Chapter Text
Magnus Fossbakken woke up on the morning of his 17th birthday with two things on his mind:
- Sex
- Breakfast
He was then struck with a logistical and existential quandary he’d never thought of before: what is it like to have sex with someone before breakfast? If you are basically starving while you are going at it in the morning wouldn’t that make you not be able to concentrate on the task at hand? Would you go really fast to get it over with so you can get some waffles or French toast sooner rather than later? Or is it like when you are really hungry and start exercising and the physical exertion makes you forget the howling empty pit of your stomach?
Then: an epiphany! This is why breakfast in bed and hotel room service were invented. Genius!!! You can eat and get it on at the same time, a total win-win. You could even get kind of kinky with the food if you wanted, like whipped cream and strawberries and all that. Damn.
His mind then drifted to what it would be like to be doing certain kinky food stuff with a certain blonde girl that had been taking up about 85% of his sex-related headspace recently. Then the lyrics to Justin Bieber’s Boyfriend popped into his head and even though liking Justin Bieber is wrong on every imaginable level, at that moment he totally dug the visual of Vilde feeding him chocolate fondue by a cozy fireside. Preferably with both of them naked. On a white bearskin rug. He went with it.
Four minutes later, he was basking in the afterglow of his favorite morning ritual when he remembered: birthday! Fucking sweet.
He cleaned himself up, got out of bed and why the hell not, put on Justin Bieber and got dressed.
“Happy birthday honey!!!!”
He was immediately bombarded by a huge bear hug from his mom the minute he stepped into the kitchen.
“Takk Mama.” He hugged her back real tight and kissed her cheek. “What have you been cooking? It smells AMAZE.”
His eyes then took in the post-tsunami countertop littered with about five half-empty mixing bowls, a smattering of cracked egg shells and runny yolks, bags of flour and sugar with their contents strewn idly across every imaginable surface, plus several cutting boards piled with fruit and vegetable skins and pits.
“Planning to feed the troops, huh?” he asked with a wink and then without really thinking about it started piling up the messy bowls and stacking them in the kitchen sink.
“Of course! It’s your special day! This is cause for a celebration. Dad went out to the market for me, he’ll be back soon and then we’ll feast! I made waffles, laggs og eggerøre and of course your special birthday strawberry and cream cake but we can save that for later. Unless you want it now? You’re the birthday boy so you can decide if you want to spoil your breakfast or not. Orange juice or coffee?”
“Thanks so much Mama. I would say you didn’t have to do this but who am I kidding, this is the best birthday breakfast EVER. I love you. Can I have some of the special whipped cream now to put in my coffee?”
After his dad got back the three of them dug into the meal in earnest. He could tell by the way his mom was talking a mile a minute and laughing a little too much that she was definitely on an upswing but not enough to send off any alarm bells. Sometimes she was just happy for happy’s sake and that was honestly one of the things he loved so much about her.
“My baby is seventeen. Seventeen! I can’t actually believe it. Where does the time go? Just yesterday you were this tiny smushy bundle and now look at you, you look more and more like your papa every day. I told Mo Mo we’d visit her today, she has a gift for you, is that ok? I know you made plans with your friends tonight but is there anything else special you’d like to do today? Isn’t it fun when your birthday falls on a Saturday? You know that when we were little Mo Mo used to let us skip off from school if we wanted on our birthday? She’d let us pick out whatever we wanted to do that day. I always wanted to let you do that but your dad was never so keen on that ritual with you though.” She then took Magnus’s dad’s hand and gave him a little squeeze and a wink.
His dad countered, “Well that’s because it’s like my own mother always said: Education is...”
Magnus cut in, “...Education is the foundation not the vacation. Yeah yeah I know. And I don’t mind going to school on my birthday. All the girls wish you happy birthday on facebook AND in school, so double bonus.”
“Is there any special girl right now?” his dad asked with a little dancing eyebrow wiggle. Magnus let out a huge gaffaw at what a total dweeb his dad was.
“Ugh dad chill with the eyebrows. But actually. Sort of. Maybe. There’s this one girl but I think she’s a little out of my league.”
“How come?” his mom asked. “You’re smart, you’re handsome, you’ve got a great sense of humor and a great smile. Why would she be out of your league?”
“Well she's kind of type-A? Like seriously type-A, like the type of girl who probably picks all her outfits out for the week in advance and has little sticky labels all over school notebooks that like match up with a hand-written table of contents. I don’t know. She’s really cute though.” Magnus smiled to himself and thought once more about eating chocolate fondue and a canoodling by a cozy fireside with his crush.
“You know when I met your mother I thought, there’s no way this total dish would ever be interested in a dork like me. I mean, just look her: a total babe. And look at me.”
“Oh shush,” his mom said with a cute smile.
“It’s true though. But you know how I won her over? Well you’ve heard this story a million times I don’t have to say it again.”
“No, tell the story Dad, I like it.”
“Ok, twist my arm. We were at uni and your mom was this super star actress extraordinaire. She was getting cast in all the lead roles as a freshman! And everyone who met her fell in love with her immediately. She always had a trail of boys with hearts in their eyes following after her wherever she went, holding her books for her and doing her every bidding.”
“Your dad is exaggerating.”
“No it’s true. And here I was, a Biology and Sciences major, totally clueless in the art of seduction or the ways of love.”
“The ways of love???” Magnus chortled and smacked his hand against his head.
“Yes the ways of love. Your mother and I had one Chemistry class together,” his dad punctuated the word Chemistry with another eyebrow wiggle that had Magnus and his mom both cracking up. “But I might as well have been invisible. I had seen her perform in A Doll’s House and was totally smitten and star struck. She played Nora of course and I am telling you, they should have sent her right then and there to America to make her Broadway debut. She was incredible. And so we had this class together and I wanted to tell her how much I liked her performance but I was a little too nervous. But I had this idea. You know how in the play Nora is obsessed with macaroons? Well I found out which was her lab locker and left her a box of different flavored macaroons for three weeks before getting up the nerve to leave a note asking her out on a date. She said yes thank god. But it wasn’t until our date that she confessed she didn’t couldn’t actually eat any of the macaroons I left for her because detests marzipan.”
Magnus’s mom laughed and swept around to his dad and gave him a big kiss on the cheek.
She said to Magnus, “But you know I knew it was him after the first week? My friend worked at the campus sweet shop and totally tipped me off to this cute nerdy boy obsessed with macaroons. I just wanted to see how long it would take for him to actually talk to me.”
Magnus loved this story with his whole heart even though he’d heard it so many times he could recite it from memory.
“So what you’re saying, Dad, is I should stalk Vilde with baked goods?”
“Is that her name, Vilde?” his mom asked.
“Yeah.” Magnus said and felt his cheeks flush ever so slightly.
“Her name means wild one you know, so I'd be careful with that one,” his dad said and gave him a cringe-worthy wink.
“It’s a pretty ironic name for her, now that I think about it.” Magnus smiled to himself at the idea of Vilde transforming before his eyes from straight-laced alpha girl to a wild and crazy one. He kind of loved it.
“Here’s what I think,” his dad continued. “I’m not saying leaving a trail of sweets will work for every woman out there. But there’s nothing wrong with a romantic gesture, however small. Women appreciate that sort of thing.”
“What sort of romantic gesture though? I don’t want to come off as creepy or like I’m obsessed with her.”
His mom answered, “Well you can always just start by asking her questions about herself, listening to her and taking a genuine interest in what she thinks and feels. Sometimes women like that just as much as a big romantic gesture.”