For A and M.
In Scandinavia, students and colleagues alike, address teachers using their first name, or an informal last name, i.e. Lukas would be Lukas or Myrtengren only. It is very rare to use Mr, Mrs, Miss etc in everyday life, as Scandinavians prefer an informal approach both in social situations, at work and at home.
This story is set in the Sweden, where the age of consent is 16. The laws are there to protect children from abuse or exploitation, rather than to prosecute under-16s who participate in mutually consenting sexual activity. There are a multitude of cultural differences described in this story that readers from other parts of the world might find strange or downright amusing, also family practices that not every Scandinavian family would necessarily agree with.
This is a work of fiction, and as such I have modified some working procedures in the Swedish school system to fit the story.
This story is edited in UK English. Any mistakes are the author’s own.
Trigger warnings: anxiety, panic attacks and brief non-graphic flashbacks to traumatic events and bullying.
This is the second book in the “Scandinavian Comfort” series. These books celebrate love, family and people’s sometimes messy lives, threaded with the Scandinavian concept of ‘’Hygge”. This Danish concept cannot be translated to one single word but encompasses a feeling of cozy contentment and well-being through enjoying the simple things in life.
I have always been terrified of water, especially large outdoor pools, big lakes, and the fucking sea. I remember it all vividly. As a kid, Dad trying to get me to dip my toes in the freezing shite. All that sand, the sharp rocks, and me screaming like he was trying to axe-murder me in public on a warm summer’s day.
I hate the waves. The sounds of the water crashing against the stones. I hate the smell of salt and the screams of children playing. I hate everything.
I remember Dad pulling me close and his voice shushing against my hair, trying to calm me down. I remember it taking a long time before I stopped sobbing. Taking a lot of sobbing episodes before Dad stops taking me to the beach, until he cancels the fucking swimming lessons, and renovates the bathroom, installing a massive show-off shower instead of the dusty bathtub that has been the stuff of my worst nightmares.
It doesn’t stop the fear, though, because the waves crashing against me, is how my panic attacks always start. I can almost see them coming towards me, like a huge tsunami of anxiety and terror that I have no way of stopping. They are coming, loud and roaring and paralysing my body, turning my muscles to unusable slabs of jelly as my breath strangles me and my mouth screams in panic at what is about to happen. It’s inevitable. Nothing ever happens. It's all in my head.
My therapist is trying to teach me to visualise holding the tsunami back.
It’s not working.
How can you hold something back that is so overwhelming? So huge and all-consuming that it takes over reality? I know it’s not real. I’m not stupid. But my brain is broken, and my head believes that every single little molecule of what is making me freeze up and sob like a hungry baby is, in fact, very real.
It’s like there are a million people in my head screaming and arguing and trying to make sense of what is going on, whilst this death-inducing monster of a wave is coming towards me and I have no way to escape. It just hits me. Covers me and drowns me, and I fight it and scream and try to swim out of it, even though I know deep down it will always win.
I will never escape. I will never win. I drown every fucking time.
My name is Max. Welcome to my life. It doesn’t get any better.
LUKAS
The light is almost blinding in its intensity through the classroom windows, dancing around on the walls as the students mill out of the door amongst the slow sounds of ringtones and pings from smartphones, and the unmistakable drawls of teenage laughter. He is still in full teacher mode, throwing back lame insults at the boys as they throw a last taunt at him, trying to rail him off his constant cheery disposition that works wonders on the little shits that inhabit his classroom.
Lukas Myrtengren is a good teacher. And being a good teacher was his goal when he plonked his then skinny arse on the flip-down chair on his first day of University. He had great plans. Huge ideas of his own worth and self-importance.
Until his priorities changed. Until he studied too much, lived too fast, and fate kind of walked him into an invisible wall, smashing his life into unfixable splinters.
He didn’t plan on his life becoming what it has become. Yet he is happy. Because this, right here, is actually his life. A life that is good, healthy and manageable.
Lukas runs every morning, then has a healthy breakfast full of superfoods and vitamins and fibre. He catches the 7.14 train from the station on his suburban doorstep to the inner city where he works, his headphones blasting out pop songs that he is far too old for. Young voices and beats that he picks up from his students.
His body is lean and muscular. The designer stubble he carefully grows on his chin, hopefully fulfilling the idea that he looks older, wiser, and subtly sexier than he actually is. The clothes he wears are what he tries to describe to himself as ‘muted hipster cool’, because, unlike the teachers he remembers from his own days of being a student at Östra Real’s Senior School, and now that he teaches there himself, he refuses to be the butt of anyone’s jokes. He pays attention to fashion, updating his wardrobe with essential items to keep his style on trend. He likes the skinny jeans that hug his arse. Prefers tight T-shirts cradling his biceps. Shirts that cover his arms, but still emphasize the bulge of his forearms. His hair is longer than it probably should be, but he likes it. He looks good. He is a handsome man despite the specks of grey he frequently finds in his blond mop and the crow’s feet that have become a permanent fixture around his eyes. Lukas may have been a cocky little shit at seventeen, and a total terror at eighteen, but now somewhere lost in his late thirties, he is fine. He’s made peace with himself. He may not have become Stephen Hawking, or taken over the world, but he is making a difference every day.
His classroom finally descends into an empty quietness, the only sound heard being the faint clatter of footsteps down the stone staircase outside, distant voices and laughter seeping through the late afternoon air. Lukas gathers up the last of his paperwork, throwing it mindlessly into his bag. He needs to go down to the teachers’ lounge and log his attendance sheets before he gets too tired. Anyway, he needs to prepare his notes for tonight. Honestly though, all he really wants to do is go home and sleep.
He sleeps well at night these days, now that the dull ache of heartbreak has faded into a questionable embarrassment around how he could have been so gullible—stupid even—again falling for a man who will never leave the safety of his marriage for an uncertain future with someone like Lukas.
It's a quirk of his, a stupid thing wired into his brain, just the challenge of figuring out the subtle vibes he picks up on. The married men questioning their life choices. The older men with their fucking reckless midlife crises where they figure a little experimentation with cock will do them good. Where Lukas once again has been helplessly drawn into the thrill of the chase. The games and flirts. The shameful release of taking that precious moment from someone, where they would finally see it. Finally letting themselves realise that loving and lusting over another man could be just as mind-blowingly real and overwhelming as in their shame-filled closeted nightmares.