Archive of Our Own

Felice finds him in his room after the dust settles, palms digging into his eyes as he breathes in, out, staving off another panic attack. His bodyguards have gotten lax with letting friends into his room, he thinks. He says nothing as she makes her way toward him.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Felice asks. She sits on the edge of his bed and smoothes out her skirt, hands brushing across her thighs. His sheets haven't been changed in weeks, and her feet rest gingerly against a microscopically clean spot on the floor, like a ship tethered between the wreckage of his life. And—more literally—his unwashed piles of clothes.

"No," he mumbles, fingers tightening imperceptibly. He turns over and glares into the cold plaster wall that boxes his bed in.

Felice sighs behind him.

His back to the world, Wilhelm lets his mind fester on everything he's lost these past few weeks. His brother, for one. The dearest piece of family he ever had, the person who'd kept him together through his tumultuous years. A boy who liked to call himself family, the boy Wilhelm had stuck his neck out for hours before everything came crashing down, phoning his mother for help as the guilt of his own misguided impulses ate away at him.

Erik. August. His mother's trust, and then his own trust in his mother. Above it all, Simon. That something between them that had turned fraught and unspoken, the slow dance of a doomed romance, fingers curled together in yellow light.

"It's fucking awful," Felice is saying this time. "What he did to you. I don't understand what I ever saw in him."

Wilhelm snorts at that. He tries to lift his head and then lets it thud back down, dully hitting the heart of his pillow.

"It's okay, Felice," he says. Her attempts feel awkward in the space of their cordial friendship, something shaped around her fumbling kiss and the abrupt ending to their hypothetical connection, what they could and should have been. "You don't have to make me feel better."

"But I feel bad," she admits into the dark. "That this happened. And that there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, none of this—I mean… all of it was avoidable, no?"

He knows this, of course. Wilhelm knows that she knows he knows. How many times has he taken it upon himself to sort through the branches in his head, the paths upon which his stupid, awful life could have unfurled? If only he hadn't—if only he had never gotten high in that field. If Alexander had never gotten caught, if he'd never kept the blinds open. If he'd never sent August spiraling, if he'd never even met Simon in the first place, if he'd never—

There's no point in playing this game, though. If only Erik had never gotten behind the wheel. And then what? If only he'd never gotten into that fight at the party, been made the fool by low-quality gifs stamped in bold font flashed across his phone screen, mocking the bruised angles of his face? If only that video—if only his mother had never—if those seven digits hadn't been irreversibly locked into his memory, a cognitive whale song to the one he'd tried so desperately to keep away? Wilhelm plays back his confession in his head like a distorted cassette recording, broken and low and incomprehensible. His voice wheezing out: I like you. And that's not fake.

Felice sounds sincere, plainly and palpably so. Wilhelm knows that she just wants to help, and he knows that she's right. There isn't anything they can do about it.

"It doesn't matter," he tries again. "I'm okay."

Nothing here is even remotely close to okay, of course. It's barely toeing the line of bearable. But he says it anyway.

Felice sighs, eyeing him consideringly.

"You know," she starts off, and suddenly she sounds shy, hesitant. Wilhelm rolls back and cracks an eye open.

"What?" he asks.

"You know that if you ever want to… I mean, if you ever need a beard or something—"

"What?"

"I said 'or something!' I know it's not ideal, but I don't think you have to suffer alone. And in the end—sometimes an easy lie can help mask over the harder truths, right?"

He blinks. Once, twice. She stares back, earnest and open, and in the moment it's suddenly so fucking funny that he can't help the harsh laugh he lets out, this uncontrollable burst of noise.

It's the releast sound he's made in days.

"Fuck off," he says, with no bite or tension. "I don't need a—Felice, really." He laughs again, mostly at the absurdity of the proposition. "I don't even know if I'm actually—"

He bites his tongue.

"Gay?" she tries.

Wilhelm rolls his eyes. He brings his hands together, and for a few charged moments opts to let silence fill the gap. "I appreciate it," he manages.

"All right," she accepts. She shrugs as if this had been the answer she'd expected, and then she leans forward to brush away at his bangs, lips stretched into a worried smile.

"Wille, when's the last time you showered?"

Wilhelm knows that answering honestly—that is, I don't know—would sound incriminating. So he winks at her and says, in his most constructed, princely voice, "It can be right now if you leave me to it."

"You're disgusting," she tells him goodnaturedly, getting up and moving toward his door. "What are men even good for?"

"A question we all ask ourselves," he mumbles.

On her way out, Felice looks at him and pauses again. She looks at him as though she's trying to discern something in his expression, something in the forlorn lines of his face, the bloodshot red of his eyes and how his skin looks scabbed over, picked away at in the obscurity of his bedroom. She looks at him like she's weighing which parting words to convey, something that will inspire him in its readiness. Wilhelm waits for the advice to hit. The well-meaning intention behind You're the only one who can live your life, something that misunderstands his circumstance. Or, worse, the ones who say, It's brave of you to choose duty above…, and then some terrible word substituted to summarize everything he'd shared with Simon, squeezing every waking moment he'd spent with him into a phrase depthless and easy, a footnote in a dictionary entry.

It's brave of you to choose duty above—infatuation? Desire? Trifling matters? Dishonor? There was no world in which Simon was his on paper, his boyfriend, the boy he loved, the person he'd sobbed about into synthetic grass, the boy on camera with his heart on display.

Felice clicks her tongue. He waits.

But all she says is, "Don't forget dinner, okay?", and then she's walking away. Her skirt flowing around her legs, hair straightened down the length of her back, arms swaying behind her.

Wilhelm watches her go.

Wilhelm remembers the words he'd whispered into the collar of Simon's coat too clearly.

That first apology. An admission of guilt to soften the blow of his subsequent confession, a shaping portrait of self-awareness, laying out his inevitabilities. The fracture lines of his character that had hurt Simon more than they could ever hurt Wilhelm himself.

He knows it all now, even if it'll always be too late to take back.

I'm sorry. I love you.

Between the lines: I'm sorry I love you.

It would be easier if he cared less. If Wilhelm didn't feel like Simon were the only person he could be himself around, if Simon's voice weren't what carried above the monotonous harmony of the relentless other, of the faceless crowd.

After all, some people are too real to be forgotten.

And deep down, a part of Wilhelm worries—no, it knows—that he isn't.

It would be easier if he cared less, but Wilhelm definitely does. He cares too much. Too fast, too hard. It's been his biggest flaw since he was born, and it followed him around all those years his brother stood alone in the castle while he got wasted in strangers' bedrooms, drinking cheap booze to make the time pass.

It would be easier, but Wilhelm has always been this way: determined to take an easy path and make it jagged. Set on digging up the gravel, turning the road unnavigable.

WILHELM
If I had known that would be our last kiss, I would have made the most of it

SIMON
Sorry, I think you have the wrong number.

WILHELM
Simon.
Please.

After winter break, Wilhelm comes back to Hillerska and finds out that Simon has transferred. He eyes where Felice and Sara sit side-by-side a few spots in front of him, the seat that Simon had once occupied beside Sara.

Wilhelm keeps his head down until he remembers that he has appearances to maintain, and he trains his eyes on the whiteboard so hard his vision blurs. He sits through his deskmate's intolerable presentation on economic policy and learns through it that his name is apparently Mikael, the first and last thing of substance he will ever know about him, and he plays along when boys stand at the table during lunch, arms thrown wide in open announcement of their conquests.

He knows that this is life, even if it isn't really his.

Later in the hallway, Sara walks up to him and corners him in by the entrance.

"Simon doesn't hate you," she tells him. Spoken if she were doing him a favor.

"Huh?" He looks down, staring at the yellow hairclip that pushes her bangs back. He's too scared to ask why she's still here when Simon isn't.

"Simon doesn't hate you," she repeats. "You have to know that it fucked him up, right? But it doesn't mean it has to be like this."

Sara is capable of being blunt in a purely informative way. Her words conveyed directly as fact, as though Wilhelm would be foolish to interpret them any other way.

"Uh," he tries. "Um, okay. Thanks?"

"Yeah," she says, and then she's walking down the steps, and he watches her go, off the same way Felice had gone.

The thing is: Wilhelm knows they never truly had time to process. The mechanics of public scandal operate at breakneck speed, leaving no respite for negotiation, for resolution.

One day Wilhelm had him. The next they were in limbo. The next they could no longer be.

And, contrary to what his mother definitely thinks of him, Wilhelm does understand this. Even if his childish self—the part that is still so resolutely seventeen—wants to lash out at the injustice of it all, wants to kick its legs around and demand a better path, he can understand. There are always fixes for little spills, ways to mend chipped china. Ways to fill in the cracks so meticulously that no one notices they were ever there to begin with.

But this is a glass plate shattered into a million shards. They cut at skin when he picks them up. He lets his hands bleed down into the tiles, pooling like the dread in his gut.

SIMON
Wilhelm.
What do you want me to say.

WILHELM
How's school?

SIMON
It's public school. What do you think?

WILHELM
Is going to public school a bad thing now?
I just want to know how you're doing.

Simon is typing...

The last time he ever spoke to his brother, Erik laughed at him and said, Just pretend you're someone else. Unflappable and obvious, always the better version of himself.

For what it's worth: he'd tried.

Really.

But then there was a boy.

No—scratch that. There had always been a boy, right from the very start.

So Wilhelm had tried, but in the end he would still just be a boy who wanted another boy. When Simon kisses him it's so insistent it turns bruising. His hands don't care that Wilhelm's hair is unwashed and oily, and he lets Wilhelm's fists grip at his curls, laughing open-mouthed into the scorching heat of his skin, the stretch of it taut across his collarbones.

This isn't really his life, but in that moment Wilhelm thinks it could be. For the first time, he thinks he wants it to be.

Simon isn't really his boy, but he might as well be.

"Your breath really is terrible," Simon announces in between kisses.

"I can't believe I'm letting you do this," he says again, making no move to pull away, his arms looped loosely around him.

"You're so hot," is all Wilhelm can respond with, mouth slack and voice dumb. He kisses him reverently, feeling aflame and incoherent, lost in the motion.

Wilhelm isn't all that much taller than Simon, but he likes the way he gets to press into his body in bed, how their shoulders stick together. Around them hazy morning light glows like a lantern, in thin, radiant strokes, the tentative wash of dawn.

"We could cut class," Simon suggests. His grin is wicked and wild, suggestive. When he puts a hand up to Wilhelm's mouth to quiet him, Wilhelm sticks his tongue out and licks at the skin.

"Fuck off," he says, and they giggle as he sits up, getting ready to put his clothes back on.

The best morning of his life would eventually become his worst. A spectacle rivaled only by the day before winter break, two silhouettes embracing in public farewell, sharing a touch inherently bereaved in its impermanence. A spectacle for curious, silent eyes.

But how was he to know?

"Did you quit the rowing team?" Felice asks at the beginning of the semester.

They're sharing a desk outside the piano room, and Felice is doing a terrible job of pretending to focus on her Physics textbook. Her fluorescent marker rests in her grasp, poised unconvincingly over an entirely clean page.

Wilhelm sighs. "Yeah," he says. "I can't go back there anymore."

Rowing had been the one thing at the school that kept him connected to Erik, a tangible legacy that was easy to elucidate. But he couldn't face it without Simon. And he especially couldn't face it with August still at the team's helm, safe from any rebuke or repercussion, absolved of villainy by his own fucking mother.

"I get it," she says. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to, you know?"

Well, that felt charged. But from the way she'd spoken Wilhelm could understand the intent beneath it. The way it was said for the two of them, probably. Something she had to pass off to him so she could finally hear for herself.

"Sure," he says, forcing out a chuckle. It sounds awkward, the way his voice always does to his ears. "And how's Rousseau?"

"Ugh. Don't even start."

The thing is:

If Erik had been the better version of Wilhelm, then Wilhelm can only be the worst version of himself. At his core, he's lazy and selfish and possessive. He wants, and not the way a noble boy—a respectable man, a normal person, someone fit for the crown—should want. He gets into fights without meaning to, going through the motions of existence completely unmoored, drifting out whirlpool to whirlpool, wondering when someone will finally stop and see him.

Wilhelm isn't a good person, and Simon is the best thing he's ever truly, really, had for himself.

The night Wilhelm sneaks his way into Simon's bedroom in Bjärstad—the night they sleep together for the first time—they lie down in his yellow-light bedroom as the sound of Simon's video game blares on behind them.

Simon is rubbing at his palm when Wilhelm asks, "Do you ever wish we were different people?"

He looks at him weirdly at that, as if this were a fundamentally useless thing to ask.

"What? It's just a question."

"Well, what do you mean by different? Like, do I wish I were a rich boarding school kid? Or do I wish I suddenly really enjoyed hard metal and reading meandering poetry collections?"

Wilhelm huffs a laugh and moves his hand away so he can reach his arms around his frame, gently pressing into the indents of his waist. "Just—different. Anything. If I weren't the prince or we didn't live in Sweden or we'd met at university studying Philosophy together and you were a cute guy from my morning lecture."

"I'm still a cute guy from your lecture! Uh, class."

"Yeah, yeah. Can you answer the question?"

"Okay," Simon hums, tracing a finger along the seam of Wilhelm's shirt. "Well, you're certainly not the most convenient person to like."

"Wow. Really?"

"Yes, it's actually very annoying to like a C-tier celebrity. And from the monarchy, no less. Complicates my socialist ideals—hey!"

He squirms as Wilhelm leans down and kisses his neck, pursing his lips together in protest. Then Wilhelm is moving to his cheek, and his mouth again, and they're kissing for what must be the millionth time that night, the connection long and slow. When Wilhelm leans back again there's a glint in Simon's eye, something shiny and bright, a version of Simon he wants to be exclusively privy to.

Simon starts again. "But I don't know. I mean, I don't want to be the person I am right now forever. So in a sense, yeah. I do wish I were different. Or that some things in my life were different."

"Yeah," Wilhelm whispers.

"But I can't just be like—I don't know. I don't know how things would have worked out if I weren't the person I were now, going to the school I am now, and if you weren't the prince, and if we hadn't—if everything hadn't happened exactly the way it did. So a part of me doesn't see the point in wondering."

Wilhelm hums, considering. Then he leans his head forward and lets it rest on Simon's chest wordlessly, looking around the stray details of his bedroom, the pieces he'd missed from his cursory rifling earlier, too preoccupied to truly register them.

"I think I'm the same," he tells him. Without finality, just an agreeable admission, something unaware of their impending circumstance.

But really—

Well.

He'll never know what it's like to be anyone else. At least, not while he's bound to the school, and certainly not while he's his parents' son. He doesn't know what it's like to be a university student, to have his life to himself, to weather his struggles of his own accord. He imagines moving back to Stockholm at nineteen, twenty. Buying his own bus tickets, kissing in the backseat of a cab after a long night out, drunk and reckless and lovesick. The image is so visceral it nearly makes him sick.

One time, Wilhelm had asked him, "Doesn't everyone do whatever they can to fit in, though?"

Isn't it normal to not want to be put down? Compared? He'd had enough of it from his own family, within those endless castle walls. A constant slew of disapproval regardless of the opportunities in his hands, regardless of how he stood independently.

In an unusual show of consternation, Simon had quieted down for a long, pregnant pause, his eyebrows furrowing.

"Not everyone," he'd said eventually. "Not my friends."

Wilhelm had laughed. At least, he remembers laughing. "Okay, yeah," he'd said, thinking about being at the football game, meeting Ayub for the first time, being shown the easy act of observation, of spectating. How nothing had been expected of him. Thinking about being on the back of a motorbike, free from the frame of his own life, free from the constant focal point of his own fuck-ups, his intolerable self.

But doesn't everyone want—isn't it worth a—does he even have it in him—

Wasn't Wilhelm allowed this recklessness, his misguided youth?

Simon doesn't hate you.

His mother tells him that in a few years, he'll grow up and see past the appeal of childish romances. That there's more to life than unsustainable desires, that he'll meet a woman who loves him, that he can be happy without fucking his whole life up.

Except Wilhelm is seventeen now. Wilhelm is seventeen and childishly, horribly, messily, unsustainably in love.

Wilhelm is seventeen and he thinks that hindsight is fucking worthless.

You have to know that it fucked him up, right?

WILHELM
I get it now.

I'm sorry. I know I already told you, but I'm sorry. I know how I made you feel and it was stupid, and I was an asshole, and you don't ever have to forgive me. I wish it could be easier for the both of us. You deserve better and I know that. And I wish I could honor you by coming clean, or by doing something drastic, or by changing the world. But it isn't that simple.

SIMON
That's what you said last time.
In fewer words, but...

WILHELM
I was angry at a lot of people last time.

SIMON
Yeah. Like me?

Wilhelm can't take it anymore. He exits his messages to pull up his contacts, where he's left Simon's name intact. When he presses call his thumb shakes incessantly, uselessly tapping at unresponsive pixels around the button until he can will himself to calm down.

"No," he spits out the moment Simon picks up, frantic, desperate. "I've never been angry at you, I swear. I'm sorry I let you into the crossfire."

He can't afford to lose his momentum, so he barrels on. "I was saying earlier—saying that I wish it could be easier. Because I want to make things right, except I'm still who I am. But with time—with time. If you give me time, I'll do what I can. You know that, right? I still need to go to university, and I need time to become my own person, and I can't do that right now. But you matter to me, and you always will."

"Wille," Simon whispers. He sounds tired. He sounds hesitant. He sounds exactly like his Simon, the Simon he's been away from for so long now, the Simon with the gentle, hushed voice Wilhelm hadn't known how badly he's missed.

"There has to be a way," he says.

Wilhelm bites his cheek so hard he thinks he might be able to taste blood. He has to go all in now, no holds barred.

"If I asked you to come over, would you?"

But it doesn't mean it has to be like this.

They're like moths to a flame, incapable of breaking habit. This shit has to be evolutionary, he thinks. Genetically encoded. Wilhelm can't think of any other explanation for the way he's still so pathetically drawn to Simon's orbit, even after all these days, these weeks, the long and crawling months. After all this time. Begging for him to hold Wilhelm down, to let him know that it's okay to just stay still, that he can finally stop chasing.

Simon is charming. Wilhelm isn't. Simon still sings at his school, and he has friends, and he has drive, and he's everything Wilhelm will never be.

Wilhelm is greedy. He'll do whatever it takes to have him back, in a space they can both decide on. Something drawn with four hands, something determined with clear conscience. He wants— he needs— he wants—

There's a knock on the window.

"They still haven't found a way to close off this stupid thing after everything that's happened here?" Simon says in disbelief, stumbling his way into his bedroom.

"Too much work," Wilhelm informs him. As it turns out, private schools can actually be extremely stingy when they need to be. He assumes most of the budget is going toward the extravagant banquet halls that are occupied once a year. "But just so you know, I think my bodyguards have gotten kind of fond of me now."

Simon lifts an eyebrow. "Maybe you're just not worth the hassle of dealing with," he teases.

"Well," Wilhelm tries. "You're still here, though. Aren't you?"

Simon shoves a finger into his chest. "This is a test run," he corrects. "We'll see how it goes. What are you going to do if someone sees me here?"

"I don't know," he admits. Sheepish, cowed. "But I think people have forgotten. Would it be such a big deal if they saw?"

"Ah, right," Simon starts innocently. "Because that isn't even you in the video, right? You could say that you were just offering emotional support to a classmate who'd, I don't know, gotten backstabbed by his trash boyfriend."

"Okay, ouch."

"Sorry," Simon offers belatedly. He doesn't sound very sorry at all.

"I don't think you are," Wilhelm says, smiling a little bit. "But you're allowed to be angry."

"Okay," Simon says, and his responding smile turns looser now, closer to the way he used to be. "Okay. Okay, now what?"

"Lie down with me," Wilhelm requests in a rush. This time, he thinks, the openness must show on his face. The way he needs, more than anything, because Simon comes easily, lying down by his side, their faces suddenly close together.

"Do you really get it?" Simon asks him.

"Tell me?" Wilhelm tries.

And it's like he's finally ready to talk, because the floodgates all open at once.

Simon takes a deep breath. He says, "It's not—I just didn't want to be the guy who messed around with some stupid prince and was dumb enough to get caught. I didn't want to be this ugly open secret." A festering wound, something glaring but impossible to broach with grace or elegance. Wilhelm gets it now, more than he ever could before. "I hated the fact that people knew about us but wouldn't talk about it. The fact that you couldn't talk about it. I just hated feeling... so. Disposable."

Wilhelm blinks, staring at the stubborn line of Simon's mouth, the way his brows knit together. His cheeks are flushed and there's acne fading away on his forehead, and Wilhelm wants so desperately to bridge this gap between them, to pull him close and keep him in his arms forever.

"I do get it," he insists. "I just wanted you to understand me, back then. But I didn't—it was bad for both of us. Obviously. I'm sorry I was being so stupid."

"We both were," he starts, then pauses. "Okay, nope. That was mostly on you. But it's also kind of that it's still so embarrassing to think about!"

Wilhelm frowns. "You mean the video?"

"Yes!" Simon shuts his eyes. "When I go to university people are going to be like… they're going to stare at me and be like, 'Hey, aren't you that guy from that video?' And then what am I supposed to say?!"

"Dude, no one's going to remember that in two years."

"And how do you know?" Simon challenges. "I'm sure people still watch Kim Kardashian's sextape every day."

Okay, what? Wilhelm has to bite his lip at that, holding back a bewildered giggle. "First of all, neither of us are as relevant as Kim Kar—no, seriously. What? I'm just a loser prince and you're a normal guy, and in a few years people will have forgotten."

"But you can't come out," he tries.

"I—"

"No, sorry," Simon says. "It's not about that, you're right." His fingers take hold of his, sliding their hands together. When he smiles it's right up at Wilhelm, their eyes locked together. It feels, finally, like they've reached a point of equilibrium. Everything in balance, no sudden motion capable of jerking them away, something—he truly wants to believe—capable of sustainability.

"I'm glad you messaged me," Simon admits, breath hot against his lips.

"Me too," Wilhelm whispers.

Simon leans in just a fraction. He kisses him quickly, decisively, and Wilhelm can't help the way his whole body shudders. It feels like his life has aligned again. This, Simon. The two of them. It's what's always been right.

Then Simon leans back and says, with a shit-eating grin, "Maybe your bodyguards are nice to you now because of all the dirt they can sell to the press if they ever get fired," and the moment is instantly splintered.

"Simon, why are you thinking about that while kissing me?"

"No, think about it," Simon insists, breaking Wilhelm's hold on his hands to gesture them around. "They'd literally be set for life!"

"Okay, do you not know how an NDA works?"

"Don't be pedantic," Simon scoffs, knocking his shoulder against him in protest. "You're no fun," he accuses.

Wilhelm rubs at the sore spot, mildly surprised at Simon's unrestrained strength. He opens his mouth to defend himself, then frowns abruptly, stopping short. "Actually—do you know how an NDA works? I really have no idea."

Simon looks at him with this horrible expression on his face. Something that says, why am I even into you? while still being, very clearly, into him. Wilhelm feels drunk with power. "You're the most useless crown prince I've ever met."

"And that's why we're perfect for each other, right?"

"Huh? What does that mean? You think I'm useless?"

"No, no," Wilhelm rushes out. "You're perfect," he assures, peppering Simon's face with kisses, feeling the vibrations of his giggles against his skin.

Wilhelm feels so giddy and stupid and horribly soft. It's almost as bad as the time he'd lain down cross-faded on the football field vomiting a lifetime's worth of emotional vulnerability to Simon over the phone, mind hazy through the thrill of having successfully punched his number in.

Almost.

Simon's curls are slightly longer now, and they frame the sides of his face loosely, lazily, enhancing the warmth of his cheeks and eyes and lips. Wilhelm can't help the way he keeps leaning in, the way he surges forward to capture his mouth in his. Moth, meet flame. He's useless to resist the pull, Simon's natural gravity, knocking Wilhelm so easily off any predetermined axis.

"You're the most beautiful person I've ever met," Wilhelm confirms again, feeling idiotic. Feeling real.

"You're biased," Simon retorts. "You wouldn't know objectivity if it stared you in the face."

"And is that such a crime?" he asks.

Being seventeen is about making compromises. It's about sneaking in through windows and learning how to draw the blinds. It's about recouping the pieces, and it's about two bodies pressed together in discovery, in secret, in hushed understanding. Wilhelm has never been more certain of this than he is now, kissing along the smooth plane of Simon's stomach, his fingers digging into his sides.

Being seventeen is about starting over, and it's about letting the future unfold. Hoping the ones who matter will stay in it.

Simon giggles and runs a hand across his hair, strands slipping loosely through his fingers and sticking together in dirty blond clumps. He'd always reveled in Wilhelm's horrible bedhead far too much.

"No," he says, beaming at him. "I guess I'll let you off, just this time."

"Good. After everything we've been through, I don't think we could handle the scandal of the crown prince getting arrested, could we?"

"Oh, shut the fuck up."