Chapter Text
Simon
“How’s your fancy university?” Ayub’s grin split his face in two.
Simon kicked him, long legs reaching across the small space he called a bedroom to knock the controller out of Ayub’s hands.
“What?” Ayub said, scrambling for it, “isn’t it fancy? It looks fancy.”
“Yeah, it’s fancy,” Simon conceded. “It’s good. Competitive.”
“You’re the best, man, you’ll be ok.” Ayub went back to the game. “It’s good to see you, we miss you. Rosh says you’re going to forget about us.”
“Never,” Simon laughed, “you’re too annoying to forget.”
They fell into easy silence. Simon had been worried it might be awkward, having Ayub visit. Since moving away for University, he’d only seen his friends on a tiny screen, at haphazard moments. Ayub and Rosh yelling into a phone at the pub, Rosh on the bus to work, Ayub half distracted playing videogames.
Simon had been away for three months, but it felt like years. They were growing up, and he’d left them behind to go to ‘fancy university’. Although, his life was anything but glamourous. The music program was exhausting. Every minute he wasn’t in class, he was studying, or practising, or thinking about studying and practising. He had no time to hold down a job, and he was living in a shit box apartment and eating noodles out of a cup because of it.
“You seen him yet? The prince?” Ayub’s question brought Simon out of his thought spiral.
“Huh? Who?”
“Uh… Wilhelm? You know? The prince? Second in line to the throne? Headbutted someone in a nightclub and got turned into a meme? That guy?”
Simon shook his head. “Why would I see a prince?”
“He goes to your fancy university, doesn’t he?”
“Does he?”
Ayub chuckled. “You need to get back online man, you’re missing everything!”
“I need to focus - social media distracts me.”
“You need to have a life too, no?”
***
There was a rodent on Sara’s head.
Simon blinked.
There was still a rodent on Sara’s head.
“Do I want to know?” he said, pushing past her into their cramped kitchen and opening the fridge.
“About what?”
“About what? What do you mean about what? I mean about the rat on your head.”
“It’s not a rat, Simon, it’s a guinea pig.”
Simon rolled his eyes as he opened the milk and drank straight from the bottle. Sara didn’t mind. Not living with their mother had many benefits, but the main one was no one giving him shit for drinking milk from the bottle.
“Guinea pig, guinea rat, whatever. Why is it on your head?”
“She likes it there.” Sara was standing in the doorway, watching him intently.
“Oh, you’ve asked her?”
Sara just blinked at him.
“I’m joking, Sara.”
“I know. I just didn’t find it funny.”
There was a pause. And then they both snorted with laughter. Simon had to struggle not to lose any milk out his nose. Sara had to struggle not to drop a guinea pig off her head.
“Just promise me it’s not sleeping in your bed.”
“No, she’s with her sisters, in a cage,” Sara said, removing the long-haired thing from her head and reaching forward to place it inside a cage he hadn’t yet noticed on the counter. Small squeaking sounds emerged as she opened it to gently place the creature inside. Simon watched her and smiled.
“Another rescue from class?”
“No Simon, I just found them on the street and brought them home.”
Simon raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“That was sarcasm.”
“I thought you didn’t do sarcasm?”
“I love sarcasm.”
“Was that sarcasm?”
“Guess you’ll never know.” She grinned. “Oh, guess what?” she said, suddenly animated.
“What?” Simon wiped the rim of the bottle and put it back in the fridge.
“I saw him today. The prince,” she added, when he looked confused.
“Where?”
“At uni of course. In the courtyard. He doesn’t have bodyguards, I thought he would.”
“Am I the last person in the world to find out we study with royalty?”
“Guess so, you didn’t know?”
“Ayub told me last weekend. Then I saw something about it on a magazine cover at the shop. Now you. I didn’t know anything about it and now suddenly he’s everywhere.”
“Baader-Meinhof,” Sara said.
“Huh?”
“It’s called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. When you’ve never heard of something, and then you hear about it for the first time, and suddenly it’s everywhere. It’s a cognitive bias. Humans like patterns, but we don’t like coincidence. So we look for patterns in coincidence and convince ourselves the patterns are more likely than coincidence. You’ve probably seen him around before, or saw news articles about it, but you weren’t paying attention, so your brain thought it was unimportant.”
“It is unimportant,” Simon shrugged. “He’s just some rich boy. There’s plenty of those.”
“But now you’re paying attention,” Sara said, “you’ll probably see him everywhere.”
***
Wilhelm, Prince of Sweden, second in line to the crown and inheritor of obscenely vast wealth was in Simon’s music theory class. Like right there, two rows in front of him on the other side of the aisle.
“Baader-Meinhof,” Simon whispered to himself, taking his seat in the lecture hall.
“What did you say?” the girl beside him whispered.
“Nothing, sorry.” Simon pulled out his notebook and pens. How long had a prince been in his class without him noticing? Was this some sort of conspiracy?
Wilhelm, the prince, looked pretty normal, to be honest. He had a laptop out on his desk and was scrolling through his phone while he waited for class to start. Although Simon couldn’t help noticing that the other hand was held compulsively up to Wilhelm’s mouth, where he was nervously biting the edge of his thumbnail. It was extremely strange to see a famous person, a royal famous person, sitting in the front row of music theory class like it was nothing.
He doesn’t look like his portraits, was the strange and unbidden thought that came to Simon’s mind. When had Simon ever even seen royal portraits? He didn’t care about royals. He thought they were outdated, stuffy, boring. A drain on public tax dollars. He’d probably seen the photos in the news or something. You can’t grow up in a monarchy and not know about royals, even if you didn’t want to. But the prince did look different. Younger somehow, in his chinos and collared shirt, and smaller, like he wanted to disappear into his seat. He had long, blonde hair that framed his face, and his nose turned up, just a little, at the end.
“Alright everyone, thank you, let’s get started.” Simon was startled to discover the lecturer, Marie, was at the lectern. “Now, I wouldn’t ordinarily do this, but in the circumstances…” she looked over to the prince, who visibly stiffened. “We do have a new student in our course today, and I’d like us all to make him welcome. Prince Wilhelm has decided to learn a little music theory with us this semester! Welcome His Royal Highness.”
There was a smattering of applause. The prince turned in his seat and waved awkwardly at them, and for the first time, a little smile flashed across his lips. Simon found himself mirroring it. For one brief second their eyes met, and Simon felt like he’d been caught somehow, but the prince’s gaze slid away quickly, and the moment passed.
***
“Ok this is getting ridiculous now,” Simon hissed at Felice as they lined up ready to walk on stage.
“Huh? What is?” She was smoothing out her collar, only half listening. Felice wasn’t exactly his friend, but she was the only person other than his sister that he actually spoke to at uni.
“The prince, being here. He’s everywhere I look.” Wilhelm was clearly visible, a few rows back, talking with a dark-haired man with a pointed face.
“Oh Wilhelm?” she said, in a way that was not off-handed at all, “I invited him.”
“You invited the prince to watch our choir performance?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know the prince?”
“Sure. My mother went to school with the Queen.”
“Of course she did.”
Felice ignored his tone. “We’re friends, sort of, we knew each other when we were little.”
“And you invited him to our concert?”
“Yes?”
“Right. Ok.” Simon wasn’t going to be nervous about that. Sure, he had a solo, but why should it matter that the prince was here to see it? Simon did not care about that. And yes, objectively, the prince was good looking, but Simon didn’t care about that either.
Just some rich boy.
He shrugged and walked onto the risers with the others.
To Simon, singing felt like - had always felt like - freedom. He loved to sing in harmony, to be part of something greater, to weave one line through the others, the voices blending to create something greater than each of them. The second the conductor raised her arms, Simon forgot about everything, stopped worrying, let his voice lift up and sang. He knew it was on his face, he could feel himself grinning. When his solo came, he closed his eyes for a moment and let himself just enjoy it. Heard his own voice come back to him in the acoustics. When he opened his eyes, he searched the small crowd quickly for Sara, and immediately found her, their eyes locking, grins identical. Simon shook his head, turned away and found another set of eyes. Wilhelm. Wilhelm wasn’t watching the choir, he was watching him, Simon, and his eyes were bright, his smile warm. Simon refused to feel any particular royal feelings about this, and instead grinned back, like it was just a boy, just some rich boy who liked his singing, and was smiling at him. He smiled back.
***
“That was very good.”
Just some rich boy. Simon made himself not react. “Thank you.”
“I’m Wilhelm, by the way.”
Simon didn’t react to that either. “Simon.”
“Nice to meet you, Simon.”
Simon smiled, he couldn’t help it. “And you, Wilhelm.”
There was a pause. What sort of small talk did you make with a prince, who’d just approached you out of nowhere after your concert?
But the prince, Wilhelm, broke the silence first. “So, um… will you be at the party this weekend?”
“Uh…” Simon didn’t want to be rude, but rich people understood that there was more than one party each weekend, right? Like Wilhelm didn’t think there was just his social calendar and his life going on, right? Of course, Simon wasn’t going to any parties, so it was easy to say, “…no? What party?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you not a college resident? I thought… Felice said you were her friend, I thought you might live with her, at Gracemere.”
“No, I live off campus.” Simon squared his shoulders, lifted his chin.
“Oh great, sorry, my mistake.”
“You live on campus then?”
Wilhelm laughed, “of course.”
Simon bristled. “Right.” He turned to leave. A sudden hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Sorry, wait.” Wilhelm immediately withdrew his hand. “Please.”
Simon turned back. Folded his arms. Wilhelm hadn’t said anything wrong, and yet Simon got the distinct impression he was reading from a script. It was like speaking to a robot.
Wilhelm took a breath. “There is a party this weekend, all the first-year students who live on campus are invited. You are a first-year, right?”
“Yes. We’re in the same music theory class.”
“Yes of course, I remember.”
There was a pause. Simon wondered what on earth was happening.
“Would you like to come to the party?” Wilhelm’s thumbnail was back in his mouth.
“Oh.” Simon blinked a few times. He could see Sara over the prince’s shoulder, eyes wide, staring at him. “Yeah, ok. As long as, can I bring someone with me? Another first-year?”
Wilhelm faltered for a minute. “Yes, yes of course. Do you have Instagram? I’ll send you the invitation.”
************