A strange exchange between two men who are the worst at apologies.
(In a blizzard)

Half an hour to midnight, the clock tower says.

The wooden bench feels cold as iron through the giving fabric of his pants. In the damp chill of cooling sweat and snow melting on the heated skin of his arms, Íþróttaálfurinn admits it to himself: he has fled. He's been nothing but a coward, and a cruel one too.

He ran to his balloon, to take care of the grain of truth in his excuse. The snow is picking up, the balloon does need to be tended to. He might have ruined Christmas, but he won't lie to the children on top of it all. So, he deflated the envelope and, in quick practiced gestures, folded it up, set it in the basket, and covered everything with a strong, secure tarp. If his hand occasionally had to shoot up and dry his nose and eyes, well, he tried to ignore it.

After that, without a distraction, the jitter in his legs had grown unbearable. He gave in and dashed off through the deserted streets, the playground, the town square, pushing himself enough to break a sweat. When he finally stopped at the bench, panting out white steam and wet, strangled sobs, he looked up to the snowfall and admitted his defeat. He didn't know when the tears came. Just out of the house? While he tried to outrun his own faults once again? Maybe they had been there for weeks, somewhere in him like heavy rainclouds, just waiting for something to make them burst.

Now, his only company are the clock tower chiming away the time, the seeds planted in the children's vegetable garden, sleeping safe under the fresh snow, and the warm light from nearby windows, neighbours awake in the night, reading or playing or celebrating. They almost sear the eye, those squares of yellow light, too sharp against the vivid blue of snow in the shadows. Yellow had never felt like such a lonely colour, before.

His chest hurts like wood splintering, the aviator scarf burning accusatory in his breastplate. He wraps his arms around his middle, lowers his head down between his knees, letting the wind freeze the tears on his face. He waits.

Then, as two black, thick-soled boots enter his blurry field of vision, something new creeps into him, under the guilt and sadness. Fear shocks him in place, paralyzing, and he wonders if this is how he made Glæpur feel, when Íþróttaálfurinn cornered him in that alley. Only, Glæpur had wanted to be found―though his hope was slight, he was waiting for him.

But, as any easy trail is nothing but an invitation, it occurs to him that he, too, might have been waiting for Glæpur all along.

Glæpur knows his lines, as he always does, he always knows. He has hunted him down and now he's found him and he's grinning bright in the snowfall, shrouded in that lonely light, and he's asking him, What are you doing out here, all alone like a piece of shit?

And it sounds like only the first of a series of poignant questions, and this time Glæpur is the one to start a dangerous line of questioning. And Íþróttaálfurinn should have an answering quip now, shouldn't he? But he has nothing but the shudder in his bones and eyes that can't meet his―and now he's the one who's wasting a rare second chance.

Glæpur isn't a man of patience, yet he finds in himself the mercy to break the silence again.

"So," he says, throwing the question like a bone to a stray dog, "that bad, huh? My singing?"

Íþróttaálfurinn can't find his voice. He looks up at the man but not at his eyes, contemplating the grin in Glæpur's voice still audible through the light wheeze of exertion. The light of the streetlamp behind him blots out his expression, and the elf drowns in the uncanny reality of his presence, the mystery of it, knowing he will fall into that gravitational pull, if he gets too close.

"No, it was…" he tries, late, hurried, hoarse. "It was good. But I… I couldn't―"

"You forgot your shitty twig-water."

Íþróttaálfurinn blinks, and without thinking, he says, "Technically, it's flower-water."

"Whatever."

Glæpur's backlit figure vibrates with a huff, shaking something in front of him, and finally Íþróttaálfurinn sees, in the grasp of one large hand, the two steaming mugs. He accepts the one pushed into his hands, white ceramic scalding his palms. A single, round lemon slice floats up, bright yellow in the pale infusion like a tiny, citrusy sun.

It takes him a good half a minute to register what he has in his hands.

"Wait, you…" He finally looks up, stunned. "You made chamomile tea for me? After―"

"Solla didn't let me poison it. Chug down, you need it."

This doesn't add up, Íþróttaálfurinn thinks. Glæpur should be angry with him, furious, reeling with vengeance. Íþróttaálfurinn was cruel, carelessly taking out on him things he had little to do with, cutting him to the quick, then hiding away instead of apologizing immediately. If not actively plotting his demise, Glæpur should at least be avoiding him like the plague. Certainly he shouldn't be out after him in a snowstorm.

But, after all, when has Glæpur ever cared what he is or isn't supposed to do? Íþróttaálfurinn takes a sip of the scorching, incongruous chamomile, and if kills him, oh well.

He cringes. Not poisoned, just… bad. The infusion is weak, the lemon weird. The honey store-bought, oversweet. Yet, he can picture Solla's face, as she moves the sugar away from Glæpur's reach until it's on the other side of the kitchen counter, he can hear his peeved grunt. Just one teaspoon, child, I beg you. Just let me make him shit himself. No, he wouldn't say that in front of Solla… would he?

Íþróttaálfurinn takes a longer sip, then eats the lemon slice in a single bite, nose prickling with the tang. And Glæpur mouths, what the fuck, under his breath, and makes him want to laugh. As he looks down, a raindrop falls into the mug. But it's not raining, he thinks stupidly. Then hurries to dry his eyes. There is a joke he could slip in, somewhere around here. If only he could find it.

"I don't know what to say," he murmurs, clutching tight his now salty chamomile. As though it might be his last chance to ever speak, he gushes out, "Glæpur, I… I said some really horrible things to you in there, and I can't believe what came out of my mouth―I don't really think that―"

"Oh, ugh." Glæpur's whole face scrunches up. "I was gonna go ahead and pretend it never happened, elf, do try to keep up."

Instantly, the gravitational pull on him falters, lessens.

"I'm just trying to apologize!" he blurts out, shooting after it like it's a falling mug. "It's… it's a bad night―I'm not myself."

Only it's not a physical thing. He can't grasp it, his good reflexes are no use, and all the words in his mouth come out shaped wrong, excuses instead of apologies. Glæpur shifts, a sigh condenses as white smoke in the air, exasperation made visible.

"I don't need any half-assed apology," he says drily.

"I'm sorry. I really am." Íþróttaálfurinn shrinks back. He pulls a knee up, leaning his forehead into it, hat flopping forward as he shakes his head. "But it's… so unlike you to forgive this easily. It compels."

The man tenses, looking away. "I just like to be unpredictable. And who says I forgive you? It's just water. Don't read into it."

The elf watches him shuffle his feet, muddling the snow under him, as though the ground kept him rooted there against his will. He swallows.

"Glæpur…"

"And hey, honest people are a liar's best company, right? You just spoke your mind. It's good."

"It's not good… I spoke my anger, nothing else. And I hit really low with it. Over what, petty theft and dirty dishes?" Íþróttaálfurinn shakes his head to himself. "No, it wasn't about you. You didn't deserve it."

A rustle of clothing, maybe a shrug. "I deserved it a little."

Something clenches tight in his chest, squeezing out the air again.

"No―" he gasps, looking up in alarm, "no, you didn't! I w―"

"You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"I…" he starts, losing his words halfway. Maybe he is doing nothing but make it worse, and worse, and worse. "Sorry."

He hears Glæpur take a sip, and stares into his own mug in lingering astonishment.

"I'm not myself tonight, either," the man says, a little quieter. "Haven't been myself in a while. I was trying to be myself, I think… but it's not going well, is it? I usually don't get caught."

Íþróttaálfurinn holds his tongue. Though his nature rebels to it, right now he doesn't have the moral standing to contradict Glæpur. Neither of them feels like himself, and the mere fact that the man is here, in front of him, goes against much of what he believed of them as a duo. Hero and villain, sworn enemies, nemeses. And now, it seems, tentative friends. Practicing understanding like a foreign language.

"How did you find me?"

In his line of view, Glæpur's hand merely points at the footprints―and handprints―in the snow leading to his bench.

"You aren't the only one who can give a good chase," Glæpur says primly, a curl of irony in his voice. He is choosing to take him literally now, as they both can see the, but why did you find me? hiding under the plain and obvious. But that would be too much, too soon, too close, and he knows Glæpur can be more subtle than him when he wants to.

As Íþróttaálfurinn finally gathers himself enough to look up at him, Glæpur throws his head back and sticks his tongue out to catch a snowflake.

"… you know that's water, right?" he asks, and the man chuckles. Deep in his chest, something twinges almost painfully at the boyish defiance of Glæpur's posture as he pretends to cough and sputter, in a parody of disgust.

Glæpur's gaze wanders for a moment, lost somewhere. Then, setting down his mug on the bench, he claps his hands like a theatre director.

"Okay, let's try this again, yeah? Let's just do a do-over. From the top."

Before Íþróttaálfurinn can even think of an answer, he inhales, looks down at him and leans his whole body back in surprise, like he's seeing him for the first time.

"Ah!" he says grandiosely, as if it were another encounter from their past game. "Íþróttaálfurinn! My worst enemy, my greatest foe, bane of my existence! Long time no see."

Glæpur's voice has dropped, hitting that husky middle between raspy and jovial, and in a moment, the lonely, hostile night transforms around them. The chase-game is on, and the practiced ease of it envelops them, painting their surroundings in familiar backdrops. The elf's eyes prickle again and yet, despite everything, he feels like smiling. In this light, the uncanny fuzziness of Glæpur's sweater mutes to some obscure disguise, Íþróttaálfurinn's presence into an improvised, yet clever trap. Maybe, he's being used as bait, but they have a plan all along, they're allied, and they're going to be all right.

"Glanni Glæpur," he acknowledges. He nods formally, but the army wife came out in his voice again, and he can practically feel the man's eyebrows quirk up. "How strange, meeting you here. How… how's your holiday going?"

"Crime takes no holidays, you fool!" Glæpur parries, and Íþróttaálfurinn chokes out a startled laugh.

"Let's see," he continues, hand-waving his botched improv and working with it. "Just befriended some noisy brats, learnt what Christmas is… got caught bothering the silverware like a rookie. You know, the usual."

The elf takes a punishing sip of the―purposefully, he suspects―terrible drink, and represses a shudder.

"Oh, and!" The man suddenly perks up, brightening up with a smile so wide it shows his missing bicuspid, "I've received a―a present? Like, they gave me this box, for some reason―for free? It has my name on it and everything?"

Íþróttaálfurinn watches him shuffle forward the strap of his burlap sack, until he can pull out the big purple box he saw him cradle in the Mayor's living room. He notices with relief that there is no silverware in sight. He breathes out.

"Of course it's free," he tells him softly, breaking character. "It's a present. I told you they like you for real."

The man gestures, as though the very concept was just silly.

"This thing is full of―I just can't believe they'd give me stuff like this for free! It's a… care package, I think?" He steps forward to show him, popping the lid and lifting the elaborate ribbon that had held the box closed. "See, there's like, soap and stuff like that, razors, and some clothes…" He tugs at the new old sweater he's wearing, almost fondly. "Got scolded by Santa himself, now I can't risk getting eaten by the Jólaköttur, right?"

Íþróttaálfurinn cannot hold back a snort. "You are the Jólaköttur, Glæpur."

The man doesn't even pretend to be offended. His face just splits into that wide grin, letting out a high-pitched squeak of a laugh.

"Maybe I am," he wheezes, eyes twinkling. He stops, looking at the lid in his hand, suddenly sobering. "Seriously, though, it wasn't you that made them do this, right?"

"Of course not," the elf says, in the human matters tone. "I don't interfere in this kind of thing… or know that much about Christmas myself. Just get them a present next year, and you'll be even."

Glæpur snaps his fingers. "Hah. Knew there had to be a catch somewhere. Too good to come without strings attached."

He stands there for a moment, biting into his lip. Then, pensively, he plunges his hand deep into the box and rustles.

"Oh, what the hell," he say, in the tone of someone losing an inner battle. "Someone even said their grandma had an attic I could crash in…? I didn't believe it but―aha! They were serious, here's a key!"

Íþróttaálfurinn loses him for a moment, as he squints at the small address tag, turning it round and round, like it's some ancient code he has to decipher.

"Do you… need help with that?" he offers, still looking for ways to amend.

"Hm? No, I got it." He's memorizing it, and Íþróttaálfurinn could swear he can see the address writing itself in his memory from the look of concentration alone. The man lets out a whoop. "Bam! Done."

Íþróttaálfurinn finds himself smiling. It's much better now, after crying and moving about, knowing no one was robbed, that there was no great evil plan, that despite everything he hasn't ruined the children's Christmas. Yet, his leg is still bouncing, restless, making the snow crunch under his heel. It just should have never been the objective, making himself feel better. He sighs.

"You really are okay," he half-asks, bound to make sure, even if it breaks their fragile balance.

"Never been better!" Glæpur chirps, on the wave of enthusiasm. He pulls the sides of his roomy sweater, tenting the fabric over his slightly rounded stomach. "Look! I haven't seen it like this in so long… I got an entire bowl of leftovers just for me! And this pile of frosted bun-rolls things―and everyone was laughing and I'm still not in on the joke but hey, they were good," he says fondly. He taps his chest with a fist, releasing a noise between a belch and a hiccup. "Might have overdone it a little, even."

"It takes time to adjust, when you've gone without for a while," Íþróttaálfurinn says, almost automatically. Glæpur's head tilts to the side.

"Oh? Speaking from experience?" the man inquires.

Lost in dark tunnels and distant wounds for a moment, he nearly forgets to nod. It happened to him too, when he had just escaped the coal mines, and he saw it happen to the other children, escape companions and rescues alike. They'd all feast on every simple meal, as though it would be the last time they had food in their lives. The body is wiser sometimes, he thinks, exercising caution where the bare minimum passes for opulence.

"Well, it's not good to adjust too much, you know?" Glæpur is saying, shifting a little, masking in street wisdom the sprouts of anxiety. "One's got to stay adaptable."

When Íþróttaálfurinn lifts his eyes, Glæpur is peering off in the distance once again. He looks at the man's profile, high-bridged nose and prominent cheekbones, observing the cold draw colour onto both.

"It's good to see you alive," he says, without thinking.

Glæpur comes back to himself, and snorts.

"Alive, huh?" he says. "Glanni Glæpur, criminal mastermind. Freshly back from the dead, here to stay."

"I mean―it's… a relief," he scrambles to adjust. He meant to say well, or better, but alive is what came out instead. And he thinks instinct is wiser sometimes, too, in its accidental literality. "Would… would hate to be bored, without you around."

The man gives him a look of pure surprise.

"I did have some rough times this year. Almost thought I wouldn't make it." He runs a distracted hand over his brow-line, then under his eyes, brushing the edge of the dark circles still there. "And I don't know how, but some stupid elf managed to drag me back."

The crossing rushes back at him, and maybe, he thinks, it's rushing back at them both. Íþróttaálfurinn thinks that maybe, maybe, he can risk mentioning it, now that Glæpur did it first.

"That trip did feel like dying and passing over," he says.

He had crossed other times, of course, but the Ocean had never seemed as wide. Nothing but the unforgiving, endless expanse of water, the man barely alive on his little bag of twigs―his death trap held in the air by air itself―and him, alone with his strength, with the unfathomable breadth of his mission.

His mind lost some hours in the air, between time-zones; he can only approximate how much time it took to complete that flight, his sense of time out of tune with the rest of the world. It felt like an eternity, in a way in which traveling usually doesn't.

In his glimpses of memory, he sees the crumpled heap that formed his nemesis' body, forehead against his knees, arms clutched over his ribs, sunken into his shoulders. He remembers the sense of uncertainty it gave him, like when the security ropes twisted up into knots for no reason. It made him want to untangle him, rub away the ache in his joints. It made him want to hold his hand, at least, as time eased his pain.

He remembers he didn't have to try to know Glæpur couldn't be touched. He could feel it in his guts. Even only half-there, keening in his sleep or mute like a dying animal, he needed to stay in himself, re-establish the contours and territories of his body, of what was part of him and what wasn't. Maybe the hours Íþróttaálfurinn lost went to him, he hopes, and aided him in his battle against the unthinkable.

On the Ocean, night went by like a passing shadow. Above them, only stars. Under them, the endless sea, uncannily still for a moment, like spilled oil. He didn't rest: he looked up at the sky and kept going, slipping out of himself to endure the strain. Glæpur didn't move either, didn't look up, no stars for him through the envelope's fabric.

He remembers―but he isn't so sure, this time―a voice like an echo, rough and hollow, saying, You should have left me there. He remembers the harsh sound of retching, of being shaken from his trance with the stark impression that the other was about to jump. You would have died, he remember saying, but he isn't sure if he said it out loud. Afterwards, nothing but a long, death-still silence.

"If that's the case, they lied to us," says the man, here and now and out loud, with a half-smile. "Hell's colder than we've been told."

The elf chuckles into his mug, a jolt of relief coursing through him. The chamomile is even more terrible now that it's cold, all tastes clashing. It's his new favourite.

"You should have stayed inside," Íþróttaálfurinn tells him. There is something painful to Glæpur and staying as ideas, especially associated. Something painful to his presence, too. "Keep having fun with the kids, enjoy the fireplace, have more dessert. Not come after me in a blizzard."

"Listen, stop flattering yourself. At the rate we were going, I would have been asked to sing at the girls' wedding―it was time to go."

Íþróttaálfurinn gasps. "Glæpur, they're ten."

Somewhat darkly, the man says, "It's never too early to start planning."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Oh―God, no."

Íþróttaálfurinn won't deceive himself. There is a lot of him that is insufferable, ungrateful, unrepentant. Yet, everything takes life around him, the colours become more vivid, the chaos alive and breathing. Even now, that peculiar warmth radiates from him, standing in his soft-looking sweater, mug in hand, talking of children's wedding plans. It would make it a memorable event, he knows, if he sang in it.

"I just… didn't think you'd come out after me, after the way I—" he breathes out, halting himself on the edge of the cliff. "Just… I appreciate it. I don't think I deserve it."

And Glæpur huffs, because in a roundabout way, the elf is going back to talking about it. And he thinks he has exclusive rights to the roundabout ways of doing things.

When he speaks, his voice is also low, almost intimate.

"Well, I... kind of owe you a life debt, don't I?"

Íþróttaálfurinn blinks up in surprise. So you do have rules, he wants to say. So, this too, is nothing but currency to you, he wants to say.

"But… you always run before it's time to collect," he says instead, but it comes out so thick and stuttered that the man only stares down at him, brows furrowed.

"Are you going to cry again―alright, what's going on with you?" he says, canting his hip to the side. "Why aren't you yourself, tonight? Why aren't you inside, playing house with your humans? The little one climbed on me and cried when you went away. Scared the shit out of me."

"It's… nothing," Íþróttaálfurinn hears his voice answer. It's unbecoming of a hero, to get like this, to be read like an open book. They wear their hearts inside leather armour, not on their sleeve.

Glæpur isn't pleased, if the low growl in his throat is anything to go by.

"Honestly, what sort of idiot do you take me for?" he asks, a flash of anger in his eyes. "You went around walking―I didn't see you do a single flip, the whole night. Normally, it's a struggle to get you to shut up, and tonight you talk to me only to throw a fit. I'm unnerving, sure, but it can't be all me. Even dear Lolli could tell something's wrong with you… and that's just insulting."

"Glæpur…" he starts, pained, but discovers he has nothing to say. It fills him with something, some sweet ache, that the man knows him, and can tell when he's acting strange. He swallows the thickness in his throat, trying to speak, but the other is quicker.

"And now I find you here, freezing your ass off and sulking, looking up at me with those teary baby blues like I just descended from the fucking clouds. For a cup of leaf-water."

Íþróttaálfurinn snaps his mouth shut, mute. Glæpur leans over him, pulling a gasp from his throat.

"C'mon, you can tell your dearest foe," he coaxes. "If you can't trust your enemies in life, who can you trust?"

He is leaning in, too close, so close it reminds Íþróttaálfurinn of how it felt to hold him, to carry his weight in his arms. His body-heat is a halo of warmth in the cold night, and he wants to fall in, in, in.

"Homesick? Miss the family?" Glæpur tries, and he must know the inside of him the way he knows the houses he wants to rob, because damn him if he didn't crack the safe on the first try.

"I don't… I don't have anything to miss," he whispers, voice catching. He has no words to describe the ache, the restlessness, the warmth of his people. Can you be homesick for something you never had, for a place you've never known? For a future that could and then wasn't?

More to himself than to Glæpur, he repeats, "It's just the holidays that get me like this, really."

"Really," the man echoes, a little sarcastic and oddly careful. He leaps up on the bench, thick-soled boots scooping the snow off the seat, snatching up his mug in the same motion, as he perches on the seatback just above the elf.

Matching him in tone and volume, he says, "Didn't know we were the same."

The elf hears himself make a noise, interrogative and hopeful, sounding a bit like a lost dog. Hopefully, this time Glæpur doesn't mean they are the same breed of jackal.

"Hm… self-sufficient from a young age, let's say," he says conversationally, licking his lips after a sip.

"Oh." Íþróttaálfurinn leans in, yearning again for that closeness, barely tasted. "I'm… an orphan too, yes."

He thinks of the human cemeteries, the proper ones down in the green hearts of towns. Nature reigns in them, too, but it is tended to, cared for, tamed. Around Christmas, they can be seen from above, strewn with lights and candles, alive with memories of love and loss.

"Tsk," Glæpur clicks his tongue at him, chiding. "It's all in the perspective, enemy mine. If you put it like that, of course the holidays are going to get you down."

The wind rustles the top of the trees, sweeping pine needles across the town square. Íþróttaálfurinn mulls this over.

"Do you remember yours?" Glæpur asks quietly, after a while. "Ever looked for them, any idea who you come from?"

Íþróttaálfurinn thinks for a moment of the village he must have had, and in his mind it has always been just like the one that raised him. Like a double, but different, and the difference is in him, in every drop of blood, every cell of his body. Part of the land, yearning to move but not too much, never far enough to forget where he belongs.

"I never looked into it." He hesitates, chewing on his bottom lip. "You?"

Glæpur shakes his head. "Nah, me neither. But I bet mine were, like, criminal underworld royalty. This stuff has to run in the blood." His eyes, for a moment, get lost and distant. "I can't come from honest people, right? That'd be just preposterous."

Íþróttaálfurinn stays quiet for a moment.

"I think," he says, carefully, and it's the closest thing to a lie he has said in a while, "honest people or not, they'd be proud."

"Oh, shut up," Glæpur says gruffly, because he knows. But it's worth it for the way the man turns away, a vibration traveling through him like a visible current, unable to look at him for a full minute, trying and failing to hide the blush in his cheeks and ears.

Then, Glæpur frees the hand closest to him and reaches around him, nudging aside the scarf and his shirt collar, to rest his over-warm palm on the juncture of Íþróttaálfurinn's neck and shoulder. The elf tenses in surprise.

The touch is warm, like the summer sun, and reaches past his skin, so deep into him it touches something, the marrow-deep longing hidden there. There is an unspoken question in the sunlight in his palm, but he knows he is free to ignore it. It's just a pass, a permission to be weak under all his armour. Glæpur's left knee is level with his shoulder, and he takes in its sharp contours, the solidity of bone. He leans to the side and he doesn't have to lean much, until he's resting his temple against it. It's knobby, hard like the edge of a shelf. Glæpur lets him.

"I'm homesick for… summer," he says, words out of his mouth like handprints in untouched snow. He hasn't told anyone. He waits for the cradling touch to move away, but it doesn't.

"Is summer home, to you?" Glæpur asks, like he perfectly understands how that would work.

Summer and Grandmother were always one and the same in Íþróttaálfurinn's mind. He thinks of her hands, large and rough from work, just like his own. Grandmother would tell him not to give up, once again. She would tell him that if he follows his heart, everything will be all right, that there is always a way. That there can be no wrong in an honest heart.

"It used to."

He leans and lets the large, warm hand cradle him, and tells his story, in just a few words.

It is not, after all, a great story. Years and years ago, a lost elf child, abandoned, nameless; raised by a stranger with boot and stick, a number in lieu of a name, hands and face black with coal since he has memory. The dark, endless tunnels, the echoes of creaking beams. The relief of starlight. The games he and the other nameless children played among the sharp rocks, imagination for equipment, team spirit for the family they all… missed, lacked, yearned for? He doesn't know when, but his right arm has wrapped itself around Glæpur's shin, hand clutching just above the cuff of his boot. The man lets him.

Then the escape, the flight, the rescues. Grandmother, opening his little hands, crying into them as her fingers found roughness where there should have been only smooth baby skin. The village of elven strangers that fed him and clothed him, like one of theirs, and yet not. Too close and knowing, always. I know what you mean, Glæpur takes a moment to tell him, and rolls his eyes.

Íþróttaálfurinn had been no one's child, and he had been Grandmother's child. And now he was no one's child again. He belongs now only in his memories of summer. Only there he's at home.

"Shit," Glæpur says eloquently, after a pause. "And here I was, thinking you had to have it all nice in life, to become such a Goody Two-Shoes. And instead you got coal mines in your youth. Damn."

"No one who had it good in life takes the path I took, Glæpur," he says, tired. "Well, or yours."

"Heroes and villains," Glæpur says pensively. "We all have our coal mines, one way or another."

It's not like his voice sounds fully sincere, not like it doesn't have any sarcasm or bitterness in it. It's that his hand is still there, holding him in place, and it's enough to blow the chill and the coal from inside him. If his worst enemy can bear the brunt of his inadequacy, and still see the hero in him, then maybe he is worth something, after all.

"I bring all the coal mines with me every time I show up, don't I? Disrespecting hospitality, lying, tricking kids into work." Glæpur sighs. "It's a wonder you don't hate my damn guts."

He agrees with a nod, wordless, and Glæpur tightens his lips, and the elf chooses to imagine he's trapping an apology there. And it's almost as good as hearing it. He'll get by with acknowledgment, if he has to.

"The children were okay, in the end," Íþróttaálfurinn offers. "They forgave."

"But did you forgive?"

"I have nothing against your guts." And perhaps it's not the wisest thing to say to a nemesis, but it is, in fact, the truth.

Glæpur snorts. "Oh no, not me. I did what I did," he says dismissively. "I meant the asshole, the miner."

The miner. Even back when he was only a number, Íþróttaálfurinn never thought of the man as just a miner. Mr. Kicker used to be Sir, or Mister, or Boss. A man so covered in coal, inside and outside, they suspected his heart to be just as black as his lungs. He used to be authority, a place of loyalty, even some distorted form of devotion.

When he was a number, he thought he was lucky, hearing the stories the man told about what happened to the other orphans. Little Number Ten, and the human children he would later rescue, they were all lucky to be with him and not some other guy, one of the mean ones. And if they kept being lucky―he would say, coughing up his black phlegm and spitting on the ground―they would grow up to be good and generous, just like him.

"I put it behind me," he says evenly, but setting the mug down between his feet, because his free hand is curling into a fist. "If my crystal called me to him, I'd help him. Like I'd help anyone else."

Glæpur nods, solemn. "Of course. Your heroism has moved me, I am a changed man. I see the world in a whole new light now," he deadpans. Determined to get it out of him, he insists, "If you had put it behind you, you wouldn't be out here, homesick for summer while your kids pout inside. Spit the truth, nemesis."

Íþróttaálfurinn shudders long and hard. What he thinks of that man now is unbecoming of a hero, unbecoming of an elf, even, maybe.

"I don't… really care," he hears himself whisper, because Glæpur already knows what's inside him, and still sees the hero in him. "I wouldn't care if he lived or died."

"At last, progress."

His grip on the man's leather-clad ankle tightens, and he feels naked, high-strung like an exposed nerve, yet oddly clean. Purified, like a sun-bleached bone.

"I don't even know if he's still alive," he hisses. "And I couldn't care less."

The cradling hand presses briefly down on him. "That's more like it."

He looks up, nearly exhausted, and Glæpur smiles down at him, raw and real, his eyes twinkling. Íþróttaálfurinn gets the feeling that he needed to hear what he said as much as Íþróttaálfurinn needed to get it out.

"Looks like you've made a new family, right here," Glæpur tells him then, nodding to the golden light of the Mayor's windows, where the sleepover is going on, where they miss him. "You've earned it, don't you think?"

And truth manifests as the man speaks it, the three splinters of him reunited in one pair of grey eyes, looking down at him, dancing with some unknown warmth. Everything is so simple, when Glæpur says it. He has family and love here, and back among the elves too, and much of his anguish lives and dies in his own heart. Simple, right? And yet.

He considers family, and considers the elusive man next to him. Had Glæpur always been like this, so perceptive? How much of him has Íþróttaálfurinn been blind to, when he knew nothing but the chase-game and petty skirmishes? Was there always so much care in him? Some distant sorrow is there too, he can see it just peeking out of the clouds, and in that moment he knows the other is certain of his own separation, of his incompatibility with the loving people around them.

He inhales to speak, to apologize in full for what he did, to thank him for reaching out, just as unexpected as it is undeserved.

You as well, you aren't an orphan anymore, either, Íþróttaálfurinn wants to tell him, but it would be too soon, too knowing. I am here, too.

But the man straightens to attention, inadvertently tugging him off his knee.

"Hush―it's time," Glæpur says, raising his index finger, tilting his ear like en elder listening for wind whispers.

The clock tower strikes midnight, and Christmas falls like a spell around them. In the distance, they can hear the pop of fireworks, but in the town square all is silence and melodic peal.

Time chimes by, the bells now ringing the notes of a semi-familiar tune, made haunting by the air soft as cotton, by the loaded silence between the two lonely figures on a cold wooden bench, feeling like that new white world belongs to them alone.

The snow has fallen on them and they've let it. Íþróttaálfurinn can feel it trickle down him, like he is a dewy leaf in the morning sun, melting into his body heat. Glæpur's hand hasn't moved from his shoulder. Under his firm touch, everything feels safe, the heaviest of memories feel lighter. In a single, peaceful intuition, he knows the children aren't worried about him. Like he knows they are safe inside, together, they know he's not alone out here, either.

The man sits so still, a statue that breathes steam in white puffs, and doesn't stir when the elf lifts his gaze to look at him. Cast in the warm light of the streetlamp, the snow collects on him like he is a branch, a stone, not melting, not moving. He wonders, is this how the man vanishes in the shadows? Is this how he disappears?

His lips are dark and full, and they can curl and quirk so easily around a lie, around a truth, around a name so lost on foreign tongues, breathing life into anything he says. But when he isn't smiling, Glæpur has a very solemn face. Long and sharp, like the carving of an ageless idol. It makes it hard to remember how young he is, when the heavy brow of a thinker shadows his lowered eyelids. Without the charm of his smile, his boyish frown, without the twinkling light in his eyes, he looks like something left behind, like the skeletons of abandoned houses you see from above, at the feet of the mountains, so eerie and beautiful and lonely.

"Everything feels so new, when it snows. So clean," Glæpur says in a murmur, voice hoarse in the hollow of his immobile form. He inhales, exhales, steam like dragon-breath from his nostrils. "I missed it."

He moves, lifting his face up to the snowfall, exposing his long neck over the collar of his leather suit. Of the bruising that marred his throat, only a faint yellow shadow remains, like a smudge of chamomile sap. So clear, so inevitably there, Íþróttaálfurinn feels heartless and stupid for doubting him.

"I missed you," Íþróttaálfurinn says, and knows now how a thing so heavy can become weightless, once out in the cold night. His own voice sounds low and thick, tone more loaded than any question. "Ever since you left, I've been restless. Worried."

You have a funny way to show it, is what he would expect him to say.

Glæpur blinks like he just woke up, flicking the snow off his eyelashes. The hand on the elf's shoulder twitches, back to being its own separate piece. When it flows away from him, it leaves a warmed, pleasantly damp patch of skin, immediately assaulted by the merciless wind. The elf shivers, unaccustomed.

"Seems like it's picking up again," Glæpur says, nodding to the sky. Without meeting his eyes, clearing his throat a couple of times, he asks, "I don't ask this often to people that aren't me, but… where the hell are you going to stay?"

The ageless carved god is gone, and before him is a spindly man in a silly Christmas sweater. He flows off the bench and to his feet, shakes the snow off his hair, and twirls a key around his pinkie finger. In his other hand, dangles the empty mug.

"I could ask the Mayor for a corner when I take his cups back, I suppose," Íþróttaálfurinn says, staring down into his own, tearing his eyes off the man's naughty smile. It is growing too wide and he knows what it means. "No, you have to give them back, Glæpur, you incorrigible―"

"But Íþró, where will I put my morning coffee?" the man asks innocently, grinning like he paid him a compliment. "Wouldn't it be rude to barge in on Christmas morning asking for cups? But, then again," he stops, halted by a sudden hesitation, recovers with a tilted grin, "if it's that important, I'll let you take them back tomorrow."

"How generous of you," Íþróttaálfurinn can only mutter, blinking in astonishment. Is he asking…?

As far as invitations go, this carries implications, he knows that much. Loaded. Yet, under the snow falling light and clean on them, he sees with sudden clarity that this is what he had been hoping for, since the man found him sulking on the bench. More time to talk, to set everything right. To know a man that, in the end, knows far less than he would like. At least, ever since he has known the weight of his sleeping head on his shoulder, and the lightness of his hand when it reaches out to protect. Since the children forgave him, and the chase-game took them on sea and land and shadowy corners.

"But I shouldn't," he finds himself murmuring, still, glancing up to him and away.

Glæpur falters, shuffling his feet so that new footprints overwrite the old, half-filled ones. When he lifts his eyes, for a moment the frightened, helpless thing he held in his arms in that alley flashes back to him.

"I insist," he says simply, a little haltingly. "But hurry up and decide, my toes are going to fall off."

Without waiting for his answer, he adjusts the strap of his bag and takes a couple of steps away, then glances, unsubtly, over his shoulder to see if he's coming along.

As it seems, this time around, Íþróttaálfurinn is the one with nobody to turn to, the stray to be picked up and carried away to safety.

"I―yes, I'm here," he says when he shakes himself from his stupor and catches up to him in three leaps, taking him lightly by the elbow. The man stiffens.

"I can't… offer more than my company, though," Glæpur blurts out, smile frozen and wide, terrified eyes. Íþróttaálfurinn swallows, stepping away in apology.

"Good thing we're on a truce, then," he says, smiling back tentatively, head crowding with worry at the uncanny apology in Glæpur's voice, and the even more worrisome shaky breath of relief that the other tries to dissimulate. The arm jolted like live wire at his touch, and his hand tingles with rejection.

Then, sort of impatiently, Glæpur takes him by the wrist, grasping hard.

"Couldn't have you out here all alone, in a blizzard, on Christmas, now could I?" he says, and drags him off.

Notes: TFW you get Íþróttaálfurinn to open up and it's like opening a shaken soda can.

The Jólaköttur is the Christmas Cat that, in Icelandic folklore, comes to eat you if you don't have at least one (1) new piece of clothing on Christmas.
The joke with the buns is that in Jól í Latabæ, Siggi at one point calls Glanni with the nickname "glæpasnúður" (crime bun). According to our sources, a snúður is a type of sweet bun, and the word can be used as an affectionate nickname. Obviously… he doesn't call him that to his face.

Chapter title from Take You Home, by Scars on 45.