A hazy gray sky hung overhead threatening to bring with it more snow, however it mercifully held off as the shoppers bustled between buildings, their arms laden with bags and boxes of last minute items for the upcoming holiday. 

It was the rare time in winter that Emilia didn’t completely despise. 

The steam rose from the styrofoam mug in her hands and she blew gently into the opening to cool the beverage within. It’s warmth felt good in her hands but her burnt tongue was still  complaining from her last attempt at sipping its contents. Sidestepping a man who nearly blew her down in his hurried journey, she made her way to the store she’d agreed to meet Mige and Linde at. 

She felt horrible about the fact that she’d neglected her friends in the time she’d been back, having seen them on only a handful of occasions, so when the text from Linde lit up her phone in the early morning hours she jumped at the chance to meet up with them. Ville hadn’t been as amenable to waking up before noon so she’d gotten ready, left him with a kiss, and emerged from their love den into the rest of the world. 

Smiling dreamily at her memories of the last few days, she allowed herself a few moments’ indulgence to imagine Ville’s hands and lips on her body, to remember the things he’d huskily whispered in her ear, and to wish that she were there right now making more of the same kinds of memories. 

Emilia had been surprised to find that in their seclusion, there had been no disturbances from Jonna. She’d half expected to hear a knock at the door every hour but there hadn’t been a peep. Not even the time that Ville had Emilia pressed against the wall joining the two apartments...

She shook herself from that memory. She would definitely turn back if she thought on that one too much. 

Still she wondered at Jonna’s radio silence. Could it really be possible that she’d really just needed an apartment and that one suited to her needs had happened to pop up in an unexpected place? It seemed unlikely given the last encounter they’d had together. 

”Maybe I’m being too hard on her,” Emilia thought briefly. After all, if she had been in Jonna’s position to begin with, she couldn’t honestly say that she wouldn’t fight for him. 

Sighing, and feeling a little wretched about the entire thing, Emilia turned a corner and arrived at the place she’d agreed to meet the boys at. A quiet little shop likely more frequented by their mothers for all its knickknacks, however given the holiday she suspected that was the exact reasoning for meeting here. 

As she opened the door and the warmth inside enveloped her, she nodded a greeting to the cashier behind the counter who, while busy with someone else, still managed to acknowledge her with a smile. She looked around at the illuminated glass shelves containing little wooden figurines and ceramic animals. Christmas ornaments hung from wooden pegs and sparkly crystal light catchers hung from the ceiling. She was curious how such a place managed to stay open year round but then she supposed that tourists loved these kinds of trinkets not to mention they wouldn’t be Christmas themed year round. 

Unmistakable blonde dreads caught her attention where the owner of them stood carefully inspecting a little wooden house, painted as though it were coated in freshly fallen snow and a wreath hung cheerfully on its door. Mige stood beside Linde and grunted. 

“Where would she even put it?”

“I don’t know, with the two hundred other ones she has just like it?”

“My dad is pissed enough about those without me adding fuel to the fire.”

“This is impossible,” Linde groaned in defeat. “We do this every year, next time I’m not coming.”

“You say that every year too.”

Emilia chuckled and moved from around a display Christmas tree. Her friends’ mirrored expressions of relief told her that she’d arrived at precisely the right moment before the little wooden house ended up lodged somewhere that would be difficult for Mige to retrieve. 

“You two bicker like an old married couple,” she quipped as she hugged each of them in turn. 

“I feel like we’ve been married at least fifty years with the way he makes me pick out his mother’s Christmas presents with him. Last minute per usual,” Linde answered giving Mige a look. 

“She’s the hardest one to shop for! How do you get your mother anything that says ‘Thank you life-giver, let me get you something that shows you how much I like being alive.’”

“Well a tiny decorated house that’s sure to make your father annoyed by its presence probably isn’t the answer,” Emilia replied as she took it from Linde and carefully replaced it on the shelf. She was the last person they should be asking when it came to what to get your mother, for the last ten years her mother had gotten a new sweater or a new pair of slippers or a little knickknack from her youngest daughter. She wasn’t exactly great at sentimental gift giving.

“See, I told you,” Mige answered satisfactorily. 

“Ok, ok let’s just get out of here. If your Dad is just going to be upset by clutter then this isn’t the place for us,” Emilia decided as she took a cautious sip of her drink. She sighed happily when the beverage didn’t melt her esophagus and instead settled in her belly, warming her from the inside out. 

Linde and Mige gladly accepted her proposal and followed quickly in her wake as she made her way through the shop’s other patrons. The cheery warmth of the store which had been far too fleeting gave way to the bitter cold once more as Emilia led the boys a bit out of the way of the crowds so that they might regroup. She pulled off into the entrance of an alleyway and waited for Mige and Linde to reach her after being briefly separated. 

“Okay, who specifically do we need to get things for?” Emilia asked, getting straight to the point. She knew both herself and her friends well enough that if they didn’t set a specific task then the day would be completely wasted.

“Well I’m only missing something for my Mum,” Mige said. 

“I finished weeks ago,” Linde responded smugly to which Mige immediately rolled his eyes. 

“I’d hardly call buying a ton of gift cards something to be that proud of, not like it’s difficult.”

Linde continued his smirk. “At least I know that everyone will like my gift.”

Emilia chuckled and looked at Mige apologetically. “He’s not wrong.”

Mige grumbled and stalked off down the street. Linde and Emilia each gave each other a knowing look before taking off after him, allowing him the lead. 

“So where has Ville been hiding you these past few weeks? It’s been ages, Em.” Linde did not sound so disappointed as he did mirthful about his friends having disappeared from his life for so long. It had been a long time since he’d seen Ville this happy. If he were truthful, he hadn’t seen it since Susanna and Ville had first gotten together and even that had seemed a little forced. 

“I believe you know perfectly well where he’s kept me,” she replied a little devilishly. 

“Gross, that wasn’t what I had meant.”

She laughed, earning a look from Mige in front of them. He would play at this façade for a while longer before joining in their conversation. 

“Well, we’ve been a couple of hermits. I paint or draw, he’ll spend hours writing songs. We do things,” she gave a half smirk. “And basically have caught up on some lost time.”

“Some,” he echoed with a chuckle. “Well as long as you both are happy then I suppose that we’ll allow you your solitude for a little while longer. But if you think you’re getting away with not coming for the tour then you’re dead wrong.”

Mige perked up at this and hung back in order to add his two cents to the conversation. 

“Yeah, what’s all this nonsense about not coming to join us once you’re done in Berlin?”

They had obviously spoken to Ville in the last few days. She wondered if his hand had pulled the strings that had led to this outing. Her suspicions were only deepened with the following argument from Mige. 

“It would finally be like we’d talked about when we were kids.”

“Except that I’ll be starting a job about that time.”

Mige scoffed. “There will be other jobs.”

“There will be other tours,” she countered easily. 

Linde sighed. “Yes but there won’t be another first tour after you’ve been gone ten years. Or there had better not be at least.”

She shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe that’s all a part of the master plan. Disappear on you guys every few years. Come back like a ghost to haunt you for a few weeks and then off I go, into the night,” she said wistfully. 

They were hardly amused. “If that’s the case then we’re about to perform a binding ritual,” Mige said as he opened his arms wide to encompass Emilia, causing her to drop the remainder of her coffee into the snow. 

“Hey!” She cried as she was dragged unceremoniously through the streets. “I was enjoying that!”

“Sorry, ghosts can’t drink. Nice try, specter!” Linde called out behind his friends as he attempted to keep up.

“You guys are the worst,” Emilia grumbled as she resigned herself to her fate. 

Some time later, with a fresher and larger replacement coffee in hand, Emilia waited as Mige paid for the fresh art supplies he’d purchased for his mother. It had taken some coercing on Emilia’s part to learn from Mige what his mother had taken to in the past few years. It had delighted Emilia that she’d been able to help choose some proper painting supplies for her friend’s mother, especially after learning that she’d only dabbled with certain mediums, she grew excited over the prospect of passing on at least some of what she’d learned in school.

Linde stood a few feet away, curiously preoccupied by his phone with an indiscernible look on his face. Emilia’s grows knitted together and she took a step toward the man who, at her approach, quickly hid his phone in the pocket of his jeans. 

“Not suspicious in the slightest,” she joked in an attempt to mask her blatant curiosity. 

“I wasn’t being subtle about it I suppose,” Linde shrugged casually as he stepped closer to Mige who had stepped away from the counter with his purchases. 

“Subtle about what?” Mige asked and suddenly it seemed to Linde that he was being stared down by a couple of wide eyed children, eager to learn what surprise was being hidden from them by their parents.

“It’s nothing, you two are incredibly nosy. Are we done now? I could use something to eat and maybe a drink or four.”

Emilia and Mige regarded Linde for a moment with their questions written all over their faces. Linde could have done without having to keep secrets from Mige but Ville had been explicit that no one but he and Manna know what it was that Ville was up to. 

Linde had known for some time now but it was quite by accident that Manna had learned of Ville’s plan and once she had, she made herself an integral part in its completion. Ville had seemed less than eager to accept when Manna had called him to meet her but Mige and his procrastination provided the perfect cover to get Emilia away from the apartment she’d been sequestered in. 

Manna had just delivered positive news which Linde had poorly attempted to cover when Emilia had caught sight of it and he knew that he would never hear the end of it from both Ville and Manna if he let the beans spill now. 

“A beer does sound good...” Mige trailed off, blessedly thrown by Linde’s suggestion but Emilia remained steadfast. 

“Secrets don’t make friends, Linde.” Her pouting had little to no effect on him and she knew that so she instead attempted to look intimidating which was next to impossible considering her stature in comparison to his own.

“Good thing I’ve got enough friends then,” he replied easily as he exited the store. He heard Emilia’s frustrated grunt behind him and knew that though he’d won the fight there were going to be plenty of assaults on the fortress in which he kept his secrets. 

Thoroughly annoyed by her own piqued curiosity, Emilia tried hard to bury her questions in her back of her mind. This was the season for surprises after all. It would hardly be fair of her to ruin someone’s Christmas, possibly even her own. 

She instead focused on her rapidly growing checklist for the pending holiday. She’d finished her shopping during the week she’d spent away from Ville. Essi’s determination to not put her shopping off until the last minute again had been to her sister’s benefit in one sense though it certainly hadn’t felt like it at the time. Now, with four days until Christmas all that she had to do was wrap and find Ville’s gift. 

She stopped dead in her tracks. 

How could she have possibly forgotten that she still had yet to procure a gift for him? Of all people! 

Confused by her sudden change in demeanor, Mige and Linde seemed to brace themselves as Ville tended to whenever she got suddenly quiet with that tumultuous look in her eyes. 

Her mouth had dropped open when she’d stopped and began wracking her brain for any ideas she could muster and came up empty as she did every time she’d tried to solve this increasingly difficult challenge. What did you get for a man who had the means to obtain whatever he wanted?

“Em?”

She looked up from the ground to find her friends looking at her with a mix of confusion, amusement, and a little bit of apprehension. 

“I fucking forgot to get Ville a gift.”

Her tone echoed her disbelief that she could be so stupid and forgetful. Mige and Linde seemed almost amused by her dilemma, however, which only served to intensify her panic. 

“That’s all? Come on we can run to his dad’s shop and get some porno mags or something,” Mige chuckled as he started to head down the walkway. 

She shot him a look. “Yeah that will be great for him to unwrap in front of our families. Good thinking.”

Linde shrugged. “It would probably go over ok in his house...yours, not so much. Especially with the kiddo around.”

“I’m not getting him porn for Christmas!”

“Why not, I do almost every year,” Mige continued. Emilia couldn’t decide how serious he was being but knowing her friends it wasn’t that far of a reach. 

“I’m serious. I’ve been trying to think of something to get him for days now and have no clue what to get for him.”

“Em, you know he would love whatever you get him.”

She knew perfectly well that she could have handed him a candy bar and some socks and he would have treated it as through he had yearned for those things all his life but she could hardly half ass their first Christmas together. It needed to be perfect.

“Come on, we’ll grab a drink and some food and brainstorm some ideas - other than porn,” Linde shot a look at Mige who opened his mouth to interject once more. “And next year if you two procrastinators do this again then you’re on your own.”



Ville placed his phone in his pocket after hanging up with Linde. Thankfully, he and Mige were more than successful in their mission to occupy Emilia for the day. While he was certain that she would have been equally occupied had he just told her that he was going to be busy that day, this ensured that she didn’t accidentally end up on the same side of town as him. The last thing he needed was for her to see him emerging from this particular building, it would absolutely ruin the surprise.

He righted himself in his seat and shifted somewhat anxiously. This idea was somewhat ill planned - beginning with the kernel of a thought he’d had upon his return from Lapland after the video shoot and blooming as the last few weeks had passed. He had been surprised by how smoothly everything had progressed given the magnitude of this whim he was acting upon.

“Well, Mr. Valo,” a woman in a well tailored black suit said as she emerged from the back office. He had spent nearly an hour with her and still managed to forget her name. “Congratulations.”

Ville grinned politely and leaned forward to collect the bundle of paperwork she held out to him as well as a small envelope. As he tipped its contents into his hand, he smiled at the flash of new metal that fit into the center of his palm.

“Thank you very much for all your help-“ he glanced at the name tag perched on her blazer. “-Marie. Is that all? It’s mine?”

She smiled and nodded. “All yours. If you need anything or have any concerns, we’re just a phone call away.”

He smiled and grasped the small object in his hand tightly, feeling the weight of his decision all at once.

”The worst that could happen is that she’ll say no,” Ville thought cynically. He chuckled darkly and pulled a small black box from his jacket pocket, something he’d picked up on his way to this appointment, and placed the item inside.

And it was done. His present for Emilia, and himself if he were honest, was ready to go and suddenly he felt as though Christmas were an eternity away. Marie smiled at him and offered her hand for a final shake before he said his goodbyes and turned to leave.

Helsinki was a wonderland and he sighed happily, glad to be home at this time of year. It had been so long since this place had felt like home to him, or really since any one place had felt like home, and he knew exactly who it was that he had to thank for that.

Replacing the small box in his jacket pocket, Ville headed in the direction of the restaurant that Linde planned to go to. He’d declined the lunch invitation initially but the lure Emilia provided proved to be too much to resist. He felt like a satellite, drawn to her gravity no matter where he was. Belonged together, as she’d told him the night before.

He’d taken to watching her start to settle into a comfortable sleep once they’d finished their lovemaking. He was far too awake after such activities, his entire body hummed with electricity and so observing her was the most calming thing he could find to do. He recalled the dreamy, content look on her face as he caressed her silky skin.

She seemed like an illusion to him so much of the time. Something he’d dreamt so often that she hardly felt real. As she lay on her stomach with her arms as a pillow and the blanket draped carelessly over her bottom, he wondered at how he could have been so lucky as to deserve her.

“Emilia.”

Her lashes fluttered on her cheeks as she looked up, smiling though she was half asleep and leaning herself on her elbow so that she might lean forward to brush his lips with her own.

“Yes, Ville?”

“Thank you.”

She regarded him curiously but placed a kiss on the tip of his nose. “For what?”

“Taking a chance on me,” he answered simply despite the poetry his heart felt.

He watched as she bit down on her lip to stop her grin and so he cupped her cheek and pressed his lips firmly to hers.

As they pulled away she burrowed into his chest and reached up to brush his shoulder gently with her fingertips, earning the shiver down his spine that she coveted.

“There’s no need to thank me for that, silly. We belong together. We always did.” Her matter of fact answer brought a smile to his lips once more and he kissed her forehead.

Ville warmed at the memory despite the bitterness of the air that he was enveloped in and quickened his pace. She had been right, they belonged together, and the weight of the box in his jacket felt suddenly lighter with that realization. She wouldn’t deny him, he was certain, and soon everything he’d ever wanted would finally be his.