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When Wilhelm opens his eyes, Simon is watching him with soft focused eyes and a hint of a sleepy smile.
They have the covers pulled up around their chests, almost to their shoulders, but Wilhelm feels exposed under Simon’s gaze anyway. It’s not a bad thing, vulnerability is as exciting as it is terrifying, and Wilhelm is excited and terrified in equal measures when they’re together. He barely remembers to breathe— eyes on him like this isn't something he’s used to.
Oh, he’s used to being watched. He’s used to being stared at, scrutinised by gawping bystanders and camera lenses and the words of newspaper columns, harsh and judging.
But Simon sees him in a brilliant clarity and Wilhelm chokes on air at how beautiful Simon is: how a curl of his hair falls across his forehead, the dip of his shoulder, the curve of his lips. He’s smiling, waiting for Wilhelm to speak.
Wilhelm can’t find any words to say anything even close to how he feels right now.
Finally, Simon speaks. Says, “What was the fight about?” His eyes are focused now, intense even.
“Hmm?” Wilhelm is caught off guard, too caught up in remembering the night before (soft touches, hot mouths, breathless). “What fight?”
“The fight that got you sent to Hillerska.” Simon smiles at him. All knowing, amused. “You know, the entire reason we met.”
Wilhelm looks away.
Simon’s hand brushes his arm. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says, and Wilhelm swallows nerves.
“No, it’s— it’s just that I barely remember.” Wilhelm shrugs, stutters. Something curls in his gut and it’s not pretty. “I, um, well, I mean I was pretty drunk.”
“You barely remember…” Simon hums, thoughtfully. “But you do remember.”
Wilhelm tries to stay relaxed, casual. Tries not to give too much away. It’s not that he thinks Simon judges him for what happened. It’s not like he doesn’t think Simon would understand. it’s just— it’s behind him now. It feels so far behind him, like he’s walked through a long, dark, tunnel to be here today and thinking about it makes him want to dig his fingernails into his palms and make tiny, red crescents. “As I say, I was drunk.”
“Okay.” Simon kisses his cheek softly. “You can tell me when you’re ready,” he says, and Wilhelm is overcome with relief.
He’s so good like that, Simon. So forgiving, so easy. It’s so easy, Wilhelm thinks, to feel safe with him. He hopes Simon can feel safe with him, too, but he’s too scared to ask, because what if he says no? Wilhelm wouldn’t blame him if he did— he barely feels safe with himself most days.
That night, Simon is attentive. He brushes the hair from Wilhelm's face softly, kisses his eyelids each in turn before kissing him proper, and Wilhelm lets him do it: take control like this, like he knows Wilhelm is vulnerable tonight. Like he needs to be loved.
Wilhelm falls asleep replaying the infamous clip from that night— the one he saw a hundred times until he managed to turn autoplay off on twitter— behind his eyelids. The clip that someone posted at two thirty in the morning, that the royal advisors found out about by five. The one that caused his mother to give him the most anguished look of disappointment as he smoothed down the creases in his suit and sat down in front of the cameras to apologise.
The clip that brought him here, to this moment, right now.
Wilhelm isn’t a good actor, maybe that’s been his problem all along.
It’s why he can’t pretend not to be in love already. It’s impossible not to want to reach out, to feel the warmth that radiates off Simon’s bare skin, golden in the morning light. He wonders if Simon can tell that he has already fallen for him completely. He wonders if Simon ever imagined being with someone so— so awkward, so constricted by tradition. Simon has made his feelings on the role of the Royal family clear enough, and it’s something that had made Wilhelm like him all the more when they first met but--
But he is the Royal family now. He’s going to be King.
Wilhelm is the straight line of procedure and Simon is unapologetically, unequivocally himself. And he is beautiful, he’s been beautiful since Wilhelm first saw him, first watched him sing in his maroon coloured uniform, up there behind the altar.
And the singing was beautiful, but really it was Simon’s reaction to the heckling from some dickhead in the pew behind him in the chapel that first made Wilhelm really sit up and take notice.
Simon’s retaliation was defiance, pride, standing tall and singing with a purpose. A voice made of molten gold, eyes gleaming with the sort of enjoyment that spoke louder than the words fuck you.
Wilhelm doesn’t have that kind of power in him. He knows he’s weak. His retaliation to the heckling he endured— the taunts, the hands on his jacket, the club too crowded— was anger, lashing out, violence.
When he was pulled too tightly, string wound tight around the fingers of the public eye, he’d headbutted someone, embarrassed himself, his family.
There wasn’t much nobility in that.
Simon says he has anger inside him too, but all Wilhelm sees, all he feels when he touches Simon, is a fearless and wondrous strength.
Simon’s family home is everything Wilhelm’s has never been, and without Erik, he isn’t sure it will ever be warm at all.
His parents are hollowed out of stone. The press followed them to the funeral in an invasive, incomprehensible swarm of noise and camera flashes. The rooms in the palace were too big and yet they still suffocated Wilhelm violently. The staff watched him, anticipating his next movement.
They have always been able to guess what it will be, it seems.
Except, they didn’t guess he’d start a fight those months ago. They didn’t see that coming, he reasons. But then maybe they did. Maybe there’s always been a contingency plan in place for when he inevitably fucked up.
Maybe his name has been down on the Hillerska student list since the day he was born, ready for the day he’d need to be made an example of, Crown Prince or not. Maybe letting people down been foreseen since the day he took his first breath.
“Am I predictable?” Wilhelm can’t stop the question from forming before he’s spoken it. He shouldn’t be thinking about this— this bullshit existentialism— right now. Still, it’s always at the back of his mind: Is he really a person at all or just a tool for the monarchy?
“In bed?” Simon replies. He tongues at the straw of his Coke and it makes Wilhelm want to worship at his feet for a lifetime and more.
“No, not in— oh, shit.” Wilhelm panics, half laughing in a strangled way. “Am I predictable in bed?!”
He probably is predictable in bed, to be fair. He’s not exactly experienced in the art of getting your first ever boyfriend off. Not yet.
Simon giggles at him. “No. I just— I don’t know what you’re asking me. Where has this question even come from?”
Wilhelm shrugs. He blushes. They’ve got zero studying done this afternoon and Wilhelm wants to blame Simon and his tongue, but he’s just as much to blame. Who would want to study political economics when they could study the colour of Simon’s eyes? No one.
“Wille, what are you asking me?” Simon asks him, softer now. Drink forgotten. He looks worried, almost.
Wilhelm doesn’t want to see him worried. “I don't know,” he admits. “I’m— I think I’m just overthinking something.”
They go back to pretending to study until Simon gets a call from Ayub asking when he’s going to be at home to get thrashed in a game of Call of Duty.
“Not tonight,” Simon tells him. He grins at whatever Ayub replies with and says, “fuck off,” with glee in his eyes. Wilhelm guessed it was a comment about how often Wilhelm’s sneaked Simon into his room lately. He likes Ayub, though. Is glad that Simon has friends like him and Rosh.
The only person he could imagine having the same conversation with is his brother, so he imagines, just for a moment, that he still could. He tells Simon he’s going to the bathroom and stands in the hallway, dials his brother's old number.
His voicemail inbox has been switched off, so Wilhelm can’t even pretend anymore. He wonders if Erik would find it funny, that after years of trying to get his brother off the phone to avoid his good-natured teasing and dumb big-brother jokes, Wilhelm is now so desperate to talk to him that he'd do anything just to listen to his voicemail message again.
Later, in Wilhelm’s room, with the curtains half-drawn and the sky a blanket of tiny stars beyond, Simon answers his question.
“You surprise me,” Simon tells him, hand pressed to Wilhelm’s chest, over his heart, as they come down from the high of sex. “You’re not predictable. Since the day we met, you’ve surprised me. That must count for something,” he says.
His voice is hoarse. Wilhelm wants to drown in it, abandon himself to the way that Simon sounds right at this moment.
Wilhelm had almost forgotten their earlier conversation, his mind caught up in the moment, in the sounds Simon makes trying not to be too loud, lest someone in the corridor get nosy, and in the span of his eyelashes over Simon’s cheeks when he closes his eyes and comes at Wilhelm’s urgent touch.
“Thank you,” Wilhlem says and he really, really means it,
Simon kisses him again then, slow and lazy. It’s not going anywhere, they couldn’t go again yet if they tried. They’re all boneless limbs and breathless drowsiness. The moon is low outside. He nips Simon’s lower lip, tugs at it with his teeth. Experimental, gentle. Just because.
Simon makes a keening noise, pulls away grinning. “You're definitely not predictable,” he says, and then he leans in and presses his mouth to Wilhelms again. “Not to me, anyway.”
Their bodies fit in a perfect line, like they were made for this, and Wilhelm thinks that maybe he isn’t just a tool for the monarchy after all.
He kisses Simon, traces his jaw with his thumb and memorises every minute movement that Simon makes. He does this until he’s too tired to move another muscle, until Simon rolls onto his side and mumbles into the pillow, “Sweet dreams, Wille,” and then they fall asleep.
Wilhelm dreams of the nightclub back in Stockholm. He dreams of the noises of that night, the vodka, the way his heart thudded when it felt like it was too much.
He dreams he’s being shouted at, angry visceral voices, shouting angry, visceral words. Erik is there, in the dream, a calming hand on his shoulder, until he isn’t.
At the end of the dream, Simon whispers, “I’ve got you. Wake up," and Wilhelm does. It's morning, and he breathes in the cool morning air deeply, deep into his lungs.
Wilhelm lets himself into the music room quietly.
It’s a few days later, before breakfast, and maybe they shouldn’t be in here so early really, but Wilhelm doesn’t care.
The night before, August had demanded all of Wilhelm’s time and attention, and Simon had gone to watch Rosh train with her football team, had texted him photos from the sidelines, which he’d not been able to look at until August had finally, finally, left him alone.
When Simon had texted him that morning to say he was getting into school early, Wilhelm hadn’t even hesitated to get up and seek him out.
“They called me all these slurs,” he says, when he’s found Simon playing piano, and he’s shut the door so they’re truly alone. “Homophobic slurs.”
“What? Who?” Simon looks ready to fly at someone; fearless, sparking. Maybe there is some anger in him, too. Maybe they’re not so different. “Who do we have to fight?”
Wilhelm laughs. “Actually, I already did that,” he says.
Simon raises an eyebrow.
“A week or so ago, you asked me about the fight. The one that got me sent here.” Wilhelm leans against the piano.
Simon looks up at him, interested, listening. He’s a good listener.
Wilhelm starts talking. “You asked me about the fight and I said I couldn’t remember much, which is true. I don’t— it’s still hazy. The YouTube videos help though.” He rolls his eyes. The memes, the remixes, the gifs, the media forms are endless. “But what I do remember is that he called me names. Disgusting names.”
Simon's brow furrows. He still looks beautiful. “And that made you angry?”
“Yes it made me angry.” Wilhelm can’t keep standing there. He feels hot with the memory, like he’s burning up, reliving it. He walks over to the window, stares out at the lawn. “Because… Because how dare he?”
Simon’s voice is measured. “How dare he… Call you gay?”
“How dare he say it like it’s a bad thing?” Wilhelm turns back to face Simon, his fists curled up at his sides. He can feel his heartbeat rising again, like it did that night, the anger unfurling inside of him as the bass from the speakers reverberated behind him.
Simon’s face softens. “He was just trying to provoke you,” he says. “Probably just your regular, teenage fuckin’ homophobic asshole. I doubt he even thought about the words he used.”
Simon is wise, Simon is right, he knows that. Still, Wilhelm remembers the sting of the words and the effect they had on him, then. The way they hit, so close, so personally, right to his core.
“Probably not. But it worked. He provoked me and I made a scene.” Wilhelm heads back to the piano and sits down on the bench next to him, thigh to thigh. He rests his head on Simon’s shoulder. “I was the asshole.”
Simon presses a kiss to the top of his head. Says nothing, allows Wilhelm time to calm down. He’s so good at looking after him, he’s so good. Wilhelm has never felt this way about anybody, and it feels like the world has opened up to him in a way he’d never realised it could.
Simon’s hand is warm when he takes it, and Wilhelm smiles to himself, lopsided, tired. When he looks up, Simon’s collar is ruffled and he resists the urge to fix it for him. “You know what’s funny, though?” He says instead.
Simon plays a run of notes on the piano with one hand, keeps his other hand in Wilhelm’s lap as Wilhelm stokes his knuckles gently. “What?”
“I’m glad,” Wilhelm says. “That it happened.”
“Me too.” Simon smiles at him, and his smile is like oxygen, flooding Wilhelm's lungs, making him feel alive. “Come on, Streetfighter, let’s go eat breakfast.”