Chapter Text
The fact that Simon shows up to Felice’s movie night in the shirt Henry smeared grass on is almost entirely unintentional: most of his other shirts are in the wash, and this one was lying on the floor in plain view and he was in a hurry. He hasn’t given much thought to his outfit at all, actually, because thinking too hard about how he looks in preparation for spending two hours in a room with Wille feels a little pathetic. It’s hard not to remember, though, that this shirt and those grass stains were the first thing in months that caught and held Wille’s attention.
So Simon didn’t exactly intend anything by wearing it. What he didn’t intend at all is for Henry to burst into laughter the moment he sees it and clap Simon on the back so hard he nearly topples into the doorframe.
“Proving me wrong, socialist boy?”
Simon still isn’t one hundred percent positive there isn’t a little bit of an insult tucked away in there, but even if there is, that’s just how friendship with Henry works: Simon makes self-deprecating jokes and Henry makes cutting ones, and neither of them acknowledges out loud that it’s not the healthiest dynamic.
He tries not to let any sudden melancholy bleed into his answering smile as he searches for a suitably glib thing to say, but Henry’s attention has already drifted to the person stood motionless in the doorway behind Simon.
“Henry. Simon. Hi.”
“Hey,” Henry says, hesitant. Simon says nothing.
The lights in the lounge are dimmed already in preparation for the movie night, and Wille is backlit by the incandescent hallway, expression as shadowed as his guarded greeting. Even so, Simon knows without having to see it that Wille’s eyes have landed on his shirt once again, a smudgy signifier of the casual touch he must also have witnessed just moments ago.
“Are we in your way? Sorry,” Henry says, when it becomes clear that Wille and Simon have nothing to say to each other. “Are you sitting with anyone? You can sit with us, if you want.”
Simon glares at Henry and hopes it conveys his absolute conviction that Wille cannot, in fact, sit with them. Henry grins back.
“I’m sitting with Felice,” Wille says, formal and awkward, and shoves past them into the room.
“That went well,” Henry says.
Simon isn’t in the mood to laugh at such a tired joke. “You shouldn’t have offered. He’s still mad at me.”
“No shit.” Henry slings his arm around Simon’s shoulders in his easy, proprietary way and steers him toward the front of the room. “Let’s sit where he has no choice but to watch you all night.”
“You’re the worst,” Simon says, even though the idea does have some petty appeal.
It doesn’t do anything to diminish Henry’s cheer. “Probably. But I’m also the best queer ally at this school. August wishes he were me.”
“Ha ha.”
“You know we’re not all as terrible as you think we are.” That’s enough of a non-sequitur that it startles Simon out of his Wille-induced funk. Henry’s hair flops into his eyes, blue in the light of the projector screen, and his normally transparent face is washed out into inscrutability. “Even me.”
“I don’t think you’re terrible,” Simon says, but he kind of does. Taking pity on the middle-class kid just because he got outed doesn’t make up for months of snobbery. Or for entrenched economic privilege and a willful blindness thereof, for that matter.
Henry links their pinkies, almost in a mirror of the time Wille once had, only to twist Simon’s hand up between them like Sara forcing him to pinky promise when they were children. “You’re only friends with me because I haven’t given you a choice. If you’d taken a shot on anyone besides Wille, you’d have realized there are plenty of people who want to be your friend.” He lets go, flashes a sheepish grin, and shrugs. “Just saying.”
That’s probably all true. Simon has a decently high opinion of himself; he knows he’s likable. But it’s hard to admit that he came in determined not to like anyone – that maybe he is partly or even largely to blame for his own loneliness.
He takes refuge in insincerity. It’s a coward’s move, but it’s what Henry probably expects and Simon isn’t ready to face his own culpability in a room full of his sister’s friends, his exp, and – improbably – his new best friend. “Taken a shot on you, huh? I didn’t know you felt that way about me.”
“Asshole,” Henry says, slugging him on the arm, which is exactly the kind of normal Simon needs in that moment. “But I’m willing to act like it to make your ex jealous, so stop looking this majestic fucking gift horse in the mouth and touch knees with me, or whatever repressed little princes do.”
Simon chooses not to reveal that that’s exactly what Wille did. “Out of curiosity, have you ever seen a horse?”
“Terrified of them,” Henry says cheerfully, tugging Simon to the floor. “Think Sara could teach me to like them? I hear she’s a really good –“
Simon attempts to smother him with a squishy unicorn pillow.
“ – horsewoman, Jesus, calm down. I don’t think I even want to know what you think I was going to say. Let’s just watch fucking Barbie Princess Party Three or whatever and you can duel me over your sister’s virtue later.”
They watch Brokeback Mountain, and Simon spitefully holds Henry’s hand through all of the sex scenes. He refuses to turn around to see if Wille is watching him do it.