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Chapter Text

The most aggravating part of this, Simon thought, was that they waited until the end of the school day to do it. He'd gone his entire first day back after Christmas break, attended all his classes, and submitted all the pending assignments he'd been working on for weeks, and he'd thought the worst part of coming back to Hillerska would be the pain of seeing Wille again.

But no, of course things couldn't be that easy for him. Just as he was leaving his last class and getting ready to go back home for the day, that's when he got called to the headmistress's office. Because these rich assholes just loved rubbing salt into the wound.

"Suspended?!" Simon exclaimed as soon as the words were out of Headmistress Lilja's mouth.

"Yes, for two weeks, starting tomorrow." She pursed her lips, pausing. To her credit, the woman did look like she wanted to be doing anything but telling him this. "I'm sorry, Simon, but you did get caught on tape having broken into Forest Ridge House—"

"I did not break in, I was let inside," he corrected angrily. Well, technically Wille's window had been left unlocked and so he had let himself inside with a mostly incoherent Prince of Sweden in tow, but that was close enough. "Breaking in" made him sound like a goddamn criminal.

"—to engage in inappropriate behavior with another student," she continued as if Simon hadn't spoken. "The board deliberated on this... situation over the break, and they have decided that the rules must be enforced if we are to encourage discipline amongst the student body."

Simon scoffed. "Really? Then why am I the only one here?" he retorted. "Someone recorded that video and uploaded it for the entire world to see without my consent. And I'm certainly not the only person in the video," he added. "Where are they, then? Why are they not getting suspended as well?"

"We are unaware of the identity of the person or persons who recorded or uploaded the video," she said, sounding very much like she was speaking from a prepared PR response. "We simply do not have the technical capabilities to figure it out on our own."

Simon had to bite his lip to keep himself from blurting it out. He was aware it had been August who filmed it. Felice had visited Sara over the break, and she'd informed both Eriksson siblings of her discovery. She said she had told Wilhelm. Simon had assumed the Crown was quietly taking care of it, so he hadn't asked. Imagine his shock when he came back to school that day and saw August still hanging around like nothing had happened. Unfortunately, he didn't even have time to process this information before he was ambushed with this suspension, but that didn't mean he wasn't out-of-his-mind enraged about it.

"As for the other student in the video," the headmistress added, still very matter-of-factly, "they are not clearly identifiable from the video alone, and although we believe the rules should be enforced, I'm afraid we can't suspend a student without concrete proof."

"You mean you can't punish the Crown Prince after he's already publicly denied it's him in the video," he retorted harshly. It's not that he wanted to rat Wille out or anything; there was just no point in playing dumb. The headmistress knew very well it was Wilhelm in the video; the Queen herself had come all the way to Hillerska to deal with the aftermath, after all. The staff and the students all knew: everybody could recognize Wille's room at Forest Ridge. The only reason he was getting shit about it and Wille wasn't was that Wille was a royal.

He couldn't fucking believe it. If anything, the school should be thanking him for getting Wille back to his dorm safely. It wouldn't bring them any good press to have the damn Crown Prince choke on his own vomit in the middle of the night with his bodyguards being none the wiser. And what kind of safety guarantee could Hillerska even offer the Crown, anyway, if they allowed their residents to routinely sneak out of their rooms to party and easily leave school property in the middle of the damn night to go roll around in the artificial turf of a random football field in Bjärstad while being completely high off their asses? Where was their stupid enforcement then?

The headmistress had enough decency to not deny it. "I'm very sorry, Simon," she repeated, this time sounding fully sincere. "If it were up to me, I wouldn't have done this. You're a good student, and I think you have more than enough to deal with already, what with the video itself. Unfortunately, I cannot overrule the board on this one, so I'm going to have to ask you to please leave the premises of Hillerska School for the next two weeks."

"Great. Thanks," Simon muttered bitterly. He pushed himself to his feet and grabbed his backpack, which he had dropped on the ground beside his chair when he came in, shouldering it crossly. Then he stomped out the door.

To say that Wilhelm wasn't expecting Simon to approach him at all would be the understatement of the century.

They hadn't talked at all during the break, save for two errant texts Wilhelm had sent before he could change his mind, wishing Simon and his family a happy Christmas and New Year respectively. Simon had replied to both texts with a quick "Thanks, you too" and nothing else, and that was the extent of their communication since they last saw each other.

So Wilhelm had spent most of the break locked in his room. He did need to step out a couple of times for the royal end-of-the-year formalities, but even those were reduced this year, as the entire nation recognized that, as a family, they were still grieving. So the invitations that would usually come from old classmates or other high-society peers didn't come this time around, and that was just fine with Wilhelm. He just wanted to be alone and wallow.

The holidays were not the same without Erik. He missed Simon with almost physical pain. And he especially did not have the slightest intention of seeing or talking to his mother unless absolutely necessary.

As the first day of the term grew closer, Wilhelm felt the tight coil of desperation inside him tense up more and more. It felt good and bad at the same time. Bad because he knew it was going to hurt so much to have Simon near and not be able to talk to him, touch him, be with him. But it was also good because even though they couldn't be together, he thought at least being near him could fill in a little bit of the huge void he felt inside his chest. To know that he was real, that he existed, that what they had was not just a figment of Wilhelm's fevered imagination trying to make up for his brother's absence. It would hurt, seeing him every day, but he'd rather it hurt than be numb all the time.

And now they were back in school, and they were... not exactly avoiding each other. Well, Wilhelm wasn't, at least. It would be hard to completely avoid someone you shared most classes with. If anything, he felt he was hyperaware of where Simon was at all times. If Erik had been around to see, he'd have teased him that he was pining like a Jane Austen character. It was really rather pathetic, and it had only been half a day.

But it didn't matter what he was feeling, anyway. Simon had asked him for space, and Wilhelm would be damned if he didn't do exactly what he asked for. He wasn't going to hurt Simon any more than he already had. Every interaction they had from now on was going to be on Simon's terms, even if that meant no interaction.

So it came as a surprise when, just as he was pulling his maths notebook out of his locker after his last class of the day, Simon came up behind him, backpack on as if getting ready to go back home, and tapped his shoulder. "Can I talk to you for a second?" he asked in a low tone like he didn't want anybody around them to hear. As if them just standing that close wasn't enough to grab the attention of everybody in that hallway.

He seemed tense. Wille noticed, but even that couldn't stop his heart from going nuts inside his chest with the tiniest spark of hope. He cleared his throat and tried to school his expression into a neutral one. "Hey! Uh, sure," he said, and he'd barely gotten the last word out when Simon was already pulling him by the arm into the music room. It was empty; classes were over for the day and choir practice hadn't restarted yet after the break. Wilhelm made sure to close the door behind him.

"Are you okay?" Wilhelm asked once Simon let go of his arm and turned to him. He seemed really agitated.

"I just got suspended," Simon stated, bluntly, in a way that reminded Wilhelm a lot of Sara, but in Simon's case, it was clearly because he was barely restraining his anger. Simon was a very chill person, and he didn't like yelling at people, but that didn't mean he didn't have a temper, even if it poured out of him freezing cold rather than blazing hot most of the time. He could still burn if pushed. Wilhelm knew that very well.

The revelation caught him unaware. "Wait— what? Why?" Wilhelm asked, immediately worried. Had something happened over the break? Had August done something, said something? He couldn't imagine anything Simon could've done to merit suspension while they weren't even at school.

"Why do you think? Because of that stupid video!" Simon retorted, losing his battle with his frustration. He was looking at Wilhelm like he should've known this was coming, and it made Wilhelm feel like he was suddenly standing on uneven ground.

"What? But—" Wilhelm stammered. "I thought— I thought the thing with the video was settled."

Simon scoffed, a sardonic sound with not an ounce of mirth in it. "Yeah, maybe for you," he threw at him, and Wilhelm's heart constricted painfully. Fuck. He really should've seen this coming, shouldn't he? "Clearly, the school's getting bad press and they needed to do something to save face. But they can't do anything to you, and fucking August is also untouchable, apparently, so I guess I have to be the scapegoat."

The mention of August made Wilhelm's stomach lurch. "Wait, how did you—" He hadn't told Simon that August was the one who caught them on video and uploaded it to the internet; Simon didn't want to hear from him anyway, and the idea of even saying the words out loud to Simon made him fill up with shame in the knowledge that the institution he'd given the boy he loved up for— hell, that Wilhelm's own mother— would choose to cover up for someone who did that rather than do the right thing, and there was nothing Wilhelm could do about it.

It was bad enough that he knew and still had to see August at school, even if the older student had enough sense in him to know to stay the fuck away. It still made his skin crawl every time he accidentally caught sight of his cousin, even all these weeks later. He didn't want Simon to feel that way, too, but apparently someone else thought Simon deserved to know. Honestly, he couldn't blame them. Wilhelm had taken the coward's way out. More than once.

"It doesn't matter!" Simon threw back in an exasperated tone, making Wilhelm realize that he was focusing on the wrong part of what Simon had just told him. "Wille, don't you get it? I can't be suspended! It's bad enough that a goddamn sex tape is the first link that comes up when someone fucking Googles my name. No music school is going to even consider me for a scholarship if I have a suspension for inappropriate behavior on my permanent record!"

Fuck. Fuck. Simon was right; none of this had even occurred to him when he denied it was him in the damn video. He'd thought the noise would die down eventually, and people would just forget, and everything would be just fine. Simon wasn't a public personality, after all, so if he wasn't sleeping with Wilhelm, then there really was no reason for the video to make the rounds forever. But he'd been wrong. Fuck, he'd been wrong, and this could ruin Simon's entire life, and it was all his fault.

"I mean—" He faltered because, fuck, what could he even possibly say to that? He could barely put together his own thoughts underneath the thundering beating of his heart in his ears. "Maybe I could— The Royal College of Music—"

He knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words came out of his mouth, but Simon's incredulous expression confirmed it a second later. "Seriously?" Simon asked, though his absolutely aghast intonation made it clear that it was a rhetorical question. "Wilhelm, I'm not asking you to help me cut in line. What I want is for this world to be fucking fair!"

Simon looked for a second like he had more to say along the same vein, but instead ran a hand over his face and turned around so that his back was to Wilhelm. Wilhelm heard him take a couple of deep breaths and saw the tension in his shoulders lessen. "I'm sorry," he said, calmer this time, though still careful. He turned back around. "That's not on you."

"No, no, that's—" Wilhelm shook his head. "That's fair. I shouldn't have—" He cut himself off again, still not quite sure what to say, but knowing that he didn't want to say the wrong thing again. He was just sorry for being insensitive, is what he wanted Simon to know, but Simon was already nodding his head like he understood even though he hadn't actually said it yet.

"I know. It's fine," he said easily. He took another deep breath. "I'm just... upset."

"They can't do this to you, Simon," Wilhelm declared, every single cell in his body screaming at him to reach out and comfort the boy he loved, but knowing it was not his place. Not unless Simon asked for it. "I mean, it's not like half the fucking students here don't just straight-up walk into each other's dorm rooms every given night, anyway. Everybody knows. Bet they don't do anything about that, do they?"

Simon scoffed again, and Wilhelm swore he never wanted to hear that sound come from him ever again. "Well, they didn't get caught on video with the Crown Prince of Sweden," he muttered. He didn't sound accusatory, just resigned. It still cut Wilhelm like a knife to the gut.

"But there's got to be some recourse you can access, right?" Wilhelm tried again, pausing only to bite at his nails, nervous. "I mean— like, there's gotta be a way to appeal their decision, isn't there? They can't just ruin your entire academic record without letting you defend yourself."

Simon crossed his arms and shrugged. "Maybe if I had someone who could corroborate my story." He gave Wilhelm a pointed look. "But I guess I don't."

Wilhelm groaned and ran both hands through his hair, tugging frustratedly. Shit, he thought as he started to pace. He knew Simon was at a financial and class disadvantage with the rest of the students, and he knew the other kids looked down on him because of it. But he'd thought the school, at least, would be fair. And Wilhelm thought he himself could see past that, see past the lack of money and status and see Simon as the person he was, because Simon saw who he was beyond the blue blood and the royal title. Because that was all he wanted: for someone to look at him and not see the Prince, but rather just see Wille.

What he'd overlooked was that Simon couldn't just... divest himself of the circumstances that determined his life any more than Wilhelm himself could. Whether they acknowledged it or not, those circumstances were always there, in the background, weighing in on their thoughts and their actions and the opportunities they had open to them. And Wilhelm had never acknowledged that. Simon had risked everything for him, but Wilhelm's actions had only factored in his own circumstances, because unknowingly, unwillingly, he'd fallen prey to the same bias his classmates had: that his problems were somehow more important because of his title, or his position, or his duty to the country. And now it was all blowing up in Simon's face, and it was all his fault.

"I'm so sorry this is happening," Wilhelm finally got the words out. Too late, he thought, and too useless, anyway, as saying he was sorry was not going to make anything better, but it was the only thing he could say. "There's got to be something we can do," he added, though he didn't know what that something could be. "I-I... I'll fix this, Simon. I promise."

"Like you said you would fix things last time?" The corners of Simon's mouth lifted, but it wasn't a smile— not a real one, at least; not the smile Wilhelm loved so much, the one he dreamed about— but a flat, tired gesture of giving up to the inevitable. It broke Wilhelm's heart all over again. He'd done this. "I'll see you in two weeks, Wille."

He walked out of the room in the ensuing silence, and when the door closed again, leaving Wilhelm alone with his racing thoughts, the Crown Prince made for the window. Not to open it; just to lean against it. He rested his forehead against the cool pane of glass and breathed, going over the entire conversation in his head. It was after a few minutes of quiet and deep breaths that he pulled back, jaw clenched, stride brisk. The hallway outside the music room was now empty as well, only Wilhelm's CPO standing guard a few paces from the door.

"Malin," he addressed her seriously as he walked by her, starting for Headmistress Lilja's office. "Please tell Sören to procure us a car. I have an urgent business I need to attend to at Drottningholm tonight."

He heard her start to walk behind him, trailing him at an appropriate distance as dictated by her job description. "Your Royal Highness," she intervened, "can this business not be taken care of via phone or videoconference? The term has just started and you're not supposed to leave school premises during the week—"

Wilhelm stopped walking abruptly and turned on his heel to look at her— she halted her stride almost immediately as well. "Malin, with all due respect, I appreciate everything you do for me, but you are my bodyguard, not my babysitter," he declared, serious. He was trying really hard not to take his anger out on Malin because she didn't deserve it, but he wasn't in the mood to be treated like he needed a handler.

"Now, I'm going to get to Stockholm tonight even if I have to go by bus. So it's your choice whether we do this the easy way or the hard way." She must've seen something in his expression that told her he wasn't going to back down on this, because she nodded and pulled her phone out of her pocket, intending to follow Wilhelm's order.

"Thank you," Wilhelm said with a nod of his own. He spun in the opposite direction once again, intending to make his way to the headmistress's office to inform her that he had to go back home and would be back sometime later in the night. It was a two-hour drive out to the palace and two more back, but he felt he had to be there in person to make it clear that he was serious about this particular situation.

"And please let the Queen know that I need to see her as soon as I arrive," he added sharply as he started walking.

Chapter Text

Kristina and Ludvig were having dinner in the private kitchen of the royal residence when Wilhelm burst in. She'd already been informed he was on the way, so his sudden appearance didn't startle her, but she did wonder what on earth had him so agitated. He hadn't even bothered taking off his coat.

"Was it you?" he asked sharply in place of a greeting.

Kristina swallowed the bite of salmon she'd just put in her mouth a minute ago, carefully put her fork down on her plate, picked up her serviette to wipe at her mouth, set it back down on the table beside her plate, and then looked up at her son. "Good evening to you, too," she said pointedly, her mouth pressing into a tight line. "Though I guess it already is, clearly, as you've somehow managed to leave school premises without my permission."

"It's good to see you, son," Ludvig intervened affably, ever the mediator. "Will you be having dinner with us? I can throw a fillet on the pan for you; it shouldn't take more than a few minutes." He made to stand as if intending to do just that. When it was just the family, Ludvig quite enjoyed cooking, even though he didn't have to. He said the methodical yet creative nature of it helped him relax, and Kristina encouraged the hobby. He was quite good at it, in fact; Lord knew Kristina couldn't boil an egg if she tried.

Wilhelm silently shook his head in response to Ludvig's question, prompting Ludvig to stay seated. The gesture was softer than when he turned back to look at her, Kristina noticed. As Wilhelm looked at her expectantly, his gaze was like steel. A loaded weapon just waiting for her to give him the wrong answer.

Well, what else is new, Kristina thought, finally deciding to bite the bullet. She laced her hands together in her lap and met her son's gaze. "Was what me?" she asked tersely. If he was going to accuse her of something, he was going to have to say it explicitly.

"Simon's been suspended for the video," he shot back curtly, straight to the point and without vacillation. "Was it your idea?"

Kristina held back an irked sound with practiced ease. Simon, of course. Given all the moping Wilhelm had done during the Christmas break, Kristina had an inkling that he was still angry about the way things had been handled at the end of the last term, but she thought that was more about her than it was about the boy, which was how she preferred it. She thought the weeks apart might've given Wilhelm's infatuation some time to simmer down. Clearly, she'd been wrong.

She allowed herself a small huff of displeasure. "That boy again?" She pushed her chair back and got to her feet. At her side, Ludvig finished his last bite of dinner and wiped his mouth as well. "Honestly," she continued speaking to her son, "I can't believe you would have your CPOs drive you all the way here for this. Wilhelm, that matter has been settled—"

"Just because it's settled for me doesn't mean that it's been settled for him," Wilhelm cut her off, his resolve hardening with every tense retort. "Was. It. You?" he insisted, demanding an answer for the question Kristina wouldn't dignify earlier.

Beside her, Ludvig pushed himself to his feet as well, extending a hand to her so she would pass him her empty plate. She picked it up and handed it to him without a word, and he took the dishes back to the sink so he could rinse them before loading them in the dishwasher.

As much as she loved her son, Kristina and Wilhelm had always butted heads, even before the sex tape incident. Wilhelm was a sensitive boy; being the second in line had put him in a position where the pressures of the public eye on him were less restrictive, and he had clung to that for dear life, grasping for every bit of normalcy he could have. It had been harmless enough to indulge him when he was a small child, but he refused to let go of that lifeline even now that he was nearly an adult.

For Kristina, it was a difficult mentality to wrap her head around, to empathize with. She'd been raised within the monarchy and the expectations the Crown and her country had of her had been a voice in the back of her head since before she could even remember. There was no dislodging a happy, fulfilled life from her position as Queen. She'd cut Ludvig a lot of slack at the beginning of their relationship because while he was of noble birth, the intricacies of living as a royal were a step beyond that. He got used to it soon enough. But Wilhelm had grown up in the palace, too, and should be used to those intricacies by now, first-born or not. She didn't know how to shake him from his reticence and resentment. Didn't know how to talk to him, how to make him see what was so clear to her, what she knew would be better for him in the long run. But someone had to be the disciplinarian, regardless. And so they fought. A lot.

Having some experience on the other side of the royal machine, Ludvig often positioned himself as a mediator between the two, trying to soften their arguments and help both of them see where the other was coming from. Erik had been that way, too, mostly out of a desire to keep the peace, as well as protect his younger brother's feelings and spare him from being overburdened. He'd been such a good brother. But one thing Ludvig understood that Erik hadn't was that some arguments needed to be had; that's how people grow and change. So in some instances, like now, he knew well enough to stand on the sidelines and watch, only intervening when necessary.

As her husband walked away from the table, she fixed her gaze on Wilhelm, finally answering the question that had brought him here. "No. I did not suggest anything of the sort," she declared, which was the pure truth. Wilhelm may think her the bad guy in all of this, but she had better things to do than machinate behind the scenes against the boy her son was apparently so enamored with.

"But you knew." It was a statement, more than a question.

And he was correct, of course. Kristina made it a point of keeping informed of any situation that arose that could affect the Crown, particularly if it involved her willful son. The school was also not about to risk her displeasure after everything that happened at the end of the year, so they jumped at the chance to keep her in the loop. "Well, we had to remind the school that your official position is that it's not you in the video, and it would be ill-advised to involve you in any way based on pure conjecture."

"And you think it's fine for them to turn on Simon?" Wilhelm asked, a flash of blatant incredulity breaking his previously adamantine expression. "His privacy was invaded just like mine was, and now he's getting punished for it on top of everything! They could've just as easily done that to me. What if it had been me?"

"They wouldn't have done that to you," Kristina reiterated.

"And you're okay with that?" He rubbed at his eyes with one hand, as if he were developing a headache. "I've got the entire weight of the Swedish monarchy getting me out of any situation that might make me look bad, but Simon's got no one. You think that's okay?"

"Of course not," Kristina threw back incisively. She knew that Wilhelm probably held a very low opinion of her at the moment, and that was her burden to carry, but for all of that, she wasn't heartless. She knew what it was to want to help people and be held back by optics and nebulous norms. She'd grappled with it as Princess, as Queen. It was a hard lesson to learn, but there was a good reason for it: it wasn't fair. The monarch couldn't put their thumb on the scale to help one specific individual above all others, and it was Wilhelm's turn to understand that. "I can intervene on your behalf because I'm your mother, but I can't very well tell the school how to impart discipline on their own students, can I?"

"Yes, you can!" Wilhelm shot back, just as she'd expected he would. He ran a hand through his hair, then hurried to shrug off his coat, almost like he was suddenly overheating. "I mean, you can't order them to do anything, obviously," he added as he slapped the offending garment on top of the backrest of the empty dining chair in front of him, "but if you make a suggestion, they're gonna listen to you! You're the damn queen!"

"Wilhelm, please. No need to get agitated," Ludvig intervened from the side. Kristina wasn't sure if he was objecting to Wilhelm's language or his tone.

Wilhelm continued his diatribe without really adjusting either. "Don't you see? This is why people resent the monarchy! What's the point of being given all this power if we can't use it to help people?"

"I understand why you're upset," she told her son, trying to give him something to stand on. She knew what it was to be young and idealistic. She didn't blame him for it; she just wanted him to understand. "I do. But you know that's not how it works. We can't just go around fixing everybody's problems for them—"

"No, just mine. And August's. And those of anyone with royal blood. Yeah, I get how it works." He sounded so perfectly bitter, it made her wonder if maybe there was more of a danger to his dalliance with the Eriksson boy than just the possible public reveal of the relationship. She held that thought back for now, however. "Do you not see how messed up that is? What kind of king am I going to be if I have to step on people— good people who have done nothing wrong— on my way to the throne?"

Kristina shook her head, exasperated. What else could she possibly say to make him see that it would be better for him to stay out of it entirely? No good would come of him intervening in any of this. "Not everything is that simple, Wilhelm. Sometimes it's not so clear how you get to the better outcome. You will be king; it is your birthright, and so you must understand this. You have to own it. It is the monarch's job to make difficult decisions—"

"Even if it costs your own children's happiness? Yeah, I get that, too," he threw back at her harshly.

Well. Now she was angry. Who did he think he was to talk to her that way? Kristina knew she wasn't the most effusive of mothers, but everything she did, she did for him. So he was ready for what was to come, what would be expected of him. Was she happy that he would have to hide a part of himself for the rest of his life? Of course not. If it were up to her, it wouldn't be an issue. But the weight of the crown was heavy, and it was hard enough to carry all on its own. No need to give its detractors any more ammunition.

"Wilhelm! That was uncalled for," Ludvig said, done with the dishes now and approaching the kitchen table once again, perpendicular to both Kristina and their son, who were facing each other across the table as if in a standoff. "Can we please just sit down and talk about this calmly?"

Neither moved, but in an attempt to honor her husband's request, Kristina tried to rein in her temper and addressed her son as soberly as she could. "Wilhelm, I don't think you understand the position you've put us—"

Her son clearly wasn't having it. "You know, Mamma, I did everything you wanted me to do," he declared. "I kept my head down, I transferred to Hillerska—"

"Really? You call what happened 'keeping your head down' now?" she threw back as snidely as Wilhelm himself had just minutes before. She really tried to keep a cool head about this, but she hated being interrupted, and he had already gotten away with it a couple of times throughout this argument. If her voice started getting louder, it was because he was deliberately provoking her.

He heard her but was too riled up to halt the tirade he'd already started on. "—I even denied it was me in that video. Just like you wanted! And now Simon won't even look at me and it kills me every day." Kristina bit her tongue. Young people— always such drama. "But it's fine! It's fine because I believed it would be the best thing for everyone, and if that was true, then it was worth it," he added, with such force to his words that she could've sworn she heard the crunch of his teeth as he clenched his jaw.

He closed his eyes tightly, took a deep breath, and ran both hands through his hair— back and forth so that not only did he mess it up completely, but it also stuck up in the back. He was sweating. When he opened his eyes again, he fixed Kristina with a glare the likes of which she hadn't seen since he was a little kid. Since he'd learned that when it came to his princely duties, it was easier to choose the path of least resistance.

"But if it turns out that's not making things better, then I'm done," he proclaimed, enunciating his words clearly and without a hint of hesitation in his tone, and Kristina's heart momentarily stopped inside her chest. Throughout all of this, she'd still been certain, one way or the other, that Wilhelm would uphold his birthright. It might take some growing pains, and perhaps his reputation might take a few hits along the way, but he would take the throne after her, in Erik's place, come what may. Even if he was reluctant, even if it took some concessions on her part, he would fulfill his duty in the end.

But now, seeing him like this, hearing him say that— it was the first time Kristina genuinely feared the word "abdication" might have crossed her son's mind already.

There was a moment she could not speak, frozen in place by that terrible thought. And then her heart resumed beating, furiously, as she let breath into her lungs in a loud gasp. "Wilhelm! Surely you don't mean—"

"I am done playing this... PR game, okay?" he kept speaking like he hadn't just dropped a bomb on her, and Kristina felt her soul slowly return to her body, leaving her wondering if maybe she'd just read too much into improvised sentences. Maybe her son and heir was not delivering quite the ultimatum she thought he was delivering. Maybe she'd jumped to conclusions, and his ascension to the throne was not on the line.

He leaned his entire weight against the chair in front of him, grip tight on the backrest over the thick fabric of his coat. "I don't care what I have to put up with, but I draw the line at Simon. If he gets hurt in any way... if any of this is going to affect his future, then it's not worth it anymore." He paused momentarily, leaning forward to rest his head against the back of his hands. Then he pulled back to look straight at her again. "I am asking you to do one thing for me, Mother. One thing. So. Can you make this go away?"

Silence reigned as Wilhelm's question hung heavy in the air. He held her gaze steadily— a purposeful effort to demonstrate how serious he was about this issue, coming from her son whom she knew to always be the first to duck his gaze away when the pressure got overwhelming— and Kristina considered how far she could push. He might not have contemplated abdication yet, but she certainly didn't want to give him the idea.

Ludvig looked between the two of them, correctly identifying that the ball was now in her court. "Kristina?" he prompted, keeping his expression neutral. He usually deferred to her on issues like this, as he understood she was acting both in her capacity as Wilhelm's mother and also as Queen, and so he knew that they needed to present a united front. He couldn't undermine her authority in these matters. But she was sure she'd hear his honest opinion later on.

She took a deep breath and crossed her arms tightly. "I'm afraid I can't tell a private institution how to conduct their internal business, no."

Wilhelm's impenetrable expression did not change in the slightest, almost like he'd been expecting that to be her answer. Kristina felt a pang in her heart. She could hardly recognize the young man in front of her— so different from her sweet, soft, darling boy, her baby— and as proud as she was that her son had somehow finally found his footing, she couldn't help but wonder if this was what their relationship was going to be from now on. It hurt. It hurt to know that she may have driven him past his limit, and she wasn't sure there was any way to come back from that. This might be the moment she lost her son for good, and she'd have no choice but to live with it.

And yet, she wouldn't do anything differently. She couldn't.

Wilhelm let go of the chair, still fully inscrutable. "Okay. Fine. Don't help me. But then you don't get to complain when I do things my own way." He grabbed his coat off the backrest, holding it in the crook of his elbow.

"Is that a threat?" Kristina asked in a low, dry, weary tone.

"It's a notice. Your people might want to keep an eye out," Wilhelm replied, fully serious. He turned to Ludvig and nodded at him as if saying goodbye. "I'll be going back to school now." With one last look in Kristina's direction, he spun on his heel and strode out of the kitchen just as hastily as he had come in.

"Don't be ridi— Wilhelm!" Kristina tried to call him back, but he was already out of the room and stomping down the hallway. Frustrated, she turned to Ludvig. "Call security and tell them not to let the car leave. There's no reason for him to make the trip back tonight; this is all just a waste of his CPOs' time on a whim—"

"Let him go, dear," Ludvig intervened, catching her arm softly before she could reach for the nearest phone. "It might be for the best; the distance might help him cool off. He's angry, and I dare say he has a right to be."

Kristina bristled, throwing him a piercing, defensive glance. "Excuse me?"

He only gave her a knowing smile, pulling her by the arm back toward the table and pulling her chair out so she could sit. "We're in our private kitchen, my love, not in your throne room," he reminded her, as he often did when they were alone. It was difficult for her, sometimes, to switch hats between her two titles— that of Queen and wife/mother. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Ludvig would have her back whenever it came to the former, but when it came to private family matters, they were on equal footing, and he would not hold back on his opinions. Which she preferred, usually; it just particularly stung today.

"You believe I have not handled this well, then?" she asked as he took hold of both their now-empty wine glasses to refill them.

"I believe you did what you could to ensure our son's reputation as future king is not marred before he even takes the throne," Ludvig said as he poured wine into her glass. "I think what you've overlooked in this situation is that he is a teenager. The more you tell him he can't have something, the more he's going to want it."

Kristina scoffed— a thoroughly unladylike gesture that she would never allow herself to make around anyone other than her husband— and picked up the glass once he was done pouring. "Erik was never like this."

He gave her an amused smile again as he poured the second glass. "It should not come as a surprise, Kristina, that our sons are two very different people." He moved to cork the bottle but he paused as if realizing something. He cleared his throat. "Were."

Kristina pressed her lips together, willing herself not to cry. Ludvig sat down in his seat beside her and took a sip of his wine. He took her hand and squeezed it as if in silent apology. Kristina sighed. "Do you think he will ever forgive me?" she asked, going back to the topic of her youngest. She missed Erik every second of the day, but there was nothing she could do for him now except ensure his legacy persisted. Wilhelm had to be her focus now.

Ludvig patted her hand lightly. "I'm sure he will," he assured her, sounding very confident of it. He'd always been the optimist between the two of them. Kristina's mind always went straight for the worst-case scenario. "He's got a big heart. And that's not a bad thing."

"No, but it gets him in trouble," Kristina retorted, shaking her head as she swirled the wine in her glass. "Did you hear what he said about people resenting us? Someone's putting ideas into his head. I might as well have been arguing with a republican!"

That last sentence made her husband laugh. "He just wants to help his boyfriend, not bring down the monarchy." He shook his head in an amused fashion.

"What do you think he's going to do?" she asked, still worried. She understood what Wilhelm meant when he said he was giving her a notice, not a threat— a threat would imply he wanted something from her in return. He clearly didn't. That fact made this situation all the more concerning to her.

"I don't know," Ludvig admitted, and Kristina couldn't help but feel a little disappointed by the response. Wilhelm had always gotten along better with Ludvig, and she'd been hoping he might have some more insight into what was going on inside their son's mind. But of course that was a big ask; at this point, Wilhelm probably saw him as an extension of her, so to speak. "Whatever it is, though, you can't stop it. We'll just have to deal with it when it happens." He took a sip from his glass. "He knows what's expected of him. We have to trust that he'll be smart about it."

"For a moment there I thought he was going to give all of it up," came Kristina's own admission. She didn't like to say it out loud, but Ludvig would tell her if she was overreacting. "I thought he would tell me that if I don't let him have a relationship with this boy, he would announce his abdication right then and there, in the middle of our kitchen."

"I doubt he would do that," he said, lifting a hand to rub at Kristina's shoulder. She took comfort in his words. He might be more optimistic than her, but he also wouldn't lie just to make her feel better. She needed that. "But," he added, giving her shoulder a light squeeze, "you may have to give a little."

"Hmm." She took another sip of her wine. "I guess we'll see."

He shook his head again and finished his drink. "We should go to bed early," he suggested, pushing his chair back and standing up. "The night has been... rather more eventful than originally expected." Kristina nodded and similarly knocked back the last of her wine, handing the empty glass back to her husband.

He went ahead and put both cups into the dishwasher. "I can hear you worrying from here," he said in a teasing tone.

"I can't help it," Kristina replied, getting to her feet as well. She pushed in both her chair and Ludvig's and waited for him to be done with the appliance.

He walked back to where she was standing and ran a hand over her back— an attempt to help her relax. "He'll be fine," he said, dropping a kiss on her cheek. "He's a good kid, and he'll be a good king. If anything, the way he handled you today should be proof of that."

He was right. What she saw in Wilhelm that night was what she wanted, right? For him to step up, learn to assert his authority instead of dodging responsibility every chance he got. Even if she'd only managed it by giving him an enemy to stand against, she should feel proud of him, in some oblique way. Instead, she felt empty, like she'd lost a part of her. Again.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Ludvig, who waited patiently by her side. "Let's go to bed," she said, and let her husband lead her, an arm around her shoulders, out of the kitchen and toward their bedroom, so they could rest for the day.

Chapter Text

By the time Wilhelm made it back to Hillerska, he was nursing the granddaddy of all headaches. Probably residual from the panic attack he'd found himself hit with the moment he walked out the door at Drottningholm and into the car. The combination of the anxiety of standing up to his mother and the inevitable crash from the adrenaline high that got him through it was enough to have him gasping for breath and with his head between his knees for the first fifteen minutes of the drive, much to his bodyguards' consternation.

Thankfully he was able to pull out of it after a while, and even caught a little bit of sleep on the way, so now all that remained was the headache. In any other circumstance, he probably would've headed straight to bed. However, they'd arrived at the school a little over half an hour before lights out, which meant that he still had a chance to make some moves, and it was better not to waste any time.

He only went to his room to change clothes, then walked out of Forest Ridge with Malin in tow. Normally at that hour it would be Sören or whomever else came up in the rotation taking point, but given where Wilhelm was headed, Malin thought it made more sense for it to be her. "Your Royal Highness, do you think this is wise?" she asked him as they made their way across the school grounds. "Walking into the girls' dormitories at this hour after... well, after what happened the last term?"

"I'm only stopping by for a few minutes," Wilhelm replied, strides not faltering in the slightest, "and you'll be right there to vouch for my good behavior, should it come down to that." She had no comment for that, but her lips were pressed tight as they made it to Manor House. She suggested they inform the housemistress of their presence there, regardless, which Wilhelm thought was reasonable.

He only had the vaguest idea of which side of the building Felice's room was in, from offhand comments she'd made here and there, but once he made it to the right hallway it wasn't hard to find, because their door was still open. As Malin took a position a few meters' distance down the hallway, he knocked on the doorframe to make his presence known. "Hey."

Madison, who was lying on her belly on her bed, looked up at the sound and gave Wilhelm a quick smile before going back to whatever it was she was drawing on a notebook. Felice was standing with her back to the door, looking for something in her dresser drawers, but she caught sight of him in the mirror and waved at him. Lounging on Felice's bed was Sara. Wilhelm immediately tensed. He'd forgotten Sara had been awarded a grant to board at Hillerska in the new term. She was rooming with someone else— some first year Wilhelm had never talked to— but it made sense that she would spend most of her time hanging out with Felice and Maddie.

She scowled at him. "What does he want?" she muttered, seemingly to herself, but everybody heard it loud and clear.

Felice tsk-ed at her. "Sara, that doesn't help," she lightly chastised her friend, and Wilhelm for some reason got the feeling they'd already had a conversation about this before, while he wasn't there to listen in.

He didn't want them to get in an argument on his account, though. "No, it's okay," he assured Felice. "She has a right to be angry at me, I think." He cleared his throat and shuffled a little on his feet. Normally he would be twisting himself into a pretzel trying to do this on his own, but he didn't have time for that now. And he trusted Felice. She'd proven herself at the end of the last term, and she'd also been the only person who bothered to check in on him over the break. She was a good friend. "Listen, I was wondering if you knew of any good law firms that you trust? All I've ever dealt with are those associated with the Crown and I'm... not going to go to them with this, that's for sure."

Felice frowned. "Well... not off the top of my head, no. But I can ask my dad, if you want?" Wilhelm nodded at her, grateful. "Do they need to have a particular specialty? What do you need a lawyer for?" she further prompted.

Wilhelm hesitated. Admittedly, he hadn't quite thought that far— this was just the first idea that had crossed his mind on the way back from Stockholm. "Uh, I don't know. Education law, maybe? Is that a thing?" he asked, unsure.

Madison's head popped up like someone had announced she'd be getting chocolate cake with every meal for a year. "Are you going to sue the school?" she asked, speaking in English as usual. Her mouth started shaping into a big grin. "Is this about Simon?"

Two more pairs of eyes snapped right to him and Wilhelm couldn't help but feel flustered at being put on the spot so suddenly. "I didn't— It's not—" he stuttered momentarily before gathering his wits with a shake of his head. "It's just, Simon told me something earlier and it kind of stuck with me," he explained. "He said the school's getting bad press about... you know..." He left it vague since they all knew about the video anyway and he didn't want to think about it any more than necessary.

"He's not wrong," Felice confirmed. When the girls looked at her, she elaborated. "I overheard my mom talking on the phone over the break. Apparently, some parents are scandalized that the school staff is 'allowing' students to have sex on school premises," she said, rolling her eyes as she did air quotes with her fingers. "The rest of them are wondering how safe the school even is if anyone can just walk up to someone's window and invade their privacy like that. Neither side is happy."

"Exactly," Wilhelm continued, "so the school has to find a fall guy to make it seem like they're doing something about it." It was a quick summary of the larger issue, but it would have to do for now. "And so I thought"— he crossed his arms and shrugged— "that maybe if we generate even worse press for them because of Simon's suspension, then they'd have to backpedal, right?" He sighed. "A lawsuit was just the first thing that popped into my head, I guess."

"You want Simon to sue the school?" Sara asked, somewhat brusquely. While Felice and Madison seemed somewhat excited at the prospect, Sara did not look happy at all at his suggestion. "We can't afford that."

"Right— No, I know— I was—" Wilhelm once again stumbled with his words, because clearly, all the confidence he'd mustered up to confront the Queen of Sweden earlier had fizzled out the second a tiny seventeen-year-old girl fixed a withering glare on him.

"—going to pay for it yourself?" Sara finished the sentence for him, eyebrows raised high on her forehead. "Simon would hate that."

Wilhelm was very aware of that. That wasn't what he'd been about to suggest, anyway; honestly, he wasn't sure what he'd been about to suggest. Once again, he hadn't thought of the details yet— but even if his family did have the means (obviously), it's not like he could just charge thousands of kronor in legal fees on a credit card; any large expenses had to go through the palace's accounting department and would most definitely make their way back to his mother.

Luckily, Madison stopped him from having to explain all of that. "There are lawyers that take on cases pro-bono, though," she intervened, waving her pencil in front of her face as she spoke. Then she turned to look at Wilhelm. "I think the real problem here, though, is that lawsuits take way too long to go through the system. We could be graduating by the time this gets settled. And what good would that be?" she pointed out smartly.

"Yeah." Wilhelm sighed and leaned his head sideways against the door. He knew it wasn't the most efficient idea he'd ever had, but it was the only idea he'd had so far, and the time crunch was weighing on him like a ticking bomb.

Suddenly, Felice started like something had just occurred to her. "But wait," she said, snapping her fingers. Wilhelm briefly wondered how she was able to do that with her nails. "If the point is to create bad press for the school, then we can do that ourselves." She turned around, grabbing her phone from where it had been resting facedown on top of the dresser. She showed it to all three of them like it was some kind of visual aid on a school project. "I have ten thousand followers on my Insta alone. We don't need anyone from the outside to help us if we have that."

"What are you going to do, make a Notes App post on how unfair it was for them to suspend Simon?" Madison asked.

"I couldn't ask you to do that," Wilhelm hurried to intervene, suddenly worried. He'd already done so much damage in Simon's life; he couldn't drag Felice into his trail of debris, too. "The school would turn against you, too. That's not an option."

"No, that's not what I'm saying," Felice quickly clarified. "Of course, if only one or a few of us raises a stink, it puts a target on our backs. So we have to get more people involved. Everyone, if we can." She looked at them like the answer was obvious. "We go full Greta. We strike!"

There was silence for a few seconds as she let the idea settle with them. Wilhelm felt a thin tendril of hope tugging at his heart inside his chest. It was definitely more immediate than anything he'd been able to come up with up to now. And it really wasn't a bad idea... in theory. In practice, however...

"Uh, I don't think you're going to get many people around here to do that for Simon," Madison quipped in a dry tone, rolling her eyes and drawing her pencil from her lips and back down to the paper in front of her. If there was one thing Wilhelm appreciated about Maddie, it was that she didn't sugarcoat things. She gave it to you straight, whatever her opinion on a matter was. He found it refreshing.

"Yeah, most people here don't hold me and Simon in very high regard," Sara added, and that was an understatement if he'd ever heard one. Sara was treated a bit better since she started hanging out with Felice, thankfully, and he wouldn't exactly say that people bullied Simon or anything— he was way too self-assured for that— but they definitely looked down their noses at them, and snide remarks were a daily occurrence.

"Which is ridiculous because you guys are like the nicest people ever," Madison added, smiling at Sara as she said it. Wilhelm knew she wasn't just saying it because Sara was there, too. She was one of the few people in the school who regularly interacted with Simon like a peer; Wilhelm often heard them animatedly talking before and between classes, chatting about their favorite music or which concerts they'd love to go to.

"Okay, then we don't make it about Simon," Felice countered, not giving up so easily. She turned to Wilhelm wide-eyed, as if afraid she'd said something terrible. "I mean, it will be about Simon, of course," she assured him, though Wilhelm hadn't even commented on her earlier assertion, "but we sell it to the rest of the students as if it's all about them. Say whatever we have to say to get them to be there."

Wilhelm must've made a face because Felice looked at him as if expecting him to say something. "Isn't that kind of... shady, though? Having a bunch of people there who don't really give a fuck what happens to Simon?" He couldn't help but be concerned about that. He'd spent his whole life surrounded by people who put on airs and pretended to be nice to him solely because of his title, and he hated it.

Felice nodded, a little sheepish. "Well, yeah. But you gotta keep in mind that the point of this isn't really to support Simon. I mean"— she signaled to herself and the two other girls, then at Wilhelm— "we definitely support Simon. But the actual point of this is to pressure the school to rescind his suspension. What we need is numbers."

"She's right," Madison quipped from the side. "When the real goal is to get eyes on your cause, even performative activism will do the trick." She pointed at Wilhelm with her pencil. "Believe me, I would know. I'm from NYC. Performative activism is basically our official sport."

Sara and Felice laughed, and even Wilhelm had to smile. Madison pushed herself to her knees, grinning excitedly. "Okay, I'm in. How do we do this?"

Felice grinned back. "Like so." She unlocked her phone with a flourish and proceeded to tap on it a few times. "What's Simon's favorite color?" she asked, without looking up from the screen, thumbs flying over the virtual keys.

"Purple," Wilhelm and Sara said at the exact same time. When they realized this, Sara gave him a deadpan stare. Wilhelm cleared his throat, awkwardly running a hand through his hair. Felice snorted but kept typing. Madison laughed so hard, she actually rolled over on her bed.

"And... here we go," Felice said, tapping her screen one last time before turning the phone over for Wilhelm to see. On her Instagram feed, her latest post showed a purple square with the words "DO BETTER" in large, thick black print letters. On the lower-right corner of the square, in smaller letters, tilted at near 45 degrees, read, "Fri 15/Jan. Noon." The caption for the post was "#HSJ #BeThere."

Wilhelm frowned as Felice turned to show Sara the post. "HSJ?" he asked, confused.

"Hillerska Strike for Justice," Felice clarified as she turned to show her phone to Madison. "We're going to need a few days to get people on board, which is why I thought Friday would be best. But if we get enough people to share it, we can get that trending in Sweden. Then we get as many people as we can to live stream the actual strike. It'll be huge."

She was getting more and more excited with each word that came out of her mouth, and honestly, it was hard not to feel the same. Wilhelm didn't post on his own Instagram account very often, and he definitely wouldn't be able to post or stream anything related to this because everything he posted was vetted by the palace's social media team and would be taken down within the minute if it was deemed unsuitable for his image as Crown Prince.

But considering the school was populated with rich, entitled kids with sizable social media followings who all fancied themselves influencers, his input might not even be necessary. He could usually get away with a little more when it came to liking and commenting on other people's posts, though, so that's what he could do for now to boost the hashtag's reach. If the vibrations on Felice's phone were any indication, the post was already getting engagement.

"Ooh, I know what I can use for my post!" Madison declared, practically bouncing off her bed and opening her closet.

Sara pulled her knees up to her chest. "Is it okay if I don't tell Simon about this?" she asked Felice. As in, very pointedly not Wilhelm. But, again, he could hardly blame her for her frosty demeanor; he deserved it. "He wouldn't be allowed to come, anyway, and I don't want to get his hopes up if this doesn't work."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you think is best," Felice agreed, though she did throw Wilhelm a somewhat chagrined look.

"Okay, check this out," Madison said, pulling a garment out of the closet. She showed it to them: it was a plain white t-shirt, the bottom of it ripped so that it was closer to a longish crop top, with the words "NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE" stamped on the front. According to Maddie, she and her New York friends had printed the t-shirts themselves to wear at the local Black Lives Matter protests last summer.

She thought it would be great to use for the HSJ, considering the similar justice theme, so she threw the top on her bed, snapped a picture of it, and within a minute or two, there was a new post on her Instagram account showing the t-shirt with the text taking up most of the background, and then just off toward the top-right corner, slightly tilted just as Felice's note had been, in bright purple letters, the words "Friday! Noon! Be there, it'll be" followed by a fire emoji. She used the full #HillerskaStrikeForJustice hashtag in the caption because Madison McCoy had no fucks to give to anyone who messed with her friends, even if it was the school itself. And Simon was her friend. Wilhelm could've hugged her.

The conversation moved to which platforms they should crosspost in— which kind of went over Wilhelm's head a bit, as he only ever used Instagram— but was interrupted when not even five minutes after Felice's post hit the web, Fredrika poked her head in from behind Wilhelm's frame in the doorway.

"Hey, hey," she greeted everyone. Wilhelm turned his head and saw that Stella was also there, moving to stand on the opposite side of her roommate as Fredrika waved her phone at the other girls. "What's this about?" She signaled to Felice's Insta post, now visible on her own phone's screen.

Felice gave them a pure, unfiltered, confident, fake-it-till-you-make-it, pro-saleswoman grin. "We're going on strike to get the school to take back Simon's suspension. You guys in?"

Stella and Fredrika exchanged a glance, clearly reluctant. They moved into the room and sat down on Maddie's bed. "Do you think that's a good idea, though?" Stella asked. "I mean"— her eyes widened— "not that I don't want to help Simon," she added, looking apologetically at Wilhelm, then at Sara, "I'm just thinking... the buzz about the video was already dying down because of the break. Do you really want to remind everyone of it all over again? Wouldn't it be better for Simon just take the two weeks off and then let it all have died down when he comes back?"

Wilhelm frowned. He liked Stella and Fredrika, but they could be so in-their-bubble. He might've gotten angry at them for it now— this was Simon's future they were talking about here— if he hadn't chastised himself about being just the same a few hours earlier. "A suspension on his record could kill his chances of getting a scholarship to a university," he explained, hoping that was obvious enough for them to grasp.

It wasn't. "Why does he need a scholarship?" Fredrika asked, entirely innocuously. "Aren't most universities free?"

"Normal people also have to pay for board, food, and materials," Sara chimed in. Her tone was not accusatory in the least; only matter-of-fact. Still, her choice of the word "normal" there would have sounded heavily sarcastic coming from someone else. Perhaps she and Simon were more alike than Wilhelm had initially thought.

"And anyway, it's the principle of the matter," Felice intervened deftly before the conversation could fully devolve into class warfare. She moved to stand next to Wilhelm so she could talk to the girls face to face. "Simon's being punished for something that was done to him. It's straight-up victim-blaming." She threw Stella a pointed look. "You know if he'd been a girl, you would've been all over this."

Stella worried her lower lip for a moment, pondering her friend's words. "You're right, that's messed up," she conceded with a sigh. "Okay, I'm in," she added, pulling her phone out of the front pocket of her hoodie. Madison cheered, urging her to use the color purple somewhere in her post.

"Thank you!" Felice gave her a bright smile before turning to her other friend. "Fredrika?"

The girl in question flinched. "Look, I'd love to help," she started, throwing a nervous look at Sara, then at Wilhelm. He tried not to squirm. He'd known that coming back to Hillerska after... everything... would mean having nasty looks flung at him and murmurs springing all around him, but it hadn't occurred to him that people would start acting like any comment that had anything at all to do with Simon somehow involved him as well, almost on the same level as Sara— like he and Simon were now a package deal, even though they weren't actually together. It was an unexpected, weird side effect to what happened, but one he wasn't going to complain about. He actually kinda liked it.

(He actually really liked it.)

"But," Fredrika continued, "I'm already on the verge in one too many subjects. I can't be punished for skipping class on top of that." She shook her head, adding in an exaggerated, dramatic tone, "My parents would kill me."

"That's why we need to get as many people to participate as we can," Felice countered. "They can't punish everyone, right? And think about what it will mean for your follower count," she swiftly switched gears— masterfully, Wilhelm thought. "Don't you remember how many new followers you got last year after you posted the black square thingie?"

Wilhelm had to hold back a snort. He might be privileged, but even he knew the "black square thingie" had been a bad look all around. Fredrika, however, seemed to hold it as a resounding success, because her eyes widened. "Oh yeah, it was like a full thousand, wasn't it?" she thought to herself out loud, her voice tinged with wonder.

She pursed her lips as she thought about it. The thinking took about two seconds max. "All right, I'll do it," she said, much to the other girls' elation. "But!" she added as a warning, "only if we get literally everybody to do this with us. I seriously cannot—"

"We will if you two help us!" Madison cut Fredrika off by throwing her arms around her in an effusive hug, before bounding off toward Felice's bed. "Sara, Sara— I know you said you don't want to post about this because Simon will see, but I know he follows me so he'll definitely at least hear about it. It'd be weirder if you don't post anything, I think." She dropped her head on Sara's lap. "Oh, we should come up with a cover story in case he asks..."

Wilhelm tuned out the chatter happening on both sides of the room about the intricacies of Instagram aesthetics and whether they should don their pink "pussyhats" on strike day, and instead turned to Felice. "I knew you were smart," he started in a quiet voice, "but really, you're like an evil genius." And he meant that as a compliment, one hundred percent.

Felice laughed. "Well, what good is being the most popular girl in school if I don't use my powers for good from time to time, right?" She winked at him, and Wilhelm smiled. She nudged him with her shoulder. "Hey," she said, "we're going to do this for Simon. You'll see." He nodded, hoping more than anything that her prediction was right.

She squeezed Wilhelm's arm, offering him one last bit of reassurance, before going to Stella and Fredrika so they could show her what they'd posted. Wilhelm remained by the door and let the girls' enthusiasm wash over him. When he thought about it, he'd hardly done anything— it was all Felice, really— but he couldn't help but feel that, for the first time since his entire life went to shit, maybe, just maybe, something good could actually happen.

He was so, so glad he was not alone in this.

Chapter Text

The full-on marketing push started the next morning.

"So what you're saying is," their formerly pink-haired classmate said, giving Felice and Madison a doubtful look, "you want us to walk out of class at noon and go stand outside in the cold?" Her eyebrows arched high on her forehead. "It's the middle of January. Couldn't Simon have gotten himself suspended some other time?"

Felice winced. Their classmate (Lisa? Laila? Felice couldn't remember at the moment but she'd definitely check— trying to cajole people into doing something for you without even bothering to learn their name was seriously rude) had a point that the weather was not ideal for outdoor activism, but it's not like they had many options here.

And she didn't have to be a jerk about it, anyway, as Maddie was quick to point out. "Sorry," she intervened in her usual English, although she sounded anything but; her tone was mocking. "We'll make sure to tell the school board to rein in their homophobia until the Spring next time." Felice elbowed her in the ribs, as a reminder for her to behave— they were trying to get people to help, after all— and she gasped. "What? Spring is objectively the gayest season."

Felice narrowed her eyes at her. "Is it, though?" she asked. She was no expert, obviously, but she knew most of her gay friends went pretty crazy for a certain Starbucks fall staple. She wasn't sure how much of an indicator that was, though.

The girl, who had come back to school after the break with her hair a bright turquoise, sighed. "How long is this thing supposed to last?" she asked, sounding resigned, and Felice felt a spark of hope that it might mean she was starting to come along to their side.

"We're not sure," Felice admitted. She might be up to say anything necessary to get people to be there, but she also wasn't going to lie. "It depends on whether the school listens to us or not, I guess." The girl made a face, and that's when Felice realized she might lose her if she didn't do something quick.

Appeal to FOMO, she told herself. When thinking about their approach last night, she had considered it a last-resort measure, but she might have to pull it out early. "Look, everybody's going to be there." If we can convince them, she added in her head but did not say that out loud. "You don't want to be the only person missing the biggest social media event of the year, do you? You'd just be sitting here in an empty classroom by yourself. Sounds kinda boring, doesn't it?"

Their turquoise-haired classmate bit her lip, thinking about it for a moment before her eyes looked around the classroom for the few girls she usually hung out with (Felice didn't know their names either. For shame! It's not like Hillerska was a huge school or anything). They were near the door at the moment, talking with Stella and Frederika, and seemed receptive.

Gotcha, Felice thought, knowing the girl was thinking the same.

Finally, the girl sighed. "All right, I'll be there. But I can't guarantee that I'll stay there the entire time! This is why humans invented civilization," she finished with a grumble.

"Yay!" Madison cheered, giving the girl a big grin for the first time since they approached her.

"Don't worry, the crowd will warm you right up," Felice assured her, mentally patting herself in the back for a job well done. One, she reminded herself. They were making headway, but they were just getting started. "You'll be having so much fun, you won't even remember the cold. I promise!"

They were about to move on to their next victim— erm, target— when Maddie remembered something she still wanted to say. Tapping Felice on the shoulder, she signaled for her roommate to wait, and rounded back to the turquoise-haired girl. "By the way, I love your hair!" she said, to which the girl smiled, a little surprised by the abruptness of the compliment, but flattered nonetheless.

Madison leaned with her elbows on the girl's desk. "I was just wondering, though: does that color wash out easily? 'Cause, see, the theme color for the rally is purple—"

"Maddie!" Felice called out, signaling to her that they should move on. No use harassing people any more than they needed to, she figured, even though their classmate would definitely look awesome with purple hair. Their next class would start soon, so they didn't have much time.

Madison gave the girl a sheepish smile. "See you Friday!" she declared, pushing away from the desk and following Felice around the classroom.

Stella and Fredrika had no qualms about going straight for FOMO right from the get-go.

"So, really, when you think about it, it's going to be more like one big party," Fredrika told the classmate they had ambushed at the entrance to the room. Stella was vaguely aware his name was Emil, but she hadn't interacted much with him since they started Hillerska together. Fredrika might've made out with him at some point, but Stella wasn't 100% sure.

"It'll be fun!" her roommate continued her charm assault. "We'll play some music, wave some protest signs, joke around..." Stella had no idea why she was making it sound like a concert. Or a date, perhaps. But whatever worked, she figured.

"Uh-huh," the boy said, clearly not impressed with the possible entertainment value of the event, though Fredrika didn't seem to notice. "Okay, cool. But can it get me out of our History quiz on Friday?"

Fredrika seemed a bit caught off-guard by the question, so Stella thought she had to jump in, lest they lose the guy. "Right. When do we have History on Friday again? Was that at two?" The new term had just started, after all, and she hadn't quite memorized their new class schedule just yet.

Emil nodded. Stella turned to Fredrika to quietly confer with her. "We might be able to pull that off, right? It will take some time for everybody to make their way outside and for the actual rally to be ready to go. We might not be able to start until one."

Fredrika nodded. "Felice was saying during breakfast that we should be ready to miss the entire rest of the school day," she pointed out since Stella had been late for breakfast that morning and had missed that bit.

"Okay," Stella agreed. They turned back to Emil. "That sounds doable," she told the boy, who seemed satisfied. "If we're all out there by noon, none of us will have to do the quiz. Just make sure all your friends are in on it, as well." Emil agreed that he would pass the news on, and walked past the two girls to finally make his way to his seat.

Fredrika turned to Stella with eyes as wide as plates. "We have a History quiz on Friday?!" she shout-whispered to her roommate. Stella rolled her eyes with a groan. Frederika was so scatterbrained. Shaking her head, Stella started making her way to their desk, since the class was about to start. Fredrika followed close at her heels. "What? I didn't hear anything about a quiz. We've only been back for like two days!"

"Eyes on the prize, Rika," Stella muttered between her teeth. They sat down just a few seconds before their teacher came in, so there was no more time to contemplate their possible impending History class doom.

Since Simon wasn't going to be in school for at least the next week or so, Felice had offered to sit with Sara until he came back. Because there was a plan in motion, though, the time between classes wasn't conducive to the usual kind of chatter between friends. Case in point, Felice was, at the moment, focused more on the boy sitting on the opposite side of Sara than on Sara herself.

"So, can we count on you to be there?" she asked, smiling at the boy. She didn't know the guy's name— they'd never talked before— but Felice seemed to know him. She was twirling the ends of her hair around her finger as she spoke.

"I don't know." The boy didn't seem convinced by Felice's pitch, as far as Sara could tell. "I mean, it's not that I don't want to go," he added. "Like, I wouldn't mind. Sounds fun, and it can get us out of class, so..." He shook his head. "But I had tutoring with Mr. Englund after classes on Friday. I really shouldn't miss that, I almost failed his class last term as it is."

"Oh, Sara could help you out with it!" Felice said right away, catching Sara herself by surprise. She didn't know when Felice said "say whatever we have to say" last night, that included volunteering Sara to tutor people. "She's really good at maths. She's even here on an academic scholarship and everything!"

Sara frowned. "I'm not—" she started, meaning to correct her misconception. Yes, she was pretty good at maths— numbers came easier to her than more interpretative subjects, like literature and English— but she wasn't at Hillerska on an academic scholarship; her mother paid full tuition for both her and Simon, despite how expensive it was. She did get approved to board at Manor House on a grant, but that had been arguably more about August's influence than about her grades... not that Felice was aware of that.

Felice put a hand on Sara's forearm and gave her a barely perceptible shake of the head, which Sara understood by now meant she shouldn't say what she'd just been about to say. She wasn't sure why it was necessary to lie to this boy, but she trusted Felice enough to know that she'd explain eventually. There were a lot of white lies and half-truths in a regular friendship, she'd come to learn. Not all of them were equally bad, though.

"Yeah," she said instead with a nod. "I can help you. Over the weekend, maybe."

The guy looked her up and down, as if seeing her for the first time, and smiled at her. "Yeah, okay. I just really need to do well on the first exam, you know, so I won't be on edge for the rest of the semester. But I'll definitely be at the strike. It sucks, what they did to your brother."

Sara smiled at him, grateful for the support. She turned to Felice, who squeezed her forearm and winked at her. Sara wasn't sure what that meant but figured she'd done well. As their Sociology teacher came into the room, the thought crossed her mind that maybe this strike thing would work out, after all.

"Hey, man," Henry greeted as he pulled back the empty seat beside Wilhelm and sat down. Wilhelm acknowledged him with a nod, pulling his hand away from his mouth where he'd been biting his nails. Knee bouncing incessantly under their desk, he looked around the classroom, watching the girls flit about from group to group trying to get people on board with Friday's strike.

He probably should've been doing more to help, but he'd never been great at small talk; he could pull it off just fine, but it always felt fake and he hated that. Also, he couldn't shake his mother's voice out of his head that the royal family should not put their thumb on the scale for or against a private institution. Of course, he knew some things were too important to stay quiet about— he'd told his mother as much— but he wasn't sure where to draw the line between not doing enough and outright abusing his privilege, and that made him hesitate.

Plus, every time he brought up the strike, people would give him this look, like they knew exactly why he was so invested in getting Simon back to school as soon as possible. Which, okay, they were right for the most part, but also he didn't need people rubbing in every five minutes just how fucking gone he was for that boy.

Still, he should help. This whole damn mess was his fault, after all, so the least he could do was get over the awkwardness of it all and start selling it. "So, uh," he started, looking down at his hands on the desk rather than at Henry, "did you hear about the, um, the strike? On Friday?"

Henry, who was slumped back in his chair with his gaze fixed on his phone's screen, nodded. "Ah, yeah, I think I saw someone talking about it on Insta," he described vaguely, his attention still on whatever he was doing on his phone. "Are you going?"

Wilhelm must've stared at him for like ten full seconds, trying to puzzle together what the inside of Henry's mind must be like for him to even think to ask that question. "Erm, yeah. Yeah, I'll be there," he replied, somewhere between bafflement and amusement. "You?"

Henry shrugged, unbothered, his eyes still glued to his phone. "I don't know. Probably," he said, completely non-committal.

Wilhelm leaned forward on the desk, a hand going up to scratch at the back of his neck. "It..." He cleared his throat. "It would mean a lot if you and some of the other guys could be there," he threw out, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. "To me, I mean. Personally." He looked at Henry out of the corner of his eye.

That finally got Henry's attention away from the screen, which he promptly turned off before setting the phone facedown on the desk in front of him. "Are we talking, like... 'VIP box at the Euro finals' personally?" he suggested carefully, very clearly trying not to seem too eager.

Once again, Wilhelm could only stare. And approximately 3.5 seconds later, he burst into a giant snort he couldn't hold inside, laughter he then had to cover up with a cough. Honestly, there was something oddly comforting about Henry pretending not to notice the shit being flung at Wilhelm from every direction just so he could continue brownnosing him for personal gain like it was just a normal Tuesday. As annoying as it was to have people sucking up to him all the time, at least Wilhelm could count on Henry's deliberate obliviousness to give him a brief respite from overthinking about everything else.

Besides, as Crown Prince, he probably would be expected to go support the Swedish National Team at their matches. His mother loathed sports-related engagements, and his father wouldn't go by himself. Erik had lived and breathed the blue and yellow, but Wilhelm had never been as into it as his brother had been. He'd have to get used to it now, though. Maybe if he brought a bunch of "friends" with him it would make things less awkward. Maybe it would even give him enough cover to, perhaps, bring Simon as well. If he'd allow it.

He shook himself out of his daydream, mirth still tinging his words. "Sure, Henry," he said, the corners of his mouth crinkled up tightly. "Sounds like a fun time."

"Sweet," Henry returned with a smirk like he could already picture himself in whichever European stadium the Euro finals were meant to take place that summer. Wilhelm didn't know, and he didn't really care, as long as Henry got his ass, and those of their fellow first-year boys, to the rally on Friday.

The ginger-haired boy went back to his phone and Wilhelm leaned sideways against the wall beside him, wondering what Simon was up to while Wilhelm was stuck in a classroom having inane conversations with his ridiculous classmates as part of a harebrained plan to bring the boy he loved back to school.

God, he really hoped this would work.

They tackled the second and third years while at lunch, or during workies. As most of them had limited interaction with Simon as it was, content to think of him as "that non-boarding socialist kid," getting them involved with the strike was even more like pulling teeth than it had been with the first years.

"Why would I want to help that guy?" Nils asked, without an ounce of self-awareness of how awful he was being, once Felice and Madison finished explaining everything that was going to go down on Friday. "He obviously doesn't belong here. I'd say we're better off if he's gone for good."

Felice glowered at him. It's not that she was surprised that so many rich kids were so arrogant and patronizing to anyone who didn't have money. She'd grown up among them and had probably fallen into those same pitfalls more than once. But even before coming to Hillerska and meeting Sara and Simon, she at least tried to be nice to less privileged people. She could (most of the time) recognize when she was being unfair or insensitive, and actively tried to avoid that, because for all her money, she didn't enjoy hurting people, or putting them down.

But people like Nils? They wouldn't even pretend to be nice. It's like they'd grown up thinking of Draco Malfoy as a role model. Who even did that? They were such cliches. What in the world did anyone ever gain from treating other people like crap? It just made you look like a jerk. Even if it was just for the sake of good PR, treating other people like human beings at least earned you a modicum of goodwill and trust, which, if her father was to be believed (and he was if the value of his assets had anything to say about it), you actually needed in business.

Still, she should've known they'd get the worst pushback from someone like Nils. He was, after all, friends with August.

Felice was about to tell him off when Madison intervened. Having known Maddie for a long time, and having been her roommate and friend for their entire first term at Hillerska, Felice could tell she was as annoyed with Nils as Felice herself was; perhaps more, since she was closer to Simon. But the tone she took was purely transactional. "If you go to the rally on Friday, I'll go on a date with you," she offered, stepping up to him.

Nisse seemed surprised for a moment like he hadn't been expecting that; Felice took it as a good sign. But then his eyes narrowed at Madison, like a poker player trying to suss out a bluff. "Throw in a handjob and you've got yourself a deal."

Felice's scowl deepened. Did he have to be so gross? Who the hell did he think he was, treating Maddie like some kind of slut who would have sex with him just to get a favor back? What an asshole. Once again, she was about to give him a piece of her mind, when Madison cut in, instead.

"You may ask," she declared in a magnanimous tone, nose held high in the air and looking every bit like she was in charge of this... negotiation. "And I may consent if I feel like it that day," she added. Nils, once again, seemed responsive to that, at least for the moment.

Felice thought that might just be it, and so did Nils, apparently, as he looked like he was about to say something in return, but then Madison smirked almost... evilly. It stopped both of them in their tracks. "And if I don't feel like it," she said in a casual tone, almost like she was just talking about the weather, "I can always just rip off your balls." She finished the sentence with an unconcerned shrug, giving Nils a brilliant smile.

Felice swallowed a stunned laugh and turned to see Nisse's reaction. His eyes had widened to roughly the size of baseballs, and as funny as it was, for a second, Felice feared Maddie's audacity might've cost them his presence at the strike— and by extension most of the other third years'. (Not that she didn't think Madison's response was epic, mind you.)

Fortunately for them, Nils was still a gross, horny teenage dickhead, and after a few heartbeats of shock, the remark seemed to, if anything, make him even more eager. "Deal," he said, putting his hand out for Madison to shake.

"Deal," she said confidently, reciprocating the gesture. "Pleasure doing business with you." Then Nils spun on his heel, walking away from them and toward the door with a distinct swagger to his steps.

Felice and Maddie turned to each other and simultaneously burst into laughter. "Tell your friends!" Felice called out to Nisse's retreating back, and then the two girls collapsed on each other, giggling like crazy.

Wilhelm carefully lined up his shot. It was the last ball, so it's not like he was going to miss it, but there was a certain theatrics to this he had to adhere to. He took a breath, held it for a second, then exhaled, hitting the cue ball with just enough force that it sent the ball rebounding off the opposite-side cushion, then another side and then another, finally disappearing into one of the side pockets with a satisfying clunk.

The crowd of rowdy boys surrounding the pool table erupted into cheers and jeers alike. His opponent groaned and hid his face in his arms. "Sorry, Jan," Wilhelm said, though he was mostly just amused. Apart from his initial turn, Jan had been pretty much just standing there as Wilhelm leisurely cleared the table. "So, since I won, that means you'll be at the strike on Friday, right?" he added, extending a hand for Jan to shake.

"Yeah, yeah," Jan mumbled, sounding reluctant, but accepting Wilhelm's handshake. No way any of these boys was going to lose face in front of their peers by not honoring the results of a wager between upstanding gentlemen. Especially not one against the Crown Prince.

"How are you even so good at this?" Vincent comment from the back of the crowd. He sounded almost angry about it, if Wilhelm had to guess. Through the different challenges Wilhelm had accepted (six or seven so far, because teenage boys were too competitive for their own good), Vincent had made a bunch of snide comments about how he didn't think people "like him" were good at gentlemen's sports. Wilhelm was pretty sure he meant "like him" as in "not straight," even if he never outright said it, and it made Wilhelm's jaw clench with anger every time. But he figured if he wasn't allowed to punch him, the best way to shut him up would be to prove him wrong. And that much Wilhelm could definitely do.

"My dad loves pool, so we have a table at home," he explained as he started pulling the balls out of the pockets and up to the baize bed so they could be racked again. The pool table in the Forest Ridge common room was smaller, clearly not meant to be professional, so Wilhelm had to adjust his technique a bit, but he was still confident that he was better at the game than most of the boys here. "Erik and I used to play a lot when we were younger."

There was silence as he finished resetting the table like he owned it, someone else moving in to rack the balls. As much as these boys' opinion of him might've soured after the sex tape, no one would dare make a sneering remark when the former Crown Prince's name still hung in the air. They all knew better.

Wilhelm's grip tightened almost painfully around his cue stick. "All right, then," he called out loud, looking around the Forest Ridge common room at his fellow students' uncertain expressions, "who's up next?"

A rumble went around the room again as three or four more of them lined up to play against him, though not all of them did. It didn't matter, anyway; he'd roped enough of them in already that the rest would gravitate toward the strike regardless because that's where everybody else would be.

As his next opponent finally stepped up to the table, Wilhelm lined up his cue stick for the break shot and started the game over.

They were reasonably certain that someone in the school's administration had to have heard about the strike by the time Thursday rolled around, but none of them had been hauled to the headmistress's office just yet, so just to be safe, they had people do all the prep work for the strike at the palace, between and after classes.

That was around the time the girls really started getting the feeling that their plan might just work out after all. That was because people actually seemed to start having fun with it, with groups coming in and out of the place until late, the more creative types helping the rest make their protest signs, and people throwing out funny or incisive ideas left and right. The girls and Wilhelm weaved periodically among them, handing out markers and cardboard and paper stock they'd had Sara's mom bring them from Bjärstad "for a school project." It was a bit like Felice had said: they weren't making it about Simon, per se, but making it an event, a reason for people to hang out together and have fun, and for their purposes, that was more than enough.

But of course, whenever you put that many dumb teenagers in the same place and gave them any sort of responsibility, there were bound to be at least a couple of them who simply refused to take things seriously.

"...Really?" Stella said, staring down at Walter's protest sign, which he had spent an inordinate amount of time working on for the effort it required, and which he had just finished. It now said "SKOLSTREJK FÖR KLIMATET" in big, bold, black block letters.

Henry snuck a peek over Stella's shoulder and snorted. "Isn't your father on the board of Preem?" he asked with a smirk.

"Yeah," Walter replied, looking mighty pleased with himself. "It's supposed to be ironic."

Henry laughed some more, and Stella turned her head to glare at him. He recoiled slightly, his snickers fizzling out quickly at her obvious displeasure. Stella rolled her eyes. She was so glad she'd never taken him up on his request to hook up; first-year boys were so immature.

She then turned her glare on Walter, who was doing his best to look like an innocent little lamb (and failing). "Change it," she warned him in a no-nonsense voice, tossing an unused marker at him. It hit him on the head, prompting him to close his eyes with a cringe, then bounced off his hair and fell to the floor, rolling a few centimeters away from his knee. He reached out a hand to keep it from getting away from him.

Now that the boys looked properly chastised, Stella walked past them and toward the next group of students who were, thankfully, putting much more of an effort into actually being helpful.

Outside, Felice had pulled Wilhelm, Madison, and Sara for an "emergency meeting." Wilhelm assumed the school had finally caught up with their plans, and they were perhaps demanding they stop, or something along those lines. He was surprised, however, when Felice started her explanation with, "So, my mother just called."

"Did she find out about the strike?" Wilhelm asked straight away, because his main priority at the moment, aside from getting Simon's suspension rescinded, was for his friends not to get hurt in the process. "Is she angry at you?"

"Oh, no, I knew she was going to hear about it," Felice said, sounding a little surprised by the question, but generally not sharing Wilhelm's level of concern. "She follows me on Instagram, so she would've seen it anyway."

Wilhelm nodded. He figured if she wasn't worried about her mother's reaction, neither should he. "Okay. What's the problem, then?"

"Well, you know how we weren't really speaking during the break? Because of the Lucia thing?" Wilhelm nodded. Felice had mentioned something along those lines in their text conversations during the break. Madison and Sara nodded as well. "Well, she must be trying to get back into my good graces or something, because she called to give me advice."

Madison scoffed. "Advice for the strike?"

Felice looked like she couldn't quite wrap her head around it herself. "I know. But honestly, I think she might actually know what she's talking about this time." She passed on her mother's assertion that, while making noise at Hillerska and getting the students' support was all well and good, if they really wanted to put pressure on the school, they had to get to the parents.

"Which means," she concluded, "it's not enough to get attention on social media. We need to get the attention of the actual media."

"Why would the news ever pick up this story, though?" Sara asked smartly. "They wouldn't care what happens at some random school over the fate of one student. It's not even a public school, either, so they can't even blame the Ministry of Education."

"Maybe we could get in as a kind of fluff piece?" Madison suggested. "They do those sometimes, right?"

Felice turned to look at Wilhelm and seemed hesitant about whatever she was about to suggest. Wilhelm had a feeling whatever it was, he wasn't going to like it. "They might pick it up," she finally said, pausing to bite at her bottom lip, "if the Crown Prince speaks at the rally."

Wilhelm felt something cold tug at the pit of his stomach. He swallowed hard on a suddenly dry throat. "No— Felice, I—" He shook his head, emphatic. "I can't. I'm not allowed to speak in public about political issues."

"This isn't a political issue, though," she insisted. To her credit, it didn't seem to be happy or enthusiastic about having to ask him this. If anything, she seemed conscious of and empathetic to his reluctance. But she still insisted. "Simon is your friend, right?" she added, emphasizing the word "friend" like he needed a reminder of the official palace position on what his relationship with Simon, or lack thereof, entailed. "Surely no one would judge you for wanting to help him."

Wilhelm felt like bursting into hysterical laughter. Of course people would judge him. They always did. Those who didn't believe his statement of denial back in December would never believe Simon was "just a friend" to him— and thus accuse him of favoritism. Those who did believe his statement that he was not involved with Simon would be even angrier because he should not use the weight of his title to aid some nobody classmate who wasn't even that close to him. No matter how you looked at it, he couldn't win. Volunteering for such scrutiny on national television was pretty much his worst nightmare. And he wasn't even sure that it wouldn't make things worse. Somehow it always did.

Felice pursed her lips, apologetic. "You don't have to do it if you don't want to. I'm not going to force you or anything; it's up to you. Just... think about it?" she prompted softly. "I think it could really help."

Wilhelm nodded shakily. "I'll think about it," he conceded. Every cell in his body was constricting with apprehension at the prospect. But if it made the difference between the strike failing or achieving its goal... He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn't help much. He took his thumb up to his mouth and started chewing on his nail almost subconsciously.

"In the meantime, maybe we can reach out to media contacts ourselves?" Madison suggested, probably understanding from Wilhelm's incessant anxious ticks that a "maybe" was as far as he could go at the moment. "Felice, maybe your father knows someone?"

"I'm sure he does, but it's tricky," Felice admitted, a little crestfallen. "He puts out press releases all the time, but it's all done through the company, and asking him to put the company's name behind this is..." She winced. "...It's a lot."

"Yeah," Maddie agreed with a huff. "I figure most people at school would be in a similar situation. It's one thing to stand in a crowd of people and wave a piece of cardboard, and a whole other thing to put your parents' business reputation where your mouth is." She put her hands on her hips. "Unless you know someone who has a journalist for a parent? I can't think of anyone off the top of my head."

Felice shook her head. Wilhelm shrugged. But then Sara spoke up. "Isn't August's stepfather a media investor?"

The cold tug in Wilhelm's stomach transformed into a dense, heavy iceberg. "No," he said, shaking his head as he stumbled backward a bit on his feet.

It wasn't that Sara was wrong; Rickard had made most of his fortune investing in media corporations, so he had plenty of pull when it came to their operations. That was, in fact, one of the reasons why Louise's second marriage was seen as something of a joke within the nobility: royalty very deliberately did not get involved in romantic relationships with media personalities, as it could be a massive conflict of interest. But Louise had bucked that unwritten rule, and now the snide comments followed her wherever she went.

It only got worse when Rickard lost most of his fortune. His portfolio had originally mostly involved established media outlets, but shortly after his marriage he and his business partners entered a new venture: a pro-business, center-right (or perhaps more right than center) multiplatform conglomerate to cater to what they thought was an untapped market in Sweden. Turns out, they were wrong. The company never caught on among the better-established Swedish television networks and online news distribution platforms, and it was shuttered down a little over a year later, leaving Rickard, and by extension Louise and August, bankrupt.

Rickard was probably still close with many people in the business, though; Sara was decidedly right about that. But getting a favor from Rickard would have to involve talking to August, and Wilhelm's blood froze in his veins just thinking about it.

Sara frowned at him. "What do you mean? I'm pretty sure he is."

Wilhelm shook his head emphatically. "I mean no, we're not bringing August into this," he retorted, putting as much certainty in his words as he could. He wanted there to be no doubt that trusting August with anything remotely related to Simon's situation was one hundred percent off the table.

Sara glared at him. "Don't be stupid. This could be the one thing that actually helps Simon—"

"Why would August ever want to help Simon?!" he threw back. He didn't understand why Sara was pushing this. Shouldn't she be as angry at August as all of them were? "He's the one who fucking did this to us in the first place!" Wilhelm didn't know if Madison was aware of August's part in the whole sex tape thing, but she didn't seem surprised when he blurted that out, so he assumed Felice had probably already looped her in.

Sara shook her head. "I'm not saying you have to forgive him. But are you going to let this entire plan fail, and Simon's future along with it, just because you refuse to talk to August?"

Wilhelm's gut clenched painfully. "So, we can try something else. We can ask people, there's gotta be someone else—"

Sara didn't let him finish. "When? The strike is tomorrow!"

Wilhelm gritted his teeth. She was right, but it grated on him. How could he even begin to explain to her that every time he so much as became aware of being anywhere in August's vicinity, he felt like he was going to throw up? He couldn't help the visceral reaction he experienced at the mere mention of August's name. If he had to stand anywhere near his second cousin, let alone actually talk to him, he couldn't be held responsible for what he might do.

"How would we even get him to cooperate with us, anyway?" Felice intervened. She seemed just as skeptical as Wilhelm felt, but also more willing to hear Sara out. Perhaps that was for the best because Wilhelm felt like his head was about to explode. "If we had something we could hold over him, maybe that would work, but the Crown already cleaned up his involvement with the tape, and none of us has talked to him in weeks. And it's not like he's going to just trust any of us. I broke up with him via Instagram Story, and Wille..." She signaled to him. "Well. You know."

Sara shrugged almost like this was a non-issue. "So I'll do it."

Madison and Felice exchanged a puzzled gaze. "But how?" Felice insisted. "Have you ever even interacted with him at all? I mean, apart from that one time..." She trailed off, frowning. Wilhelm didn't know what "that one time" was, but Felice seemed almost disturbed by it. "Sara, what...?"

Wilhelm shook his head again. "No. I can't let you do this," he declared, tugging at his hair with one hand. "August uses people, Sara. He manipulates everyone around him for his own benefit. There's no way I'm letting him do that to you."

Sara glared at him and crossed her arms around her torso, obviously defensive. "I can take care of myself. I'm not stupid."

"That's not what I—" He let out a frustrated groan, rubbing at his face with his hands. "Remember how you said Simon wouldn't like me paying for a lawyer for him? Well, you should take your own advice, because I know for a fact that your brother would hate this."

Felice took a step closer to the center of the misshapen circle they had formed for maximum privacy. "I agree with Wille, Sara. August is going to have it out for you from the start just because you're friends with us. I think we can try, but I don't think we should trust him, and I definitely don't think you should talk to him alone."

Wilhelm nodded, heaving out a rough, resolute breath. "We do this together, or we don't do it at all."

Sara remained quiet for a moment as if measuring the two options in her mind. Felice and Wilhelm waited for her decision expectantly. Madison diverted her gaze between the three of them in turn, like she was watching a really intriguing TV show.

Finally, Sara decided. "Okay, fine. We all go." In the end, Maddie stayed behind at the palace— someone had to "supervise" the preparation activities for the strike— while the other three started in the direction of Forest Ridge, in search of the person they least expected, or ever wanted, to need in these circumstances.

Chapter Text

August's room was too small to fit all of them comfortably for this conversation, so he kicked out the few stragglers that were hanging around in the Forest Ridge common room— mostly people who had just come in from the palace, or who were waiting for the dinner service to start— and took the space for themselves. One of the second years who made his way out was carrying a sign that said "PUNISH THE REAL CULPRIT" in big red block letters. Wilhelm caught August eyeing the sign guardedly as the guy walked out, promptly closing the door behind him and leaving the four of them in relative privacy. Malin, who was standing in the hallway outside, would make sure no one came in to interrupt.

Whatever uneasiness August might feel at the idea of his classmates demanding his head (even if they didn't know that's who they're gunning for) disappeared as soon as he turned back to look at the other three students, his usual bluster coming back full force. "Well, well," he started, speaking directly to Wilhelm. "Whatever it is you want must be really important if you're willing to come to me about it."

Wilhelm glared at him, fists clenching inside the pockets of his coat, which he was keeping on like it was a bulletproof vest. "Believe me, I wouldn't be standing within a kilometer of you if it wasn't strictly necessary," he snapped back, making it clear to his cousin that they were there to deal with a strictly transactional matter, and nothing else.

August's smarmy smile only widened. "And here you thought you didn't need me anymore, huh?" Wilhelm's fists tightened so hard, he swore he was starting to lose feeling in his knuckles.

He could already feel his chest starting to constrict. He held the glare just for a moment longer before shifting his gaze to the door of the common room. "I can't fucking do this—" he muttered, just about to make for the exit when Felice's extended arm stopped him in his tracks, barring his direct line to anywhere else but here.

"Wille, we've already come this far. We might as well just ask," she pleaded with him. "Just... stand back for a bit, okay?" she asked cautiously. Wilhelm could still feel his heart booming inside his ribcage but eventually nodded. Felice kept her arm up for maybe a heartbeat longer, only dropping it when Wilhelm took a step back toward where Sara was standing in front of a mid-height bookcase. The popular girl was watching him warily like she expected him to lunge at August at the slightest provocation. Wilhelm couldn't blame her; even he wasn't sure that he wouldn't.

He felt like a threatened feral cat, both terrified and a second away from lashing out at the same time. They needed to do this fast.

Once Felice seemed somewhat reassured that Wilhelm wasn't going to bolt, or... God knows what else... she turned to August. "Have you heard about the strike we've got planned? Tomorrow at noon?"

August scoffed, dismissive. "Your little PR stunt to demand respect for Little Lenin's right to an expensive private education? Yeah, I heard something about that," he retorted with a sneer. He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "You'll forgive me if I can't make it, but I can definitely appreciate the irony, at least."

"You don't have to be there," Sara intervened for the first time since they had come into the common room. It would've seemed an odd reassurance to state for anyone else, but it wasn't surprising that Sara might've missed the sarcasm dripping from August's words. "You just have to ask your stepfather to get his media contacts to pick up one of our social media live streams. We'll do the rest."

August looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "Why would I ever do that?"

Wilhelm groaned out loud and pulled his hands out of his pockets just to tug at his hair in frustration. "Fuck! I told you he wasn't going to—"

Felice let out a very similar frustrated noise but otherwise made no other outward gestures. She had way more self-control than Wilhelm did, that's for sure. He was itching to pace even just within the two or so feet of space he had between the bookcase and the back of the couch. "Wow. Really, August?" Felice said. "You don't feel even a little badly about what you did?"

August opened his mouth to say something, then hesitated for a brief moment before shaking his head and trying again. "I wouldn't have been forced to do it if that little social climber had never come to Hillerska in the first place," he spat back venomously.

"Forced?!" The exclamation burst out of Wilhelm's mouth without him even willing it to happen. The absolute nerve! "You've gotta be fucking kidding me—"

"If Simon hadn't come to Hillerska, I wouldn't have, either," Sara intervened quietly before Wilhelm could launch into a full-on rant.

Wilhelm wasn't sure why Sara thought that was an important point to raise, or why it seemed to give August pause, but that's what it looked like from his vantage point. "That's not—" He faltered, once again having to shake his head to readjust his train of thought. "Why does it even matter, anyway? He'll be back in a week and it'll be like nothing happened. You're only doing this to make yourselves look like heroes, and people are only jumping on board to get more followers online. It's not like they actually care about your little boyfriend."

"Fuck you," Wilhelm snarled back at him. "These are people's lives you're toying with here, you can't just—"

August laughed like Wilhelm had said something eminently funny, but the sound was eerie, almost threatening, rather than lighthearted. "You're one to talk about toying with people's lives, Crown Prince." He heavily emphasized those last two words. "Sounds to me like you're still too damn invested in this whole... sordid affair, when you know for a fact it can never go anywhere." He shook his head. "How selfish can you be? Throwing centuries of tradition and stability down the drain just so you can get your jollies with some guy who doesn't even respect the monarchy? It's pathetic."

Wilhelm saw red. Not just because he was being called selfish for wanting to be with the person he loved— he was used by now to being called selfish for wanting things regular people had. August wasn't the first to say that, and he wouldn't be the last. But no, what really got him was August calling his relationship with Simon "sordid" when he'd been lurking outside Wilhelm's room at an ungodly hour in the morning so he could catch his cousin having sex and record it for blackmail. Who the hell did he think he was to judge Wilhelm for loving someone?

August knew nothing about his relationship with Simon or what it was really about. He didn't have a single fucking clue. He thought he knew everything, but he didn't. His feelings for Simon were about so much more than just sex or convenience. But August wouldn't know the first thing about that. Wilhelm might pity him if he wasn't so damn angry.

He was about to go absolutely nuclear on August when Sara said something that abruptly stopped him in his tracks. "If you don't help us with this," she started in a very blunt manner, "I'll tell the police that you've been stealing my medication."

"What?" Wilhelm said, turning to Sara with what he was sure was an absolutely aghast expression on his face, nearly at the same time as Felice exclaimed "He did what?!" It might've looked like a slapstick comedy for anyone looking in from the outside— at least for anyone who didn't know they were talking about stealing drugs.

August noticeably paled. "I-I did no such thing," he said, floundering a little at the beginning of the sentence. So much for his usual bluster. "And you can't prove it."

For the first time since they came into the common room, Wilhelm allowed himself to really look at his cousin. August looked thinner than the last time they'd seen each other, his features just on the edge of gaunt. His hair was disheveled and he had dark circles under his eyes. Now, Wilhelm wasn't simplistic enough to make a direct connection from August's appearance to what Sara had just said about drugs— not after just three weeks— but it was clear that August was struggling with something, and Wilhelm wasn't about to give him the benefit of the doubt that it might be guilt. Between this from Sara and what happened in the last term with Simon, on top of August's money issues, he wouldn't put it past his cousin to really be so far gone as to stoop to stealing ADHD medication from a girl with ADHD to feed an addiction.

Said girl seemed pretty certain about her explosive accusation, though. "That's fine. I'll just tell them the truth: that my medication disappeared from my purse both times we met up over the break. We'll let them decide if that seems like too much of a coincidence."

Felice looked between the two of them, looking baffled. "Why were you two meeting over the break?" Her line of sight rested on her friend, who was staring at August in a determined fashion. "Sara, what is going on?"

"We've been hooking up since the end of the last term," Sara admitted in a mumble, dodging Felice's gaze. Wilhelm had to shake his head to make sure he'd heard her correctly. "Just a couple of times, because I couldn't get to Stockholm too often. I'd tell Mamma I was going to visit you, then take the train and meet up with him somewhere."

Felice let out a groan, clearly disappointed. "Sara, no..."

August rolled his eyes at her response. "Oh, don't you whine like she fucking killed your cat; what Sara does and who she does it with is none of your damn business. And you"— he turned to Sara— "What the hell? I thought we had a good thing going. Didn't we? Why are you doing this?"

"I can't function without my pills," Sara said simply, wrapping her arms around her torso almost protectively. "I'm gonna run out soon, and I can't just ask for more—"

"There are ways to get pills!" August threw back before she could even finish speaking. Wilhelm knew it was all bullshit, of course. He didn't give a lick what August did to himself, but if it was so easy for him to find a dealer, why had he roped Simon into getting him pills last year? Why had he stolen Sara's medication? "As long as it's not urgent, I can put you in contact with someone—"

"I can't afford that!" Sara retorted automatically.

"Neither can he," Wilhelm muttered. He was still having trouble wrapping his head around... everything he'd learned in the last five minutes... but if there was one thing he was clear on, is that August could never be trusted— both on emotional and financial matters.

August glared at him, his jaw clenched tightly, but he said nothing. Instead, he continued speaking to Sara. "Fine," he said, with an obviously forced lack of concern. "Go ahead, tell the cops. It's not going to go anywhere, anyway; the Queen can make it go away."

The boast was so ridiculous that Wilhelm couldn't help but let out a bark of laughter. "Seriously?" he asked. August gave him a dark scowl in return for his mocking. "You think she protected you because, what— because she cares about you? It's not about you, August. It's about the Crown and the royal family's reputation. You're only worth protecting until you make yourself a liability. Keep digging yourself in like this, and it'll be easier for her to pretend she's never met you."

He shook his head. "Believe me, I would know. The only reason she hasn't disowned me yet is that she gave birth to me." Wilhelm frowned as soon as the words left his mouth. It wasn't quite the truth; he knew his mother loved him— in her own way, at least. But those were the kinds of thoughts that popped into his head in his lowest moments, and quite frankly at the moment he very much felt like August deserved to feel that low.

His cousin continued to glare at him. For a second Wilhelm thought he was going to stay quiet again (what could he possibly have to say to that?), but he was wrong. "That may be the case for you because you've been a disappointment your entire life. Me? The Crown needs the support of the noble families. I'm the head of mine, and I'm going to make damn sure I uphold my family's legacy. Make us indispensable, even for you."

"By stealing ADHD meds from neurodivergent teenage girls like a street junkie?" Wilhelm threw back. "Sounds like a plan."

"At least when I slum it, I don't do it with a communist," August snarled back at him, and oh, Wilhelm wanted to strangle him. Just reach out and wring his neck— but Sara was standing between them, so he couldn't. As if noticing the same, August turned his ire on her, then. "You can't fucking do this to me," he told her. "I got you into the Manor House!"

To Wilhelm's left, he heard Felice gasp. He was too stunned himself to even exchange a glance with her, as things were beginning to click in his mind. He had wondered how Sara's housing grant had been approved so fast. Initially he'd figured it was just the school trying to ingratiate themselves with Simon's family after everything that happened— avoid a lawsuit and all that— but after Simon got suspended that hypothesis started to make less and less sense. Now he knew what the real reason was.

Sara took a step back, closer to the bookcase behind her. "And I kept my end of the deal," she replied, her tone matter-of-fact but her face betraying some apprehension. "We're even. This is a completely separate thing."

It took Wilhelm entirely too long for Sara's latest reveal to process in his mind. "What deal?" he demanded urgently, turning fully toward Sara. Earlier when they decided on doing this, he'd been worried when Sara offered to talk to August alone, for fear that he would manipulate her somehow. Clearly, that ship had sailed. "Sara, what did he have you do for him?"

"Sara...?" Felice prompted. She sounded scared.

Sara pursed her lips, hesitant, before finally blurting it out. "I kept his secret," she said. Wilhelm wondered for a second what secret she meant— the drugs? Or had August done something else?— but then she continued. "I saw him when he was uploading the video. During Lucia. I didn't realize what it was until the investigators came to take the library computer." She looked down at her feet, unable to bear their gaze in what Wilhelm assumed was remorse. "He told me he'd get me into the Manor House if I didn't tell anyone."

Felice gasped again. "You knew it was August before I told you?" Sara bit her lip but did not respond in the affirmative or in the negative. Her silence was probably a clear enough answer.

Wilhelm couldn't... comprehend what he was hearing. "That's... Why wouldn't you come to me? Or— why wouldn't you tell your brother?" He ran a hand over his face in disbelief. "He made Simon's life a living hell, Sara, what the fuck—"

"I know!" Sara cut him off, clearly very agitated, her back fully bracing against the bookcase behind her now. Her shoulders scrunched up, almost like she was starting to curl in on herself. "I know. But now he can be useful to Simon, see? If he does this for us, we can at least fix this one thing," she said earnestly. She looked up at August, serious. "So, you get the strike on the news, or I will go to the police and tell them about the drugs."

August sneered at her. "You little—" He made to grab her arm; for what, Wilhelm didn't know, but it looked like a threatening gesture to him. Clearly it did to Sara as well, because, in an attempt to dodge his grasp, she pulled her hand away, and without meaning to, hit the edge of one of the shelves on the bookcase behind her. She let out a hiss of pain and cradled her hand carefully.

Wilhelm was between them in a flash. "Try that again, I dare you," he declared, staring up at his cousin. They were very close, right in each other's faces, and Wilhelm held August's gaze, unwavering. His voice was like ice. "I've been wanting to punch you for a long time, so go on, give me a reason."

August scoffed but took a step back, raising his hands at his sides almost sarcastically, if such a gesture could be sarcastic. "I wasn't going to hurt her," he claimed, but of course he would say that. "And you're not going to fight me, anyway. We all know how that turned out for you last time," he added dismissively, referencing Wilhelm's club fight that had gone viral and landed him at Hillerska last fall.

Wilhelm did not back down. "Try me," he said, his voice low and steady. "'Cause right now I really don't give a fuck."

August didn't say anything for a while, only looking back at Wilhelm with dripping contempt. Then he shook his head and gave in. "Fine. Fine! I'll get your little social justice pow-wow on TV," he conceded. He pointed at Wilhelm. "It does not affect me in the slightest whether this kid comes back to school or not; that's your deal, not mine. But once this is done, I want you to stay the fuck away from me until I'm finally out of here for good." He lowered his hand, shifting his glare to Felice, and then to Sara. "All of you."

"Gladly," Wilhelm retorted. August only had a few more months left at Hillerska, and if Wilhelm never had to see him again after that, it would still be too soon. He knew he wasn't going to get that lucky, but he could hope.

August gave him one last look of disdain for good measure, then turned and stomped his way out of the common room, leaving the door open behind him. Wilhelm's eyes followed him until he disappeared from sight, and only once he did, did the prince let out a heavy breath— a weak attempt at calming his racing heart.

The common room was quiet for... nearly a full minute, actually, since all of them seemed to be struggling to process everything that had just happened, everything that had been said. Wilhelm felt like his brain was being tugged in three different directions, and not one of them was winning so he stood there immobile, his mind running through every word that was said like it had happened to someone else and he had just been watching from the outside. He turned to Felice, who gave him a wide-eyed, appalled expression that Wilhelm thought might reflect his own, and then he looked at Sara, who was still leaning back against the bookcase and cradling her hand against her chest.

Wille had so many things he wanted to ask, so many things he wanted to say, but dammit, this was still Simon's sister, and she was hurt. "Shit," he muttered under his breath, groping around the inside pockets of his coat for the handkerchief he always carried in one. "Are you okay?" he asked Sara softly, handing her the piece of cloth when he finally found it, so she could press it against the cut on the back of her hand. There was only a little bit of blood, thankfully, but it was still a sizable cut and an angry red welt on a delicate area.

Sara nodded, accepting the handkerchief gratefully and pressing it against the laceration. "Thanks," she mumbled, not looking at Wilhelm. He wasn't sure if she was thanking him for the handkerchief, or for defending her from August, but it didn't really matter.

"I—" Felice squeaked out. She seemed overwhelmed by everything they had learned— not that Wilhelm could blame her, as he felt the same way— and looked like she was struggling to say anything. Or to say everything, probably. "Sara— I—" She cut herself off again. She swallowed hard. "I'm— I'm going to go get the nurse," she finally managed to say, more to herself than to them, and spun on her heel, hurriedly making for the door.

Sara was obviously distressed by Felice's abrupt exit, and probably still shaken from their confrontation with August, because she leaned her back against the bookcase and let herself slide down to the floor, still pressing Wilhelm's handkerchief to the back of her hand.

Wilhelm was— not angry at her, not just yet, but just... perplexed? He didn't understand what Sara could've possibly been thinking to involve herself with August after she discovered what he'd done to her brother. For a grant to board at Hillerska? Was that it? He sighed. "August, Sara? Really?" He shook his head. "How could you do that to your brother?"

Sara shrugged, not looking at Wilhelm but rather at the back of the couch. She sat against the foot of the bookcase, knees pulled up. "He lied about meeting up with someone who hurt me," she explain in a quiet mumble, "so I thought it was fair if I lied about hooking up with someone who hurt him."

Wilhelm didn't know the full story, but he had a vague idea what Sara said Simon had lied about had something to do with their father. He remembered seeing a man he thought might be their father approach them and Linda during Lucia, but then the video was released and he never got the chance to ask. And Simon had never really talked much about his father, just the basics of him being an addict, his parents having divorced a while back, and generally not keeping in contact with the man. At least until the mess with the drugs last year. Regardless, Wilhelm could read between the lines of Sara's assertion well enough.

"You know that those two things are not—" he started, then stopped himself when he realized he was coming off too harsh. Erik had done some work with autism charities over the summer before Wilhelm's confirmation, and sometimes Wilhelm had tagged along, his mother wanting him to take up more responsibility since he turned sixteen. So he'd had some interaction with autistic people, though his knowledge was very limited. He knew enough to understand that autism presented differently in different people, however, and he didn't want to make any (wrong) suppositions as to how it presented for Sara. He should be more careful, just in case.

He took off his coat, dropping it on the back of the couch. Then he sat down beside Sara on the floor, legs only partially stretched out in front of him due to lack of space, the tip of his sneakers touching the back of the couch. "Sara, you know those two situations are very different, right?" he tried again. "What happened with your father was... a long time ago, but what August did is actively affecting Simon's life right now—"

"Of course I know that," Sara snapped, and Wille knew right away that even his so-called careful phrasing had offended regardless. She shook her head emphatically. "That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, what Simon did. And this is Micke's fault, too, anyway," she claimed, sounding very certain.

When Wilhelm turned a confused glance in her direction, she expanded on it. "He left us with a lot of debt. It's the reason we need to get scholarships for university. Simon doesn't want to take out any loans; we have to help Mamma with old back payments. If Micke weren't such a shitty person, Simon getting suspended wouldn't be such a big deal."

Wilhelm's heart grew heavy hearing this. He'd been to Simon's house, seen how his family lived. He knew they weren't wealthy, but they weren't exactly dirt poor either— just a regular middle-class family, doing the best they could on a single income. In Sweden, that was good enough to live comfortably and even afford some fun things, like Simon's (pre-owned) gaming console or the aquarium setup for his fish. But it couldn't have been easy on their finances when they had to transfer to Hillerska because Sara was getting bullied. And now, knowing that they had debts on top of that... All of it only made Wilhelm even more determined for the strike to go well. He'd do anything in his power to make that happen. To help Simon.

"Okay," he said, conceding that Sara's point was valid, and that he'd misunderstood the situation. "That makes sense. I'm sorry for just assuming. But still... your father is sick, Sara. August is just a spiteful asshole. And even if it was shitty that Simon lied to you about seeing your dad, he didn't do it to hurt you."

"I don't know why he did it," Sara retorted forcefully. "He hasn't said."

Of course, Wilhelm thought. Sara didn't know about the drugs. Wilhelm couldn't tell Sara everything that had led to Simon repeatedly visiting Micke during the last term, mainly because he didn't have all the details, but also because Simon clearly didn't want her to know. But there was one thing he was absolutely sure of: "He didn't mean to hurt you," he repeated. "So you shouldn't be trying to hurt him."

"You hurt him, too," she countered quietly. Again, she didn't sound accusatory; just matter-of-fact. And she was right, anyway, so Wilhelm wasn't about to feel defensive.

He leaned his head back against the bookcase. "I know," he said. He closed his eyes momentarily, his mind offering him a flash of Simon's devastated expression in the aftermath of Wilhelm's official statement about the video. It would forever be etched in his mind, how hurt he'd looked. "But I've apologized to him already," he added, almost by reflex lifting a hand to his mouth to bite at his thumbnail. "Whatever happens now is up to him."

They were silent for a couple of heartbeats until Wilhelm spoke again. "You should tell Simon. About August."

He saw Sara rub at her face with the hem of the sleeve of her jumper; he couldn't see clearly from that angle, but the movement itself was familiar enough that he could tell she was crying. "He'll hate me," she whispered, fragile.

Wilhelm shook his head. "He won't hate you," he said, fully certain of every word. "He may be angry for a little while, but he's your brother. He loves you." He took a deep breath. "You shouldn't put it off, though. You know what the last thing I said to my brother was?" Sara shook her head no. "'You're annoying,'" Wilhelm revealed, reminiscing about that last phone conversation, and how glad he'd been to have his brother's advice that day. "Now I look back on it and think of so many things I should've told him..."

"It's not like Simon is going to die," Sara said. Wille tensed, and she noticed. "I'm sorry. That was insensitive."

Wille shook his head. "It's okay. But I guess that's what I'm saying... you never know what might happen," he added. "Even if the chance is very small, you don't want to leave things unsaid. Like, I wish I had told Erik about Simon," he confessed. "I wish I had told Erik how Simon makes this place better. How happy he makes me."

"He loves you, you know," Sara said, and Wilhelm felt like there was a supernova bursting inside his chest. Just the mere idea that Simon might reciprocate his feelings was enough to make him feel like he was floating on cloud nine.

Still, he shook his head. "He doesn't," he muttered. He didn't want to get his hopes up. A small part of Wilhelm dared to believe that Simon might love him even just a fraction of how much he loved Simon, that their short-lived relationship had meant as much to Simon as it had to him, but Simon hadn't said it back, and Wilhelm wasn't so self-centered as to make assumptions about what was in Simon's heart. Especially not after he'd ruined everything between them.

"He does," Sara reiterated. "He hasn't told me, but I know he does."

Wilhelm cleared his throat, not knowing what to say to that. "Well," he started, with the most awkward twitch of his shoulders, "you can do better than August."

He panicked a little at the prospect that he might've said the wrong thing, because Sara's expression fell and she shifted her gaze down to her knees. But it wasn't really about what he said. "It felt nice, though," she admitted quietly, "having a boy like me. Having a boyfriend. Like all the other girls. I've never had that before."

She sniffled. "But then he started stealing my pills," she said, sniffling again, "and I can't—" Her voice cut off in what sounded more like a sob. "I won't go through that again," she concluded, shaking her head and once again wiping at her face with her sleeve.

Wilhelm wasn't sure if he should, like, hug her or something. He wasn't sure that would make her feel any better, or if she would even welcome it, anyway. This conversation was the most they'd ever talked to each other. "You don't have to," he tried to reassure her instead. "You don't need August. You've already got your grant, and if you get any trouble about it later on, just let me know. Or Felice, or Madison. We'll figure something out." And he meant it. He might not have interacted much with Sara before this week, but she was important to Simon, and that made her important to him. "You've got people here who care about you."

Sara nodded, still wiping her tears away. That was when Felice came back, knocking on the doorframe to get their attention. She was serious, but her expression softened a little when she saw that Sara was crying. "Hey," she said. "The nurse said she'll see you at the Manor House."

They got up off the floor, Wilhelm standing up first to make sure that Sara was able to get to her feet with only one hand. (She was.) After carefully checking that the cut on the back of her hand wasn't bleeding anymore, Sara made her way to where Felice was standing. Before she walked out the door, however, she turned back to look at Wilhelm. "Hey, Wille?" she called out. He looked at her expectantly; it was the first time she had ever called him that. "I'm sorry," she said, looking and sounding contrite.

He smiled at her. "It's okay," he replied. He wasn't sure what specifically she was apologizing for— not telling him about the tape, maybe, or the whole August thing, or maybe just being so curt to him after the press release. Or maybe all of it. It didn't really matter, though; they had bigger things to worry about at the moment. Wilhelm didn't know they could properly be called friends after this, but he felt like they'd at least come to some kind of mutual understanding.

Sara acknowledged his acceptance with a nod, and the two girls disappeared into the hallway. Wilhelm took a deep breath and grabbed his coat off the couch, making his way back to his room with Malin at his heels. He had a lot to think about what was needed of him the next day. The strike had to work. Wilhelm would make sure of it.

Chapter Text

Mr. Englund came into the classroom a couple of minutes before noon, and the students did their stand up/greet him back/sit down routine. Wilhelm looked around at his classmates' faces. They all knew they didn't have to do it— there wouldn't be a class today— but it was almost automatic by now.

Their teacher seemed to be aware of that, as well. "I'm told you are all planning some sort of protest action today," he started, leaning against the edge of his desk with a disgruntled expression. "The administration has asked me to remind you that truancy is a school offense, and anyone caught skipping class without a valid excuse may be subject to disciplinary action."

So the school did know. That was fine, though; it didn't really make a difference at that point. There was silence for maybe a second or two before Felice stood up. She gave their maths teacher a polite smile. "Thanks for the warning, Mr. Englund," she said, "but some things are more important than class."

She turned to Madison, who was sitting beside her with a huge grin on her face, and extended her hand. Madison bent down to grab a cardboard sign that was resting against the foot of her desk, then handed it to Felice. It said "DO BETTER" in big block letters, much like Felice's initial Instagram post had. She turned to look at the rest of the students sitting behind her. "Everyone, we're meeting up at the front steps of the main building, around the fountain! Let's do this!"

There was a flurry of voices, sounds, and movement as everybody started getting up, exchanging excited chatter with each other, and pulling signs and banners out from under their desks. Soon everybody was filing out of the room, the girls splitting up in the hallway outside to make sure people from other classrooms knew where to go.

Soon, the classroom was nearly empty, save for Mr. Englund and Wilhelm, who still sat at his desk, smiling to himself. The older man sighed. "Well, Your Royal Highness, you might as well go. It seems we're not going to have a class today."

Wilhelm flipped the notebook in front of him closed— he wasn't sure why he'd thought to bring a notebook to the class that day; probably just being pessimistic— and smiled up at the man. "That's quite all right, Mr. Englund," he said. He stood up, grabbed his stuff, and nodded at his teacher. "Have a nice day." With that, he walked out, dropped his things at his locker, grabbed his coat, and put it on, listening for the murmur of voices nearby as more and more people made their way out of classrooms and out of the building.

They were really doing this. And it was going to work.

It had to.

Felice grinned brightly as she looked down at the crowd congregated at the base of the steps— dozens and dozens of her fellow students, bundled up against the cold, but dancing and clapping and waving colorful signs in the air and chanting loudly when prompted, phones up and recording. Madison had set up her speakers in the corner and was playing what she called her "Stick It to the Man" playlist as background music. Fredrika had somehow procured them an electric megaphone, apparently out of thin air (where she found such a thing anywhere within school grounds, Felice had no idea), and they were taking turns hyping up the crowd.

"...And is that what we want everyone to think of us?" Fredrika spoke into the megaphone, her voice getting louder and louder the more worked up she got. "All of Sweden is looking at us right now!" she added, pointing toward Maddie, who was in charge of live streaming the rally on Felice's phone. "It's bad enough that they already know us as that school with the sex tape. Now we're also going to be the homophobic school. I don't know about you guys, but I am not okay with that!"

The crowd hollered, a few of the signs being waved even more enthusiastically at her words. Felice took a second to read them and smiled proudly. Some were straight to the point— "YOU SAY JUSTIFIED PUNISHMENT, WE SAY HOMOPHOBIA"— while others crammed eloquent messages into barely enough space in tightly squished letters— "Your decision to judge a person for their sexual orientation, relationships, or situations outside of their control defines your character, not theirs." One that Felice particularly liked read "Things that are actual problems:" followed by checkboxes for "same-sex relationships," "love," "intimacy," and last but not least, "SLEAZEBAGS LURKING OUTSIDE WINDOWS WITH A CAMERA." (Only the last option was checked.)

"The administration did this without thinking how it would affect the rest of us," Fredrika continued. Felice snuck a glance behind her, where Headmistress Lilja, the school counselor (Boris, was it?), and a few of the teachers stood just off to the side near the main entrance of the building, watching everything that was going on but not intervening. Right to protest and all— there really wasn't much they could do, other than possibly take disciplinary action (which they wouldn't; not against every single student, and pretty much everyone was out in force).

"This could follow us everywhere we go!" Frederika added. "Do you want to be labeled a homophobe when you're making business deals, chatting with your peers at the golf club, or in the middle of an international conference? I know I don't!" The crowd roared at that. Felice tried not to roll her eyes; trust them rich kids to revolt at the idea of having their golf time soiled. But hey, whatever worked. "So join me in telling the administration that we will not stand for this!"

Fredrika passed the megaphone to Stella, who took over moderator duties for a bit. "It's not just that, either!" she declared. "By blaming the person who was in the video, instead of looking for the person who took the video, they're basically telling us that we're on our own if this ever happens again." She shook her head. The crowd erupted into boos. Felice spotted several signs relating directly to this particular issue— straightforward ones such as "STOP VICTIM-BLAMING," "BLAME THE SYSTEM, NOT THE VICTIM," and "If you blame the victim, you stand for the culprit."

"How can the school assure our parents of our safety if they just let this happen?" Stella continued. "I've started keeping my drapes closed at all times because I don't know when the next sicko will peek in on me! And I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. We shouldn't have to live in fear like this. Am I right, girls?"

The crowd cheered, more and more signs coming to life as she spoke. Some of these were a little more imaginative, too, like the ones that read "OPEN DRAPES ARE NOT CONSENT," "Decent humans don't record other people without their permission," and— Felice had to snicker because, oh, she so hoped August stuck around long enough that morning to catch sight of this last one— "My open window is not at fault for your moral depravity."

"And it's not just girls!" Stella added, pointing directly to a sign held by a second-year girl near the front that read "BOYS CAN BE VICTIMS TOO" in big square letters. "We know they never would've done this if this had happened to a girl, right? It would've looked terrible! But because it was two boys, they don't care. And to make it worse, only one of the boys got punished! We all know why, too. Can they be any more obvious with their favoritism?"

The crowd below jeered, and Felice noted more signs relating to this being lifted high— "ENOUGH OF THE RICH KIDS CLUB" caught her attention because it was unexpected (she'd definitely ask around to find whose sign that was later), and "THIS IS A SCHOOL, SO EDUCATE YOUR DUDEBROS" near the back, which made her chuckle.

"This awful decision by the school administration affects all of us," Stella finished up her bit, gesturing to the entirety of the crowd with her hand. "That means we have to keep pushing until they take it back! Are you guys with us?" The crowd went wild.

Stella handed the megaphone to Felice then, as it was her turn. She moved closer to the center of the top step so that everyone could see her. "Hi, everybody! I'm so glad you're all here to support the strike and that you're all so pumped up to get our demands heard." The crowd cheered and clapped in response.

As she thought about what she wanted to say next, her gaze fell on one more sign she had forgotten about. It was Walter who held it up in the air— Felice was pretty sure Maddie had hoisted it onto him right before the rally started because his original sign, a black-and-white one that said "IT SUCKS THAT I HAVE TO BE HERE," was vetoed by pretty much all the girls in unison when he proudly showed it to them that morning. (Henry might still be carrying it, but at least he wasn't holding it up for everyone and their cameras to see.) His new sign said, in purple sparkly letters, "SIMON DOESN'T DESERVE THIS."

Felice smiled, finally settling on her next words. "Stella's right that this is an institutional issue, and it affects all of us. But I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that some among us are affected more, and more directly, than most. Whenever we witness injustice, we have to think about more than just ourselves, and keep in mind the people who truly are affected the most by it."

Her audience was quiet, and Felice could imagine they were wondering where she was going with this. "I know most of you don't know Simon very well. I don't either; just from the choir, but we don't talk much. But I would like to be his friend! He sounds like a great guy. At least that's what I hear from some of my friends, and so I think if we want to remind ourselves that we're doing this for Simon, it's only fair to pass the megaphone to the people who really know him."

"Like biblically?!" came the exclamation from the back of the crowd. A few people ooh-ed and laughed at the stupid comment. Felice did roll her eyes this time, disappointed at the immaturity. It wasn't hard to figure out whose voice that had been.

Madison, who had been standing off to the side recording everything, pulled Felice's arm, which was holding the megaphone, slightly to the side so she could speak into it. Or more like growl into it. "Just because you're the Virgin Mary, doesn't mean everyone else has to be, Vincent!" she fired out in English. The crowd ooh-ed even louder.

"Maddie!" Felice chastised her in a mutter, keeping the megaphone away from her so no one apart from Madison would be able to hear her. "If we're on TV, we don't want to give them a reason to cut away from us. Can we keep the sacrilege to a minimum, please?"

"Right. Sorry," Madison said, giving her roommate a sheepish grin. Then she pulled the megaphone back up to her mouth and said, "My apologies to the Virgin Mary. She's cool." She paused, and for a moment Felice was afraid she was going to tell Vincent to fuck off (profanity was going to get them off the air for sure!), but she seemed to think better of it and instead released Felice's arm, gesturing for her to continue.

"Anyways," Felice said into the megaphone, then turned to look in Sara's direction. Her newest friend had stayed off to the side, looking a little bit overwhelmed by the crowd, but also kind of excited, if that was possible? Felice thought this situation might be the kind where her autism might affect her, but she couldn't be sure, and she hadn't had time to ask. At least Sara wasn't keeping her distance because of what happened with August the previous evening, though; that much, Felice was absolutely certain of.

After the nurse had cleaned and bandaged Sara's cut on the back of her hand, Felice had been about to leave, honestly too upset at everything she'd learned and thinking she needed to cool down before she could think about it calmly. But Sara had begged her to stay so she could explain, and given that she was hurt and already crying for different reasons on top of that, Felice couldn't say no.

So Sara had explained. All the way from her parents' divorce, how her father's addiction had hurt her, and how she felt her mother should've acted earlier— though she understood now that it wasn't that easy, but when you're a kid and the world is crumbling around you, you can't help the way you feel.

All through the bullying at Marieberg, and how she always felt like a freak, even though her bullies weren't any different from her except in the way their brain processed the world around them. How much she loved her brother for always protecting her and supporting her, but also how she resented him sometimes because it felt like his constant hovering implied that she was incapable of taking care of herself.

How she always wished she could just be normal, and how she thought starting at Hillerska might give her that opportunity: to fit in, to have friends who didn't look down on her for being autistic, to be just a regular girl. Even if she had to change herself to do so, pretend to be fancy, pretend to be someone else. It was better than being excluded. She liked it. It made her happy for the first time in a long time.

How being with August felt a bit like she'd achieved that goal. Sara admitted she'd liked fooling around with him, but it had never felt quite right, and sooner rather than later the guilt started eating at her. She'd hurt her brother, and she'd have to atone for that. And then August started stealing her pills, and that had been the last straw. She'd done the wrong thing in a moment of weakness, of insecurity, and she was so very sorry.

By the time she finished her story, they'd missed dinner, and it was almost lights out. Sara had been crying so hard that Felice could not for a second doubt that she was being sincere. What little anger she'd been holding onto fizzled out quickly, and taking her distraught friend in her arms, she assured Sara that she wasn't mad. She didn't mind that she'd hooked up with Felice's ex mere days after she broke up with him. She didn't care one bit for August, and the "girl code" didn't apply to him, as far as she was concerned. And she could understand making a rash decision out of insecurity; that's how Felice herself had ended up dating August to begin with, after all.

But she was disappointed that Sara had gone to him even after witnessing from Felice's experience what a piece of shit August was, that she'd even be capable of going behind her brother's back like that, and that she'd then pretended not to know about the video when Felice told her. All of it, it broke her trust.

Felice was hurt, but... that didn't mean they weren't friends anymore. Sara just had to make sure she never did anything like that again, which the girl promptly promised. Felice assured her that she didn't have to change herself to fit in— dressing up and giving each other makeovers was fun and all, but it didn't really matter; Felice liked her no matter what she wore. And Sara was clearly trying to make up for betraying Simon now, so that counted for something.

So there was still a little residual tension there, but they were still good friends. It made no sense to hold a grudge when they would see each other and have to interact with each other every day. And Felice really liked having someone in her life who wasn't hung up on status. Who was real. Sara had fallen into that quicksand once, but at least she seemed determined to make up for her mistakes, even if the stress of it all could be triggering. She told Felice she wanted to do this— Felice wouldn't have asked.

She lifted the megaphone to her mouth. "I'm hoping Sara can tell us a little bit about her brother," she said, though it came out more like a question. Sara was listening, and expecting the request, but she still hesitated for a moment before stepping closer and accepting the megaphone when Felice handed it to her.

Sara stepped up to the front, tentative. Some in the crowd were nice enough to cheer in encouragement for her, particularly most of their fellow first years, who were standing near the front. Felice was glad for that, and it seemed to buoy Sara enough to give her the last push she needed. "Hi— hi, everyone," she said into the megaphone. More cheers and scattered applause. Sara smiled. "I appreciate that you're all here trying to help Simon. He doesn't know we're doing this, but if he knew, I'm sure he'd be... pleasantly surprised."

Felice did not miss the pause there, and it made her chuckle. Sara always had trouble saying things that were outright falsehoods, so sometimes she used roundabout ways of saying something that was... somewhat true, but not quite the same. Felice was sure Simon would be less than impressed that a bunch of rich kids who don't know him and mostly look down on him had shown up to support the strike for a thousand self-serving reasons that didn't involve him at all, and he probably wouldn't be grateful to them for it. "Pleasant surprise" was... somewhat more plausible, though. If you stretched the meaning of "pleasant."

"For those who don't know us," Sara continued, pointedly not looking at the crowd, but rather everywhere else, "Simon is my younger brother, and he's my best friend. He's really smart, he's funny, and he loves singing and dancing. He always takes care of me and Mamma. I know he can seem kind of standoffish a lot of the time, but that's just because he's trying to protect himself and the people he loves. He'd be anyone's friend if they only treat him as an equal. And Simon would do anything for his friends. He didn't even think twice about switching schools to help me out."

She paused for a second and pursed her lips before continuing. "I really like it here at Hillerska, and I want Simon to feel that way, too. So, thanks for being here, and..." She shook her head. "That's it, I guess. Thank you." She smiled shakily at the crowd and quickly handed the megaphone back to Felice, who grinned at her and clapped in a supportive manner. This prompted the crowd below them to clap as well, as if they'd just woken up from being caught off-guard by the somewhat abrupt conclusion to Sara's speech. Sara went back to the side, where Maddie welcomed her with a one-armed side hug.

Felice spoke into the megaphone again. "Okay, so—"

"Yo, is the prince going to speak?!" came a holler from the back of the crowd, interrupting what Felice had been about to say. She looked over there to try and see if she could find who it was, but she couldn't tell.

They weren't alone, though. "Yeah, Wilhelm should say something!" someone else yelled from the left. Felice floundered a bit. She'd told Wille he didn't need to give a speech if he didn't want to, but now the crowd was organically breaking out into a chant of "Wille! Wille! Wille!" and she was afraid if they didn't give the people what they want, they might lose what little interest they posed to stations carrying the rally on TV.

Felice looked helplessly at her friends and fellow strike organizers. "Where's Wille?" she mouthed, lowering the megaphone. Her friends all responded with shrugs and clueless head shakes. The chant continued, unabated. If anything, it was getting louder the longer they took to figure things out.

"I'll go look for him," Sara mouthed back, running around Madison, past the school staff, and into the main school building. Felice turned back to the crowd, at a loss of what to do. She called Stella, Fredrika, and Madison into a huddle to figure out what else they could say to keep the crowd engaged until Sara came back. Hopefully, she'd come back with Wille.

As Sara walked into the mostly empty building, the first person she saw was Wilhelm's bodyguard— the female one— standing in the main hallway. She seemed to be standing at attention like she did when she was guarding Wilhelm, but Wilhelm didn't appear to be anywhere nearby.

She was about to ask the woman where her charge was (and probably get herself bounced away as she wasn't particularly a known associate of the prince's) when she heard a desperate gasp coming from her left. There, in the first landing of the stairs, just hidden from view of the windows by the turn of the corner, was Wilhelm. He was standing, but leaning nearly the entire weight of his upper half against the wall, frantically trying to draw air into his lungs.

Sara was taken aback for a second. She knew very well what a panic attack looked like— anxiety is a comorbidity (or maybe even a symptom of) both ASD and ADHD, so she'd had to deal with panic attacks often, back before she was properly diagnosed, and before they found the best medication for her. She didn't know Wilhelm also had them, though. It seemed odd that someone with such resources would have to struggle like this, but maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising. Anxiety disorders could happen to anyone.

Deciding that she needed to do something, she turned to the bodyguard. She briefly considered asking her to get the nurse, but she thought Wilhelm might not want to draw attention to this, especially with the media's eyes on the school— not to mention a medical emergency would take attention away from the strike itself. "The prince is having a panic attack," she said. The older woman's eyes widened, and Sara figured Wilhelm must've managed to keep his heaving quiet enough that his bodyguard hadn't heard him. No time to parse that now, though. "I'm Sara, Simon's sister. I can help him through it, but could you get him a glass of water, please? He'll need it after."

The woman nodded and rushed to the kitchens to do what Sara requested. Sara made her way halfway up the stairs, approaching the prince. "Wilhelm?" she called out carefully. She saw him tense up, and it took a couple more deep gulps of air before he looked up and at her. "I don't know what triggered this, but I wanna help you with it, okay? Can you try to focus on me for a second?"

Wilhelm didn't outwardly respond, only kept breathing heavily, but he kept his gaze on Sara, which was good enough. "Can you sit down? It'll be easier for you if you're sitting down." He didn't move of his own accord, but let Sara pull him until she got him sitting down on the top step before the landing.

His hands immediately went for his head (to pull at his hair, maybe), but Sara intercepted them. "Wille? You're doing great. Can you look at me, please?" He did so, though it looked like it took an unspeakable amount of energy just for him to lift his gaze. His arms were shaking under her hold. "Okay, that's good. Now, I need you to watch me breathe, okay? In and out. Slowly. Can you do that?" He managed to nod that time. She breathed deeply a few times herself, to show him how to do it, then asked him to try and match her.

He did so, shakily and off-rhythm at first, but after a minute or so, he managed to coordinate his breathing with hers. They kept at it for a little while longer, until his breathing was stable. He was still trembling like a leaf, though. His bodyguard, who had come up behind them in the interim, handed Sara a glass of cold water, which she passed onto Wilhelm. Once he wasn't running on a parched throat, she had him put his head between his legs and count out loud. In Sara's experience, focusing on a mundane, repetitive task kept you from thinking back to whatever caused your anxiety in the first place.

It took maybe ten, fifteen minutes for him to be able to breathe easily and stop shaking. Sara knew Felice and the others were probably worried, but at the moment, getting Wilhelm up and running was the most important thing. Once he felt calm enough, he sat back up, wiping tears from his eyes. "Thanks," he mumbled in a scratchy tone, not meeting her eyes.

"No problem. You're the one who did the hard work," Sara said. Pushing herself to a standing position from the crouch she'd been in almost the whole time (her knees were starting to hurt), she looked the prince over, just to make sure that nothing else was wrong. "Was it the rally?" she asked, unable to hold back her curiosity. "Felice said you don't have to speak if you don't want to."

"I have to, though," Wilhelm retorted with a shake of his head. "I want— I have to tell them. Not just the students here, but everyone. That it was me on the tape." He finally looked up at her. He still looked shaken. "Right? That's what Simon wants."

Sara frowned, not expecting him to bring that back up now of all times. She figured he'd already denied it, and what was done, was done. But he could take it back, she guessed. She didn't know how much of a difference it would make for everyone— some people still believed it was him even though he denied it, and some people would still believe it wasn't him even if he said it was— but it would probably make a huge difference to her brother. And still...

She pursed her lips, shifting her weight a little on her feet. "I think... I think Simon would want you to be okay," was what she settled on after some thought.

For some reason, Wille looked like she'd just punched him in the stomach. Sara looked into his wide, watery eyes, wondering if she should ask what she said wrong, but then he tilted his head down, ran his hands over his face with a groan, then ran them through his hair (thankfully not pulling this time). Keeping his gaze down on the steps in front of him, he took a deep breath— not a gulping one like before, but rather a calming one— and nodded, mostly to himself. "Okay," he said, and with one last sniff, stood up, squaring his shoulders and straightening his clothes.

"So you're not going to speak?" Sara asked.

"No, I will," Wille replied. Sara didn't understand. She was about to ask why, but he started speaking again. "Could you... could you not tell Simon about this, please?" he asked, referring to his panic attack, most likely. He cleared his throat. "It's... I know it's a lot."

"He doesn't know?" she asked. Wilhelm shook his head. "You should tell him," Sara assured him, much like Wilhelm had urged her to tell her brother about August the previous night. "He'll understand." She knew that for a fact because Simon was the one who had always been there for her when she had dealt with anxiety over the years. He'd be there for Wille, too, if he knew. He would want to help.

Wilhelm nodded. He turned toward the window, looking at the crowd outside. Sara noted that the girls were still trying to hype everyone up, but the chanting had died down. Not surprising, really; no way they could maintain that level of enthusiasm for twenty minutes straight.

"Let's go," Wilhelm said in what she thought sounded like a determined tone, starting his way down the steps. He assured his clearly concerned bodyguard that he was okay and there was no need to call for medical attention, then made for the exit. Sara followed him, half worried and half puzzled. She didn't know what he was going to say, but she hoped it didn't make things worse, either for her brother or for Wille himself.

The moment the Crown Prince stepped through the doorway, there was an absolute furor from the crowd, and the chants of "Wille! Wille! Wille!" resumed in full force.

Simon was just pulling a bowl of shredded beef out of the microwave when the obnoxious knocking began.

His mom had taken to coming home for lunch every day during Simon's two-week suspension. Just so he wouldn't have to spend the entire day on his own, she said (or, as Rosh had more colorfully put it, so he wouldn't "haunt the house like a Victorian ghost" until his penance was over). Simon appreciated his mother's effort; by day five he was bored out of his mind, and he could only play videogames for so long, especially since the only other gamers online during Sweden's school/office hours that he could somewhat effectively communicate with were a rowdy, overly competitive bunch of Australians.

So every afternoon around one, Simon would put together something for lunch (nothing complicated— he wasn't a particularly good cook— but just leftovers or whatever quick re-jig he could manage from those leftovers), and have it mostly ready when his mother got home, so she wouldn't have to waste time with it. Today, he'd been just laying out the fixings for sandwiches made from last night's carne mechada when his mother arrived, and he thought he'd have time to plate real quick without any interruptions while she was in the bathroom.

That's when the urgent knocking came. Simon wondered who could be looking for them at this hour since there was usually no one at home at this time. He hoped it was not some paparazzo or reporter. He was damn glad those had left him alone a couple of weeks after Wilhelm's interview; they were driving him insane. Puzzled, he put the bowl down on the coffee table and went to check who was at the door, and what could possibly be so important that they felt the need to nearly tear the door down to get his attention.

When he opened the door, he was surprised to find Rosh and Ayub, heaviest winter coats and school backpacks still on, almost bouncing on the balls of their feet, for some reason. "Dude, are you watching?!" Ayub asked before Simon could even think of greeting them.

"Watching what?" Simon asked, utterly baffled, but Ayub ignored the question, pushing past his friend and making for the living room TV. Simon turned to Rosh. "And aren't you two supposed to be in school right now?"

"Yeah, we snuck out— Sorry, Linda," Rosh replied, pre-empting a scolding from Simon's mom, who had just come back from the bathroom and seemed surprised to find Simon's two best friends in her home at that hour. Rosh pushed Simon inside and closed the door behind her, keeping out the cold. "We just weren't sure if you'd heard about this, and man, you really need to see this."

"See what?" Simon asked again, letting Rosh push him toward the couch. They sat down while Ayub hurriedly browsed the channels for TV4. Simon couldn't imagine what they so pressingly wanted him to see; as far as he could recall, the programming in the early afternoon was dominated by, like, vapid US talk shows or silly vignettes about buying property abroad— the kind of stuff his mother loved but he couldn't stand.

Then Ayub found the right channel, and Simon found himself looking not at Dr. Phil, as he'd been expecting, but rather at what looked to be an Instagram Live feed showing a crowd of people surrounding a very familiar statue, in front of a very familiar set of steps that led to a very familiar building. His jaw dropped. "Is that... is that Hillerska?" he asked, noting with a wince that the chyron on the lower third of the screen said "Breaking: Boarding school students hold protest for boy from Crown Prince-lookalike video."

"Yeah, man," Ayub explained as he sat down on the other side of Rosh. "They walked out to demand the school take back your suspension!"

Simon was speechless. Under normal circumstances, he would've wondered what kind of drugs they were on that had suddenly transformed all these spoiled rich brats into social justice warriors— and for his sake, of all people's— but honestly he was too curious as to what was going to happen to even consider being derisive.

The feed switched to a different Instagram Live shot (the username was shown on the top left corner of the newscast, but Simon couldn't recognize whose account that was). This person was closer to the front, which made it easier to see the people leading the rally, and hear them as well. The whole thing seemed to be airing in real-time, so the captions were delayed, and some bits were hard to understand, but it was pretty clear they'd gone all out with this "Strike for Justice" thing. Fredrika was passionately yelling into a megaphone about golf clubs, and Simon had no idea where she was going with any of it, but if it managed to get his suspension rescinded, he'd take it.

He turned to his mother, who'd come up to stand beside the couch. "Did you know about this?"

She shook her head, looking just as stunned as Simon felt. "No," she said, sitting down on the armrest beside him, the food long forgotten. "Sara just said they were working on a school project." Simon frowned. That was also what his sister had told him when he expressed via text earlier in the week that she seemed to be acting weird. Maybe Hillerska was making her better at lying, but hey, he was hardly going to complain about her withholding this particular plan from him. He'd just be ungrateful if he did that.

The four of them watched with rapt attention as Simon's first-year classmates— Felice's little group of equestrian friends— rotated the emceeing among them. Stella spoke next, and Felice herself also said a few words. She sounded the most sincerely social-justice oriented, which Simon respected, given that she was also the richest girl in school. Madison intervened with some snarky commentary, which made the three teens snort and Simon's mom roll her eyes and shake her head.

Then Felice handed the megaphone to Sara. She didn't speak for long; she was quick and to the point, as was her way, but Simon couldn't remember her ever speaking so assuredly in front of so many people. She was so earnest that she had Ayub rushing for the bathroom to grab some tissues for Simon's mom, who couldn't contain her tears. Simon just grinned— couldn't stop grinning, he was so proud of his sister. So glad to have her in his corner. The other girls as well; he'd barely even spoken to some of them, yet there they were, going against the school administration for him. He had no idea how they'd managed to get everyone to go along with this— none of those rich kids in the crowd cared one lick about him, he was sure— but he was really appreciative nonetheless. He held his mother's hand and squeezed it, and she smiled at him between sniffles.

Then the crowd started clamoring for Wille to speak. And Simon's heart sputtered to a halt inside his chest.

"Oh, he better not mess this up," he heard Rosh mutter under her breath. But she needn't have bothered, because Wilhelm never stepped up to the front. The girls were looking at each other in dismay, and whatever they were saying to each other away from the megaphone wasn't audible, but Simon got the feeling they didn't know where Wilhelm was. He certainly wasn't anywhere to be seen on the live stream. Simon's gaze would've zeroed in on him immediately; it always did, much to Simon's annoyance.

"I wonder if something's wrong," Simon's mom wondered aloud as they saw Sara run off toward the main building without any explanation.

The girls valiantly tried to keep people's attention in the interim, but it seemed like it was not enough to satisfy the ruling overlords of television programming, because shortly after the chants died down, the broadcast switched to En plats i solen, the protest at Hillerska relegated to a small rectangle on the lower-right corner of the screen.

Simon's mother took that break to finally assemble those sandwiches (she didn't have much time until she had to go back to work, after all), and thankfully there was enough food for Rosh and Ayub as well, so they all busied themselves with that. Simon did not take his eyes away from that little rectangle for even a second, though. Because the live streams they were drawing from were filmed in portrait mode, it was even harder to tell what was happening in a landscape frame at that tiny little resolution, but Simon was sure as hell going to try.

He was halfway through his sandwich when something changed in the protest feed. "Guys, I think something's happening," he said, putting his plate down on the coffee table and getting up to crouch closer to the TV. He couldn't quite tell what was going on in the strike, but the shot had jostled harshly, almost like the person who was recording it was jumping up and down.

When the shot stabilized again, Simon could barely make out two, maybe three figures walking out of the main building and toward the front of the protest. Ayub, who had come up to stand behind Simon, was also watching over his shoulder. "Is that Sara?" he asked, pointing at the smallest of the approaching figures.

Simon squinted at the screen. "I can't—" He cut himself off when the broadcast switched again, the protest now taking up the entirety of the TV screen. He didn't even need to read the now-updated chyron— "Crown Prince makes appearance at boarding school protest"— to know who it was walking up to the head of the rally.

"That's Wille," he murmured, thunderstruck, completely frozen for a second, not knowing what was going to happen.

Everyone scrambled back to the couch as Wilhelm walked up to Stella, who held the megaphone at that point, and said something inaudible to her with a smile— his princely smile, Simon thought to himself; the practiced, polite, and efficient, but mostly superficial, gesture he recognized from the time Wilhelm greeted his classmates' parents on Parents' Day. Stella replied with a bright grin, however, and handed the megaphone to him without a word. The crowd went crazy.

Simon might've stopped breathing for a few heartbeats. It was only when Rosh swung one of the couch cushions at his stomach that his lungs seemed to start working again.

The video shifted to a different Instagram feed— Simon could recognize Felice's username as the source credited in the top-left corner of the screen, though clearly, it wasn't her doing the recording because he could see her in the shot— and he could see Wilhelm much closer than before, from the side. He was looking out at the crowd. A gust of wind blew his hair into his eyes, and he reached up with the hand that wasn't holding the megaphone to push it back, but it fell right back into his field of vision the second he pulled his hand back to his side. Simon's fingers itched to reach into the television screen and delicately move it behind his ear.

The prince lifted the megaphone to his mouth. "Hey, everyone. I'm Wilhelm," he started, unassuming, like every single person laying eyes on him didn't already know who he was. The crowd cheered loudly, proving that point. "It's good to see so many of you out here!" Wilhelm added over the noise.

He shuffled his feet a bit, waiting for the frenzy to die down so he didn't have to speak too loudly. "I haven't been a student here for that long," he continued, the cacophony of voices in front of him dwindling to a low rumble as everyone listened attentively to what he was saying. "However, I'm privileged for having gotten to know Simon in my first semester at Hillerska. He's my..." He paused for a second, then took a breath. "...my classmate, my teammate. My friend."

Simon's heart clenched, but not in a bad way, for once. Wilhelm hadn't disclosed anything beyond friendship— he couldn't; Simon understood that— but he looked like he wanted to. This wasn't the Crown Prince speaking anymore. It was just Wille. His Wille. Speaking directly to him, directly to Simon, through the television screen.

"And he's... amazing," Wille admitted. The crowd broke out in some loud whooping and hollering, and Simon had the vague idea that it was because they'd taken Wille's last assertion as some kind of innuendo— but Wille was smiling, maybe even blushing a little, and Simon couldn't care less about the silly immaturity of his knuckleheaded classmates as long as that expression remained on Wille's face forever.

"He's amazing, and smart, and brave, and such... just such a good person," Wille added once he could get a word in. "In fact, he's— he's the best person I've ever known." Rosh smacked Simon's arm with a smirk, but Simon barely felt it; he couldn't have torn his gaze away from the screen if he tried.

"And he doesn't deserve what's happened to him," Wille went on, sounding stronger, surer of himself with each word. "No one ever does, really, but especially Simon. His privacy was invaded in the worst way, and a moment that was supposed to be deeply cherished and guarded by him and..." He trailed off momentarily. "...and his— his partner..."

His voice broke a little as he pronounced that last word, and Simon's heart broke a little as well, because that was himself Wille was talking about, his own pain and disappointment, and no one could know. No one could be rightfully upset for him. It wasn't fair. But he continued. "...their moment was blasted all over the internet for the entire world to see and judge like it was something... sleazy or indecent."

He shook his head emphatically, his floppy hair blowing in the wintry wind as he did. "But it's not," he declared, his tone sharp, leaving no room for any doubt in anyone's mind. His lips were pressed together tightly, and Simon wondered if he was clenching his jaw as he did sometimes when he was angry. "It was his important moment to treasure, and now that's been stolen from him, and he'll have to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life."

The crowd booed as if they'd been prompted, and in the back of his mind, Simon wondered if August was listening to this somehow. God, he hoped he was. The jackass. But Wille carried on before Simon could ponder on it anymore. "But Simon's strong. He'll carry it with grace," he said. "Except now the school is punishing him for it like it was somehow his fault that he was victimized in the first place, and that is not okay."

He took a step back and lowered the megaphone a little, almost like he needed a moment to regroup, to calm himself down. The camera caught him taking a couple more deep breaths before he spoke into the amplifying device again. "I don't speak about issues like these very often," he started again, in a slightly more measured tone, "because it's considered political, and the royal family is supposed to stay away from political topics." He shook his head, almost like he was disappointed in himself, and Simon was reminded of the first time they ever talked, how Wille had seemed almost embarrassed of that very same precept.

"But you know what?" Simon swore he could see a fire in Wille's brown eyes that wasn't put there by an Instagram filter— it was just in him, and Simon found himself drawn to that flame like a helpless moth. "Saying that recording and distributing intimate images of people without their consent, of minors without their consent, is wrong... should not be political. Saying that revenge porn is wrong should not be political. And saying that blaming victims is wrong should not be political." Wille swept his gaze over the entire crowd, from side to side, almost like he was daring his audience to dissent. "I think we can all agree on that much, at least."

Simon had to hug the cushion to his chest to suppress a full-body shiver. He was aware he tended to separate his Wille from the prince of Sweden in his mind, but this? This was the future King. And Simon might be opposed to the monarchy on principle, but... damned if this Wilhelm wasn't really fucking hot.

He shook that thought out of his head. For fuck's sake, his mother was sitting right beside him. He needed to get a grip.

"So I'm standing here," Wille said, solemn and deliberate, "in full support of Simon, begging Hillerska School to please do the right thing." Out of the corner of his eye, Simon saw Rosh's eyebrows rise high on her forehead. He knew what had surprised her, and frankly, he shared the feeling; begging wasn't something royalty was usually known to do. "And I'm asking every single one of you to not let up until they take the suspension back. If we fight this fight together, we can win."

Wille paused, closed his eyes for a second, then sighed, relieved. "Let's do this for Simon, everyone."

He stepped back, lowered the megaphone, and handed it back to Stella, but he might as well have dropped the mic with the way the crowd went absolutely nuts. As he walked to the side, just before he went out of sight of the camera, he gave it (or maybe the person who was filming— Madison, perhaps?) a quick and frankly adorable smile. It made Simon's heart flutter.

(He didn't know hearts could do that when they were already beating hard enough to be on the verge of bursting out of one's ribcage, but maybe that's just the kind of paradox that happens when a person falls in love.)

One of the girls (Felice, maybe?) started up a "Take the suspension back!" chant, and soon enough the entire crowd was chanting along with them. Simon wasn't listening anymore, though. His mind was just replaying Wilhelm's speech over and over, unable to process all the emotions it generated in him, all the feelings that flooded his body just thinking about it.

Ayub leaned forward to stare at Simon, wide-eyed, from across Rosh. His mouth was hanging open and he let out a few incredulous chuckles here and there like he couldn't believe what they had just seen. Rosh crossed her arms and fell back against the backrest of the couch, looking grudgingly impressed. "Well... damn," she muttered, and if that didn't sum up what they were all thinking, Simon didn't know what could.

His mother, on the other hand, was smiling bright and wide. She tried to discreetly wipe a tear off the corner of her eye (Simon caught the gesture, regardless), then threw one arm around her son, rubbing his shoulder affectionately. "Ay, mi vida," she said, her voice quivering a little, "that boy really loves you."

Simon had to bite his lips to keep himself from bursting into giggles. His gaze kept drifting back, without him willing it, to the news chyron on the TV screen, which now read "Crown Prince Wilhelm gives impassioned defense of unjustly punished school friend."

"Yeah," Simon whispered, the corners of his mouth quirking up unbidden. "I know."

Chapter Text

Simon laughed at the never-ending string of happy/victorious/relieved emojis his mother sent him when he told her the news, along with a promise to bring back the ingredients for his favorite meal so they could celebrate properly at dinner. She'd had to go back to work shortly after Wille's speech; Rosh and Ayub stayed for a while longer, but even they had to leave when school hours were over, as they had responsibilities in their own homes. So Simon was left alone again, with nothing much to do except ponder on the Hillerska Strike for Justice.

The broadcast itself had ended before his friends even left, the powers that be at the network evidently losing interest after the Crown Prince said his piece, and even the little rectangle in the corner of the screen disappeared eventually when it started getting dark and the crowd started dissipating. The video quality wasn't great at that point, even for people who could afford fancy 10,000 kronor phones with 4K night mode or whatever.

It was around five when he got the call, so he assumed the protest itself was over, but he still hadn't heard from anyone involved, and he was starting to get worried that they'd gotten in trouble. He'd texted Sara several times, but she wasn't looking at her messages. Madison wasn't even getting his messages— knowing her, her phone was probably dead. He'd even texted Wilhelm— just the once, something along the lines of "What just happened?!?!?!?!"— with similar results. His phone must've been off. He did follow Felice on Insta so he could technically just DM her, but she must've been swamped with messages from her adoring followers at that point so whatever he sent was very likely to get lost in the deluge.

Throwing his head back against his pillow, he cursed himself, not for the first time, for being a damn recluse. Okay, he didn't have to be Mr. Social Butterfly with a bunch of kids who didn't give two shits about him (...at least until today?), but it really was rather pathetic that he only had three classmates' numbers in his contacts list, and one of them was his sister.

He was still slumped over in his bed, browsing through his Instagram feed trying to find someone from school he talked to somewhat regularly who might be amenable to replying to his DM today of all days, when someone knocked on the front door. Assuming it was one of his friends coming back to pick up something they left behind (Ayub especially had a bad tendency to forget important items at Simon's when he came over to visit), he shoved his phone into his pocket and got off the bed with a sigh.

The person on the other side of the door was not Ayub.

"Wille?" he asked, eyes wide in surprise. "Why are you here? Did you guys get in trouble? I've been sending messages, but no one's answering—"

"I'm sorry," the taller boy blurted out, almost without meaning to, it seemed, but he interrupted Simon's questions nonetheless.

Simon looked at him in confusion. Wille looked almost... scared? Simon couldn't place what it was, but it wasn't how he'd expected Wille to look after everything that happened that day. Not when Simon himself was jubilant. "What are you talking about?" he asked, puzzled. "I just got a call from Headmistress Lilja telling me that my suspension's been rescinded and I'm expected back at classes on Monday!"

"I was going to say it," Wilhelm once again said very fast and bluntly. "That it was me in the video. I wanted to say it at the rally, but I..." He trailed off, looking almost helpless, like he was begging for the right words to fall from the heavens because he couldn't grasp them. Simon found the expression unexpectedly cute.

He huffed in resignation— whether at his own hopeless self or the prince, he couldn't be sure. "Come inside," he said, pulling Wille by his plaid scarf and into the house. "It's too damn cold to do this here," he muttered.

"Right, sorry," Wilhelm mumbled under his breath as he stepped past the threshold, the front door closing behind him, and then it was Simon more than Wille himself taking off Wille's winter wear before hanging it all in the foyer. Wilhelm started babbling again as Simon led him to the living room. "I meant to say it when I decided to speak at the protest, but then I kept thinking that it's probably not a good idea to tell the people that their Queen and future King blatantly lied to them. Even if we did do that. Because, like, it could undermine trust in the Crown? And what if there's a national emergency at some point and people refuse to listen to official government advice because the Crown lied to them once? I know you wanted me to tell the truth, and I meant to— for you— but also that could be really dangerous, and I just..."

By the time he finished his diatribe, he was biting on the corner of his thumbnail and looking like one opposing word from Simon could destroy his entire soul. Simon's heart clenched. He'd never considered himself particularly intimidating, but there was something sobering in the knowledge that Wilhelm was hanging by a thread just as much as he was. Simon's Christmas break had been utterly miserable, and he'd been so immersed in his own pain that he hadn't really thought about how their breakup might be affecting Wille. Not that he thought Wilhelm didn't care or anything, but one always tended to assume that the hurt was always greater for you than for your ex. And Simon was the one who'd been betrayed, so he felt justified in that feeling. But looking at Wilhelm now, it was clear that he was terrified of making things even worse between them.

He didn't have to feel that way. He was the Crown Prince; he had an entire world away from Simon that he could fall back on to help himself move on. A world that might be less complicated for him in the long run. But Wille hadn't moved on, even though Simon had pushed him away. Instead, he'd done the one thing Simon knew very well was the last thing he wanted to do in the entire world— step in front of a crowd of people pointing cameras at his face to give a speech that was entirely too personal for even the most practiced public speaker to get through unscathed— and he did that for Simon.

And now he was worried that wasn't good enough.

Simon sighed. "Wille," he started in what he hoped was a calming tone, "I hate to break it to you, but I don't think people are going to buy your previous statement about the video anymore after what you said today."

Wilhelm's brow furrowed, and once again Simon chided himself for finding it adorable. "What? Why?" Wille asked, completely befuddled. Clearly the prince had not actively heard the words that had come out of his mouth earlier in the day. Or at least hadn't realized how they could be interpreted by... pretty much anyone with more than a single brain cell.

Simon looked back at him with obvious amusement. "You told everyone that I'm the best person you've ever met," he pointed out. Wilhelm still looked at him like he couldn't understand what was wrong with that, and Simon smiled. This time it didn't even bother him that his affection for this dumb boy was obviously showing. "Seriously? Barack Obama came to your confirmation!"

Wilhelm shook his head with a scoff. "He was here for a conference and it just happened to be on at the same time as my confirmation— wait, you followed my confirmation?" His eyebrows lifted in surprise and perhaps, if the slight turn up of the corners of his mouth was any indication, some not-so-small level of delight.

Well. They couldn't have that, could they? The Crown Prince already had enough people around him to fluff up his ego; Simon wasn't going to be part of that choir. "I couldn't help it; it was everywhere," he explained with a roll of his eyes, but his smile remained.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Malin standing outside in front of the window, and immediately felt bad. He'd completely forgotten about her, but he should've let her in along with Wille— surely it was freezing outside. Then again, the way she was standing with her back to them made it seem like standard procedure, like she was deliberately standing there to situate herself between her ward and the sight of a gun (okay, maybe Simon had been watching too many movies lately; in his defense, he'd had a lot of free time that week) or, perhaps, a camera. Which, given their history, was probably for the best. He considered asking Wilhelm if he should ask her in, or at least offer her a warm drink.

Wilhelm shuffled his feet. He looked a bit more relaxed than he had when he came in, but still somewhat unsure. "I thought..." He cleared his throat, shifting his gaze down to the coffee table that separated them. "I thought you wanted me to come out."

Simon held back a groan. That wasn't really what he'd meant, but he could see how Wilhelm might have interpreted his words that way. They hadn't really dug deeply enough into it that day, had they? The hurt was too raw. But now Simon had... he didn't want to say he was "on the other side of it" because he was still hurt, and he still thought he'd done the right thing in putting himself out of the equation, but he also now knew how awful it felt to be away from Wilhelm. He wasn't a fan of prolonging his pain with his own decisions, so maybe it was about time for them to have this conversation, now that the sting of betrayal did not cut as deeply.

Simon sighed again. "It wasn't about you coming out, Wille. That's a very personal decision; I can't tell you when or how to do that." He walked around the coffee table so that he was closer to Wilhelm as he spoke. He saw Wille's hands twitch at his sides, then he moved them into his pants pockets, almost like he had to keep them away in order not to immediately reach for Simon.

"It was about you figuring out what you want out of this relationship, and not just doing whatever everyone else wants you to do," Simon clarified further. "Particularly not letting your mother get in your head."

Wilhelm scoffed again. "Well, she's had nearly seventeen years of practice; she's very good at it," he muttered.

"Yes, but at some point, you have to find your own voice," Simon insisted. He lifted a hand and laid it on Wille's chest, right over his heart. He felt, more than heard, Wilhelm inhale sharply. "You did that today. And I'm so damn proud, Wille."

Simon looked up at the boy in front of him and saw Wille's eyes start to water. "Yeah?" he asked, almost like he couldn't believe it.

Simon nodded, smiling. "Yeah. And grateful. And a little put out that I couldn't be there myself— you know, social justice is kind of my thing." Wille laughed at that. "But mostly just... impressed? I don't know how you managed to get all these rich kids to go along with it, but whatever you said must've been really convincing."

Wilhelm shook his head humbly. "It was mostly Felice and the girls. I just... got the ball rolling, I guess." He pulled a hand out of his pocket to tenderly cover Simon's on his chest. "I'm... so happy that it worked, but it's not..." His expression sobered up again. "This doesn't just fix things, though, does it?"

Simon carefully pulled his hand back; Wilhelm's hand closed into a fist where it rested against his chest as if scrambling to fill up the space Simon's warmth had just vacated. "I... I don't know," Simon admitted, taking a step back almost reflexively. "What you did was really shitty, Wille, and even before that, you were all up and down. That really hurts," he added as if it wasn't blatantly obvious. "You might be doing and saying the right things now, but how can I be sure you won't back out again tomorrow? Or the next time something happens that makes you embarrassed to admit that we're together?"

Wille's utter devastation at that last remark was clear as day in his expression. "Embarr— No, Simon, that's not—" He ran both hands over his face and through his hair in exasperation, letting out a frustrated growl. Then he turned around, paced back and forth a couple of times, and when he spun back toward Simon, he grabbed both of Simon's hands in his, silently tugging him toward the couch, where they both sat down facing each other. Wilhelm did not let go of Simon's hands.

"I—" Wilhelm started, then cut himself off with a shake of his head. His gaze met Simon's with a familiar intensity as if demanding without words that Simon's attention remain only on him. "I need you to really understand this, Simon," he said, and Simon knew this was important to him, so he nodded, urging him to continue.

"Everything I do is a public matter," he said, absolutely serious. "It has to be that way, because the monarchy is sustained by public funds, and so there has to be some level of accountability for what those funds pay for." Simon nodded. He knew all of this in principle, of course, and very much agreed, in theory, but of course now knowing from personal experience that there were human beings on the other end of that principle— not just abstract figureheads— it did put things into perspective for him. Was that what Wille was trying to tell him?

"That means I have no privacy. Or very little," Wilhelm continued. "And I mean that literally. Even things that are silly or everyday things for other kids, for me, they're this huge deal that has to be announced and scrutinized. Because I may be a kid myself, but as far as the institution of the monarchy is concerned, I'm not a person. I'm a role model. A representation of what every Swedish teenager should aspire to be," he added, distress clear in his expression.

"And I do mean silly stuff," he continued, "like which friends I had playdates with in grundskola, or how many concerts I go to on any given year. It doesn't all get reported because, let's face it, it's boring. But it's all a matter of public consumption. The palace keeps track."

He sighed, squeezing Simon's hands a little tighter before speaking again, like the words grated at him. "Like, when I lost my two front baby teeth, the palace put out a statement informing the public of this momentous occasion, and for weeks after that, there were discussions on TV about whether my getting kronor from the tandfen was going to make me spoiled, and random people would come up to me on the street demanding that I show them the gap in my teeth."

Simon had to press his lips together to keep himself from giggling. It wasn't that he couldn't see how that might've been overwhelming for Wilhelm at that age, it's just... now he kept thinking of baby Wille with his two front teeth missing and the mental image was just too cute.

Wille noticed, of course, and mock glared at him. "Don't laugh! It was traumatic, okay? I was six, and these were complete strangers," he whined.

Simon managed to swallow back most of his mirth, except for one loud snort that he couldn't keep inside. "Okay, that's fair," he conceded. He didn't like it when people shoved cameras in his face and demanded to know things about his personal life either, and he was sixteen.

"What I'm trying to say is," Wilhelm continued, narrowing his eyes playfully at Simon, "I've got no control over which parts of my life get reported out and which don't. It's not up to me. Honestly, it's a miracle they don't put out a press release every time I go take a dump— and I'm sure that's only because the official position of the Crown regarding bowel movements is that royals don't do that."

This time Simon couldn't help but laugh, but Wilhelm didn't mind this time; he smiled as well. "Yeah, I can definitely see that," Simon said, shaking his head in disbelief. Royals were so weird, he wouldn't put it past them to go to such heights of ridiculousness.

"The worst part of it is," Wilhelm said, sobering up as he lowered his gaze to their joined hands, "because most of it is boring, the only parts that hit the news are the bad parts. So that's what people judge you on. Not the thousand other things you did right in the last I-don't-know-how-many weeks, but the one day when you made a mistake." He sniffled and shook his head. "So you have to go through life trying to be perfect at any given second because you know you've got this... eternal microscope trained on you all the time. But no matter how hard you try, all people care about is when you fuck up."

Simon's stomach lurched. He had known, intellectually speaking, that the pressure for Wilhelm was a million times worse than it was for any other kid their age. But this... this sounded worse than he had ever imagined. No wonder Wille was terrified of the public reaction to their relationship.

"You get what I'm saying, right?" Wilhelm said, looking at Simon again, that lingering desperation still shining in his eyes. "It's not that I'm embarrassed by you— I could never. If anything, I'm embarrassed by me, of the fact that— that I don't have any control over my life. So I have to cling to the few things I can still control, can still keep away from that microscope, because otherwise, I'll just... become what they want me to be. A thing that's only here for people to gawk at and judge. Every day is like... it's what I imagine it would feel like to live in a zoo. But, you know, like, from the side of the animals."

"Yeah, I got it," Simon said sadly, responding both to the general thought and to the random unnecessary clarification Wilhelm felt the need to tack on at the end. Simon might've chuckled at that if he didn't feel so bad for him. No one should have to live that way, monarchy be damned. Especially not someone as sensitive as Wille.

"But I have to live with it, because of who I am, what I was born into," Wilhelm spoke again like he was responding to Simon's thoughts, but at the same time it almost sounded like he was talking to himself. Reminding himself of a mantra that had been repeated to him over and over since childhood. "And I hate it, but I can't change it. The royal family owes itself to the Swedish people. They have that right; it's the price I have to pay for all the privileges I get. I know that."

His next words were punctuated with something that almost sounded like a sob. "But I can't... I can't give them everything. I would have nothing left of me." His voice trembled as he said the last sentence, and Simon wanted nothing more than to wrap him in his arms and reassure him, promise him that was never going to happen. But he couldn't.

"And this?" Wille said, lifting both of Simon's hands to his mouth so he could kiss them. "Us, what we have? They don't get to have that. That is ours." He shook his head, his tearful eyes shining in the warm light of Simon's living room with the movement. "Only we get to choose who can see it, who we share it with."

Simon thought he might start crying himself, and found himself blinking hard to keep the tears at bay. "I agree," he said, after a moment of letting Wilhelm's words settle. "But that means you can't go off making decisions about us on your own, Wille."

Wilhelm pulled his hands away and threw his head back. "I know," he said with a groan. "I'm sorry. I guess I was just... afraid." He crossed his arms and leaned forward almost protectively. "When I think of random people out there knowing about us, and judging us, it's like... it's like every single part of me just recoils from that." He made a hand gesture as if to illustrate said recoiling, and Simon thought it added to the visceral feeling Wilhelm was trying to convey.

"The public scrutiny has been so... suffocating, and I just..." Wille took hold of Simon's hands again. "This, being with you, is the best thing I have in my life, Simon." His gaze pinned Simon down in place. "I don't want my baggage to ruin it."

They stared at each other in silence for Simon didn't even know how long. It felt like forever, honestly, but that's usually how Simon felt around Wille anyway. Like he could stay there staring into those golden eyes he adored for the rest of time, the only sound their intermingling breaths, the only movement the slight caress of Simon's thumb on the back of Wille's hand. Simon never thought he could be so comfortable just... looking into someone's eyes, but it was so easy to get lost in Wilhelm's.

And then Wille broke away, looking down at the two centimeters or so that separated their knees on the couch. "There's one thing my mother told me that day— the day she picked me up from Hillerska— that I still think she was right about," he admitted almost reluctantly. Simon wasn't sure he wanted to hear what kind of advice the Queen had to offer her "wayward" son, but he was also rather curious. Wille elaborated. "She said if I feel the attention I'm getting right now is too much, it's only going to get worse as I get older."

Simon had thought it might be something more insidious, but that was probably his bias speaking— he had to concede that it made sense. He had never paid too much attention to royal gossip, but again, it was hard to dodge, and so he was aware that even Erik, who did not end up in many scandals over the years, had been hounded incessantly by the press, especially after he officially became the heir. And people had liked Erik. He could only imagine how much worse it would be for Wilhelm, who already came with a(n unfair) "Party Prince" label attached. Everyone would be just waiting for him to mess up, and that expectation would just get worse the more responsibility he took on.

But Wilhelm was already struggling with that weight. A truly supportive family would have helped him deal with it effectively, try to mitigate the pressure somehow, rather than just throw him to the wolves with nothing but a passing warning. It made Simon angry for him all over again.

"And I have to deal with that; I don't have a choice. But you shouldn't have to," Wilhelm continued speaking, snapping Simon out of his indignant musings. "It's not that I want us to keep sneaking around forever, it's just... I was afraid that you would realize all of this and feel it was all just... too much, I guess, and... I'd lose you anyway." He looked absolutely shattered just saying that, and it hit Simon just as hard. He knew how that felt. The past few weeks they'd been apart had been nearly unbearable.

"I just wanted to have this for as long as I could. But I really, truly didn't mean to hurt you," Wille finished, earnest. Seeing him like this, vulnerable and raw, made it impossible for Simon not to believe he meant every word.

Simon intertwined his fingers with Wilhelm's, tightening his hold. "I know," he said, "and I understand what you're saying, Wille, but I need you to understand me as well." It was Wille's turn to encourage him to elaborate, nodding emphatically and adjusting his position to give Simon all of his focus. His hair flopped right into his face as he did, and Simon couldn't help but smile.

"It's not that I need to have a giant spotlight on our relationship," Simon started after a pause to gather his thoughts. "Being 'famous'"— he made air quotes with one hand, thinking back to a comment Rosh had made after the sex tape hit the web— "that's not something I've ever wanted. But I can get through it with you... I can try my hardest, at least... because it shows me that you're not just playing around with me. That you really want to be with me."

Wille looked like he was about to say something, but Simon continued speaking before he could. "There's a power imbalance between us, Wille," he pointed out. Wilhelm dodged his gaze, and Simon could see the guilt creep up on him, so he tugged at his hand to get the prince's attention back on him. "I know you don't want there to be, and I know it's not your fault, but it's there, and we have to deal with it," he insisted. Wille considered this for a heartbeat or two, then nodded.

"I want to believe you when you tell me you don't want us to sneak around forever," Simon continued very seriously, "but I can't go on faith alone." He shook his head, feeling the creeping sadness prickle at him, as it always did when he thought about his past. "I've already had someone in my life who said he loved me, but it wasn't enough to keep him from hurting me. I won't go through that again."

Belatedly, Simon realized he may have made it sound like he had some old boyfriend who had broken his heart before Wille was even in the picture, which could not be further from the truth. He figured he should clarify, but at the same time, Wilhelm didn't seem bothered by it. Almost like he understood what Simon meant right away.

"Your dad?" Wille asked, catching Simon off-guard.

"Yeah," Simon confirmed, surprised. "How did you...?"

Wille shrugged. "Sara said something similar," he said like it was just an everyday thing for him to be talking to Simon's sister about Micke. Sure, those two had probably interacted more than usual this week on the lead-up to the strike, but Simon tried to picture a conversation between them and struggled to come up with a visual in his mind. And wasn't Sara supposedly angry at Wilhelm on his behalf? For the entire break, she had glared at anyone who even mentioned the Crown Prince.

"Huh. Okay. Well... we'll circle back to that one," Simon said, still dumbfounded by the fact that his sister and his... whatever Wille was... were apparently friends now. Or something like that? Either way, they probably could touch on that some other time. He shook himself back into topic. "But do you see what I mean? I need some assurance that I'm not just some... side piece that you have to hide forever because it's shameful or whatever."

Wilhelm shook his head vigorously, this time not holding back from speaking before Simon could continue. "Not shameful. Never shameful," he affirmed, his tone almost like he was begging Simon to believe him. He shifted closer to Simon, negating what little space there was between them until his knees were touching, almost on top of, Simon's shin.

He let out a frustrated breath. "Simon, you're— this is— the happiest I've ever been. If I wasn't terrified it could cause a massive crisis, I would go around telling everyone." He closed his eyes for a moment, almost as if savoring the thought, before continuing. "Really, there is nothing I want more than to be able to just be with you out in the open like any other regular couple. I literally dream of it."

"So do I," Simon admitted in a whisper, somehow feeling way more exposed as he said it than he thought he should. It's not like it was some sort of secret that he was head over heels for this boy— even now, after ostensibly "breaking up" with him— but saying it out loud made it feel riskier for some reason, like he was leaving himself without cover in the middle of a blitz. It was only because of everything Wille had already put out there, every vulnerability the prince had admitted to himself, that Simon could even bring himself to say it.

Wille gave him a tremulous smile and a nod, which Simon reciprocated, and they remained in silence for a moment, just basking in those words and in the weight of that feeling. It was only after a minute or so that Wilhelm remembered he was supposed to be saying something. "Anyhow, I can't keep all my relationships away from the public forever. I know I can't— I'm going to have to come out anyway, right? Eventually. I mean, it's not like I can just walk up to the altar on my wedding day and be like 'oh, by the way, I'm marrying a man.'"

Simon's smile turned mischievous; he couldn't help himself. "...Are you proposing?" he asked teasingly.

"What?" Wille asked, immediately going bright red. "No, that's not— I just meant it as a hypothetical—"

Simon laughed. Wille really just made it too easy. "Yeah, okay," he said, poking at the other boy's side playfully. Wille squirmed. "Thought you might be getting a little ahead of yourself there, Your Highness."

Wille pushed Simon's hand away, then flicked his forehead. "What I'm saying is," he started again, "eventually I'm going to have to tell everyone. About me, I mean; not you, necessarily— though, of course, that involves you as well— but, like... about who I am." He took a deep breath, and let it out heavily. "I just... I don't know who that is yet. This is all so new, and so... overwhelming, and... the only thing I know is that I want to be with you." He looked down at their joined hands as he absentmindedly played with Simon's fingers. "That's it; that's the only thing I'm 100% sure of."

He threw his head back and looked up at the ceiling as he spoke. "I wish I could be more like you; you're so sure of who you are, but I'm just— I'm just not," he said, sounding disappointed in himself.

Simon shook his head promptly, quick to disabuse him of that notion. "And that's okay. You don't have to have it all figured out right now, and I would never try and force you to do that," he assured Wille. Just because figuring out his sexuality had been pretty straightforward for Simon, it didn't mean that it had to be that way for everyone. And Wille didn't even have anyone to talk to about this. It was no wonder he was so confused.

"It's just..." Simon continued. "I just need you to remember what I'm telling you, okay? I need you to always keep in mind that I can't be the only one making sacrifices here. You need to meet me halfway because I'm going to be on the losing end every time something like this happens." Wille nodded, again looking heavy-hearted at the prospect that being with him could hurt Simon. But it was their reality, and they had to talk about it.

"You've seen it just from this week alone," Simon added, "how this could affect my future, my family..." He sighed. "But more than anything, this is my heart I'm putting on the line here, Wille. You could crush it so easily." He shook his head. "You already have," he admitted brokenly.

Wilhelm's lips trembled, and Simon saw him swallow hard. "I'm sorry," he said yet again. "I'm trying, I really am. I even told my mother you were my red line. I won't go along with anything that hurts you or affects your life. Not again. If that happens, I'm out."

His phrasing caught Simon by surprise. "What, out of the monarchy?"

"What?" Wilhelm retorted automatically, before seeming to think back to what he had just said. "No, I meant out of... out from under my mother's control, I guess," he cleared up.

Simon nodded. "Ah. Good, okay. I mean, I don't approve of the idea of the monarchy on principle, but you'd be heaps better than the whole lot of them," he added, not even wanting to think of who would end up on the throne if Wilhelm ever took himself out of the line of succession. God, the title wouldn't pass to August, would it? Because Simon would be on the first plane out of Sweden if that ever happened.

Wille was smiling shyly, though, like Simon had just said something unexpectedly transcendental. "You really think so?" he asked sheepishly.

Simon tapped a finger against Wille's knee affectionately. "I know so," he confirmed, holding Wille's gaze so the other boy could tell that he meant it. Just as a person, completely separate from their romantic relationship, Wilhelm was such a better person than he had any right to be. When Simon first heard the prince of Sweden was going to enroll at Hillerska, he was sure he would be the worst of the already terrible bunch of entitled rich kids that populated the school halls.

Except he'd turned out to be nothing like that. Wille was gentle, unassuming, empathetic, and he cared so much. He wasn't perfect, and he had blind spots just like everyone did, and his insecurities got the better of him a lot of the time. But if they had to have a king, Simon would much rather it be someone like Wilhelm than anyone else. And once again he wanted to curse Wille's family and the entire damn institution of the monarchy for ever making Wille doubt that he was good enough.

Wille groaned again. "I really wish I had your confidence. I feel like all I do is mess things up," he said with a dejected expression.

"You don't," Simon insisted, trying to snap him out of his self-pity funk. "You try to make everyone happy, it just... doesn't always work out for the best, I guess." It was one thing for him to own up to his mistakes, and a whole other thing for him to blame himself for everything just because that's what his family usually did. He was just a boy; he wasn't supposed to be perfect, role model or not.

"And to be fair, you weren't wrong," Simon added, recognizing that there was one aspect of this he might not have fully accounted for when he told Wille they couldn't be together if it had to be in secret. Wilhelm looked at him curiously, waiting for him to expand on that point. Simon spoke through a grimace. "Seeing my face on the covers of tabloids and having paparazzi knocking at my door was... a lot."

Wille winced as well. "I'm sorry," he repeated. It was at least the fourth time he said that in the course of the conversation, and a part of Simon wanted to tell him to stop saying it, because saying the words didn't change things. The rest of him, though, didn't mind, because he believed Wille truly felt remorse and wanted to make things better.

"I hate that I put you through that," Wille mumbled, crestfallen. He leaned forward, closing his eyes as he rested his forehead against Simon's. Simon closed his eyes as well, breathing in the familiarity of being near Wilhelm. So close.

"Maybe..." Simon started, his eyes blinking open as he recalled what he'd said earlier about meeting halfway. "Maybe it's not a bad idea to take it slow. Give us— and everyone— some time to... adjust?" he suggested. He wasn't sure what that would even entail, but going back to being apart from Wille felt like an impossibility after today. Simon didn't know if he'd survive it. "I mean, I want to be able to be with you in public, but we also don't want riots in the streets," he added with a chuckle.

Wilhelm's lids remained shut. "I'd start a riot for you," he whispered. "That's what scares me."

His fervent assertion gave Simon that funny weightless feeling you get when you get to the top of the roller-coaster and are just about to thunder down the rails. He could only guess it meant that his heart was doing loops inside his chest. He found himself holding his breath for a heartbeat, lost in that sensation of free-falling.

He sighed, delicately rubbing his nose against Wille's. "Well, I'm not asking you to," he said just as quietly. He wanted to be very clear about that, in case it had somehow gotten lost in the back-and-forths of this conversation. He didn't need Wille to make some grand declaration on national TV. He just needed to be sure that he wouldn't always have to worry that Wille was going to back out when things got tough. It wasn't healthy for either of them.

But that didn't mean they couldn't be together. Simon didn't think so anymore, at least. "Wille..." he started, cupping the other boy's face carefully in his hands. Wille's eyes opened, immediately locking with Simon's. Simon smiled. "Today was good. Thank you. I can see that you're trying."

And then finally— finally— he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Wille's, so softly it was almost like the flutter of a butterfly's wings. He meant to keep it short, just a peck, but as he started to pull back, Wille pulled him back in with a hand to the back of his neck, tips of his fingers buried in Simon's curls.

The kiss itself was still chaste, more of an outpouring of emotion than anything else, but Wille was putting his everything into the warm pressure of lips on lips, and Simon reciprocated wholeheartedly, feeling like a man finding water in the desert after days of longing for it.

He didn't know how he'd made it so long without this.

As they pulled back breathing heavily— just a centimeter apart, anything more than that was wholly unacceptable— Wille was the first to speak. "What does this mean?" he asked. Simon had to suppress a shiver from the way Wille's thumb was oh-so-exquisitely grazing the side of his neck.

"I think..." Simon started, taking the leap. "I think it means that... maybe we can take it one day at a time?" He didn't know if that even made any sense to Wilhelm, as he wasn't even sure it meant anything concrete to him. But as long as they both agreed to try and understand each other, and talk to each other, and make decisions together, they could figure the rest out on the go. They just needed to be able to trust each other.

"Okay. I can do that," Wille readily agreed, willing to keep trying in any way he could. He moved his hand from Simon's neck to softly caress his cheek. "But can I still kiss you?"

Simon felt his lips slowly draw into a smile. "Yes, please." He'd hardly finished saying the words when Wille was already diving in again.

As ever when they were together like this, things got really heated really quickly. Because this kiss... yeah, there were no pure intentions with this kiss. It immediately became a flurry of lips and tongues and shivers and sighs and hands grappling under layers of clothing for skin-to-skin contact.

Simon pushed himself up on his knees on the couch, scrambling for leverage to be able to kiss Wille harder, deeper, and Wille's hold tightened almost reflexively on Simon's hips. It occurred to Simon that Wille might be about to pull him to straddle his lap, and was about to comply enthusiastically when Malin knocked loudly on the window.

They sprung apart as if shocked by lightning, frantic gazes turning immediately to the window only to find Malin still with her back to them. What a relief. They'd completely forgotten she was right there (God, they needed to get smarter about that! What the fuck!), but at least she had the good sense not to watch.

Simon was about to ask what was wrong (and maybe follow through on that warm drink he'd intended to bring out to Malin way back at the beginning of the conversation) when the front door opened and Simon's mother came in, carrying a couple of grocery bags. Simon and Wilhelm barely had time to rearrange themselves (and their clothes) so as not to make it obvious what they'd just been doing.

"Simón, I need you to—" she started loudly in the general direction of the bedrooms, probably assuming that's where Simon was, as she struggled to push the door open on the way in. Halfway through the sentence she caught sight of the two of them in the living room and spoke in a more measured volume. "Ah, there you are. Bebé, necesito que me ayudes con las bolsas, por favor. And why is Malin outside in the cold? You could have at least let her in, it's freezing— hi, Wilhelm. We saw you on TV; I can't believe you all were able to pull that off!"

She said all of this almost in one breath as Simon hurried over to grab the bags from her. He saw Wille shuffle his feet as he responded. "Hi, Linda. It was the least we could do, really. Um, Malin— that's my fault, actually. She said she would stand guard outside and I didn't— I should've insisted she come in. I wasn't really thinking... at that point."

Simon headed over to the kitchen to drop the bags off, but he could still hear them speaking. "Oh, well, surely we can let her in now, right? I'll be making dinner in the kitchen, and I'm sure you boys can entertain yourselves away from a window for a while."

Her tone was teasing, Simon noticed (he knew which side of the family he'd gotten that from), but it seemed to go straight over Wille's head. "No, that's okay, I—" He cleared his throat. "I shouldn't have come, anyway. Can't imagine you're very happy to find me in your living room unannounced after... after everything."

He was self-flagellating— again— and Simon frowned as he made his way back to them. Seriously, it had taken Simon this long to snap him out of it, and now he was just going to lather, rinse, repeat the whole guilt spiral with his mother? Thankfully— and it was also clear where Simon got his empathy from— by the time Simon made it back to the living room, his mother had approached Wilhelm, who was determinedly dodging her gaze.

"Wilhelm, cielo, look at me," she said, lifting a hand to cradle Wille's cheek. The motherly gesture forced Wille to do as she said, though he still looked wary. Simon couldn't see his mother's face, but he assumed she was smiling up at the other boy. "All I want for my children is for them to have people in their corner who will fight for them as hard as I would. And after what you did today, I'm pretty sure you're one of those people. So if Simon is all right with you, then I'm all right with you. Okay?"

Simon smiled to himself, crossing his arms and leaning sideways against the doorframe as he waited for Wille's reaction. The silly goober was obviously overcome by the response— as if mamá was ever going to stay mad at him after today, Simon thought, amused— and Simon saw him blink quickly, as if blinking back tears, before he nodded.

"Good," Simon's mom declared, moving her hand from Wilhelm's face to squeeze his shoulder affectionately. "Now, are you staying for dinner? I'm making Simon's favorite Venezuelan lasagna to celebrate the news about his suspension. There'll be more than enough for you and Malin."

"No, actually, um, I should— I should probably get back to school," Wilhelm said, his gaze moving somewhat sheepishly from Simon's mother to Simon himself, who was still standing at the entrance to the room. He was talking directly to Simon at that point. "My phone's been off all day so I haven't been getting any calls, and, uh, I'm pretty sure the palace will be trying to get in contact with me at some point."

Simon flinched at the unexpected reminder of the world outside their bubble, now worried at what might come for Wilhelm after the stunt they pulled earlier in the day. He could only imagine the Queen was not happy about it, and Simon didn't want Wille to get himself in trouble for him, but... there wasn't much he could do about it now.

"Well, then," Simon's mom said, "I'll get to cooking and give you two some privacy to say your goodbyes." She turned slightly so she could see Simon in the doorway and gave them both a smile. "And Wilhelm," she added, "you're always welcome here, chiquito."

With that assertion, she walked out of the living room, past Simon at the doorway, and toward the kitchen to start making dinner. Simon watched her pass by before turning back to Wille and smiling. The other boy returned the smile a bit shyly, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself after that. Simon, entirely too endeared by the gesture, signaled to Wille with his head to follow him toward the foyer, where he handed Wilhelm his coat and scarf back.

"Is your mother going to be angry?" Simon asked as Wilhelm started putting his winter outerwear on. He genuinely did not care how the Queen felt about any of this, especially after everything Wilhelm had told him earlier, but it bothered him that this was something Wille had to face alone. Simon couldn't help, and he hated being unable to help the people he cared about.

Wille shrugged as he wrapped his scarf around his neck. "Probably. But when isn't she?" he mumbled bitterly. Noticing Simon's concerned expression, he shook his head, trying to reassure him. "It's fine. I told her I wasn't going to let you get suspended because of me. She knew something was coming."

Simon didn't know how a vague warning would make much of a difference, but he wasn't immersed in the world of royal PR like Wilhelm was, so he'd have to take Wille's word for it. "Okay," he said, moving to open the door. "Just... text me when you hear from the palace, okay?" He caught sight of Malin once again out of the corner of his eye, making her way around the corner when she heard movement at the front door. "I don't care if it's late."

"Okay," Wille said with a smile— a real smile, like the mention of his mother had gone in one ear and out the other. He leaned down to kiss Simon goodbye, which Simon more than welcomed. They were still standing in the foyer, really, so the only way anyone could catch sight of them was if they were standing directly in front of the door, which they wouldn't, as Malin had situated herself directly in that position, her back to them once again. It was secluded enough that it felt private, but not like they were deliberately hiding. Simon liked that.

He liked it so much that it kept going for a few minutes too long, and Simon only realized they had completely forgotten about everything but each other again when he heard Malin clear her throat loudly.

Simon tried to pull back. "You need to—"

"Nope," Wille said, pulling him back in and cutting off his protests with his lips.

Eventually, though, they did need oxygen, and Simon was freezing, and Wille did have to go, so they couldn't just kiss forever, much as they might want to. "Sorry, Malin," Wilhelm said to his bodyguard, though he was still looking down at Simon with a very satisfied smile.

"That's quite all right, sir," the woman replied, sounding resigned, but if Simon had to guess, there was also a slight undercurrent of amusement in her voice. It made him burst into a very undignified snort, followed by laughter.

Wilhelm looked down at him, chuckling as well. "What?" he asked, feigning curiosity but clearly finding this whole situation just as ridiculous as Simon did.

Simon shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Just go," he said, pushing the other boy out the door none too gently.

Wilhelm stumbled a bit but maintained his amusement, his brown eyes shining golden in the exterior lighting of Simon's doorstep. "I'll call you," he reiterated, walking backward.

"You better," Simon threw back, giving Wille one last wave before the prince turned around and started following Malin back to the car park. Simon watched him walk away until they moved out of sight past the corner, then closed the door and leaned against it dreamily, covering his face, and the blinding smile he couldn't hold back, with his hands.

Shaking his head at his own silly self, he breathed out a deep sigh. "Mamá, ¿te ayudo?" he asked, pushing away from the door to make his way to the kitchen, where his mother was busy chopping up vegetables. Better give himself something to do so he wasn't checking his phone for new texts every five seconds.

Chapter Text

The next time the Crown Prince stepped foot at Drottningholm, it was because he was summoned.

Wilhelm met his mother at her office. That meant he was facing the Queen alone; his father would not be there to mediate this time, to whatever extent his presence could be helpful. He took a calming breath before going in, but he felt a lot more confident this time around than the last time he'd talked to his mother. Probably because he wasn't as angry (though who knew how long that would last; there was always an undercurrent of irritation in his interactions with his mother, especially since the end of the last school term), and also because... well, their plan had actually worked.

For one, they managed to get the school administration to reverse Simon's suspension that same day. Felice had told them, passing the news along from her mother, that the school had been inundated by calls from parents. Apparently, continually getting comments from clients, business partners, and key contacts about how "Hey, isn't that your kid's school on the news?" prompted enough embarrassment among the upper class to get them to reach out to the school and ask them to do whatever it took to get their name out of the national broadcasts.

But moreover, the strike itself had garnered an incredible amount of support from the public, and young people in particular. Wilhelm hadn't been tracking the response himself— that would be like asking for a mental breakdown— but the girls had been exchanging some of their favorite reactions from social media, web forums, press articles, and news sites over a group chat since the night before, and they all seemed pretty excited at how supportive people seemed overall. (Fredrika, especially, was over the moon because her Instagram follower count had finally crossed seven thousand.)

It wasn't that they didn't get any negative comments, of course; it was just that they didn't expect the response to be so overwhelmingly positive. Mostly, Hillerska kids already got a certain amount of (not entirely undeserved) derision from the general populace just from the fact that they were upper-class students of an expensive private boarding school. But even then, Simon's plight had seemed to resonate with young people all over the country, and the Hillerska students' support of his cause garnered them a lot of unexpected goodwill they wouldn't otherwise get. Just as Wilhelm had said himself during the rally, most people would agree that the issues surrounding Simon's suspension were wrong, and unlike most aristocrats and rich people who only worried about their image and status, the people watching in from all around the country had no problem voicing their support online.

Wilhelm kept that support in mind as he readied himself to go into the office. He might technically be facing his mother alone, but he wasn't really. Bolstering him, in spirit, he had Simon, and the girls, and the support of the people. He also felt that Erik would have supported him on this. He had done the right thing. He let that thought buoy him as he opened the door.

As he entered the room, he found the Queen sitting at her desk, diligently putting pen to paper even though it was a Saturday. There was a large folder open in front of her with a giant stack of documents in it, which she seemed to be only a quarter of the way through. She heard him walk in, but she did not look up from what she was writing. "Well, you must be feeling proud of yourself," she said instead of a greeting, which, Wilhelm noted, was something she often chastised him for.

In all honesty, Wilhelm wasn't sure he was feeling proud of himself, necessarily. He was feeling a lot of things about the plan they cooked up and what came out of it, and those feelings were both positive and negative at the same time. It was all more than a little overwhelming, and it hadn't even been a full day since— he was still processing. But Simon was proud of him, and that counted for a lot. "I think it went well, yes," was all he said, guardedly, in response to his mother's comment.

She glanced up at him then and gave him a look, and Wilhelm had to school himself not to squirm under her gaze like he'd been conditioned to since childhood. She quickly went back to the papers in front of her. "You certainly gave the communications team a lot of extra work, but thankfully you had the good sense not to directly contradict anything you've said before," she said, confirming to Wilhelm that her main worry was, indeed, that he'd go rogue and admit to everyone he, and by extension the Crown, had lied when he gave that statement back in December.

He knew how big of a bomb that would be, and that's why he hadn't said it. It wouldn't do anyone any good at this point; it would only drudge up the scandal all over again, and feeding people's mistrust in authority, deserved as it might be, could be dangerous. But it was good to know he had some leverage over his mother. He could do with some of that.

"There is still," the Queen continued, "the issue of you not only appearing at, but also taking an active part in, what was quite explicitly billed as a protest against a private institution." She shook her head. "You know we can't speak on political issues."

Wilhelm scoffed, yet another gesture his mother would usually reprimand him for ("Royals are not so obviously derisive, Wilhelm," he remembered from way before he even knew what the word "derisive" meant). "Seriously? You can go to the G20 Summit in Saudi Arabia and advocate for climate change action in front of a bunch of oil tycoons, but I can't stand up in support of a classmate?"

She looked at him again, her gaze razor sharp. "He's not just a classmate, and we both know that."

Wilhelm met her eyes as unflinchingly as he could. "We know. The press doesn't."

His mother shook her head and put the pen down with a sigh. "They're not stupid, Wilhelm," she said in the same tone she took whenever she scolded him about slouching while at state dinners or when he complained about having to learn some random greeting in some other language— the You should know this already tone. "You think they won't put two and two together when you're suddenly on national television defending the boy you were rumored to be in a scandalous video with just last month?"

And yes, of course he knew they'd figure it out, but that wasn't the point. "It doesn't matter what they think," he threw back, keeping his chin up as he said the words. He never thought such a thing would ever come out of his mouth, and at the moment he wasn't sure if he could live by that maxim, but he was going to try. It was the only way for him to survive this entire mess— or, really, his entire life as a member of the royal family— without going insane.

"Of course it matters! You've grown up in this environment, Wilhelm. You know how this works." Ah, there it was, the You should know this already statement to go with the tone. His mother squared her shoulders and pushed herself to her feet, work queue set aside for the moment. "Public perception is everything!" she continued.

She crossed her arms in a very matriarch sort of way, lips pressed together tightly, as she regarded him with obvious dissatisfaction. "Honestly, if you insist on going through with this, I would say it's in your best interest to say something."

Wilhelm's jaw could have hit the floor. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me," he blurted out, stunned. Normally he tried not to swear around either of his parents— save himself the lecture and all— but he rather thought this circumstance warranted the emphasis. "Now you want me to come out? You practically twisted my arm last time to get me to lie to the entire nation!" he all but yelled at his mother.

His mother's breath left her lungs in a huff. "I did not force you to do anything," she retorted incisively. "I gave you the best advice I thought was applicable, and then you made your own decision. Would I rather you not do this at all? Of course. That would make things easier for everyone," she stated, then shook her head. "But if you had chosen to tell the truth, we would have had no choice but to figure out how to proceed from there."

Wilhelm wanted to scream. Sure, she was technically correct, but she knew very well that one did not simply dismiss advice from Her Majesty, the Queen of Sweden. Even if you were the Crown Prince. Perhaps especially if you were the Crown Prince.

She seemed perfectly comfortable pretending her "advice" was no different from anyone else's, however. She knew when to apply the full weight of her royal title and when to stash it away; had it down to an art form, really. That had to be a fraud of some kind, Wille thought. Manipulation of emotional currency. Wilhelm didn't think he'd ever be able to just... make that shift so automatically.

"My point is," she continued in a no-nonsense tone, "it's always better to take some sort of stance. Otherwise, they'll speculate regardless."

"So let them!" Wilhelm threw back, louder than he'd intended. Already the frustration he'd told himself he would hold at bay was starting to creep up on him; it always happened with his mother, especially recently. "If they're going to talk about it anyway, then why does it matter what I say or what I do?"

"Because we only get one chance to get ahead of this," she replied pointedly, her eyebrows arching high on her forehead as if to underline the words she was saying. "You can't let other people set the narrative about your own life."

"What narrative?! I don't even know what I—" What I am, Wilhelm had been about to say, but he cut himself off abruptly before he could. He was not about to discuss his sexual orientation with his mother, the Queen, thankyouverymuch. That was not a thing that was ever going to happen.

It did annoy him when she started throwing around PR terms like "narrative," however. This was his life. There were no narratives. Wilhelm barely had a grasp on his own identity, let alone any labels that may or may not apply to it; he wasn't exactly thinking of how to best explain it to the rest of the world just yet. "I don't understand why I need to say anything. I'm sixteen! It's not like I'm going to get married tomorrow. It's none of their business until I make it their business."

"If you flaunt it for everyone to see and then pretend that they're just imagining things, they're going to make it their business," his mother insisted. She rounded the desk and leaned back against the opposite edge so that there was only empty space separating them.

Wilhelm wanted to pull at his hair. He'd never said anything about pretending— pretending was precisely what he did not want to do anymore. He just wanted to live his life without having to explain his every move to the entire world. Why was that so much to ask?

"It's not like I'm going to be making out with him in the middle of Humlegården— I wouldn't do that even if I were with a girl!" he countered, trying to keep his composure, but failing. She just really knew how to push his buttons. "I'm not an idiot. I'm not about to invite them into my relationship; that's the last thing I want."

He took a deep breath again and let it out slowly, just as he had before coming into the office. "There's gotta be some middle ground here, right?" he asked, almost begging. "What's so wrong with, like, holding hands with him between classes, or... inviting him here to hang out during school breaks, or... taking him to a concert and laughing the next morning at all the headlines talking about Crown Prince Wilhelm and his 'good friend' Simon." He did the air quotes with his fingers and imagined that Simon would chuckle at that if he could hear him.

He saw his mother shake her head in immediate refusal as he spoke, so he pre-empted her rebuttal with an imploring look. "What's so wrong with just... being able to be ourselves around a small group of people we trust?" He shrugged. "That's why you sent me to Hillerska, right? To protect me from the scrutiny? To keep me out of the eye of the wider public?"

"You can't just trust people, Wilhelm!" she shot back with a harsh sideways movement of one arm like she was trying to wipe away this entire conversation. She was now fully yelling, which in turn made the last connecting thread on Wilhelm's composure give way.

"You think I don't know that?!" he snapped back at her, no longer caring about how laced with desperation he sounded. "Erik told me I could trust August and he was wrong, Mamma. He was wrong!" His voice broke on the last word and he could feel the tears stinging in his eyes. He hated feeling like he should be mad at Erik; he'd sweep the mistake aside in a second if it meant he could have his older brother back.

His mother's reaction wasn't overt, but Wilhelm knew her well enough, and knew her stoic façade well enough, that he could tell she was affected. She flinched, pulling back until her whole posture screamed "retreat," crossing her arms around her torso in a protective gesture Wilhelm recognized in himself. Her eyes were glassy, too.

She offered no retort, however; it was like the mere mention of Erik had spirited the words right out of her mouth. So Wilhelm continued making his case. "Believe me, from now on, I will think it through four and five times before deciding to trust anyone," he declared, and that was the truth. What August had done... it scarred him. That wasn't something he could ever forget. Or forgive.

"But I can't just go through life being paranoid that everyone will sell me out," he added softly, feeling tired down to the marrow of his bones. "It's a recipe for madness."

His mother stared at him in silence for a long while. Wilhelm wasn't sure what she was thinking; if it was about their conversation or his appearance somehow. He could almost feel her gaze as it lingered over his disheveled hair, his slumped shoulders, his hands pulling at invisible loose threads on the hem of his blue sweater. But the visual inspection didn't feel uncomfortable or judgmental, for once; if anything, it felt contemplative. He could only dare hope his mother was truly thinking about everything he'd said.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she sighed. "Are you sure this is what you want, Wilhelm?" she asked, in a resigned, exhausted tone very similar to the one he'd just spoken with. She still had her arms crossed, but not as tightly as before. "You have to be sure. You have to think ten moves ahead."

She pursed her lips briefly before continuing. "This will follow you for the rest of your life— for the rest of your reign," she added, emphasis making it very clear where her primary concern rested. "If there is any chance that you might change your mind about this in the future, that you don't have to put yourself and Simon through this hardship..." She was clever, for sure. She knew where Wilhelm's priorities lay and that any chance of this backfiring on Simon would give him pause. It's not like Wilhelm hadn't already agonized over it for ages.

But it didn't feel like an outright manipulation this time around. She sounded sincere. And there was a part of Wilhelm, still, that longed for his mother's approval. A part of him that still sought affection from her, despite what she'd done. "...if there's any possibility you don't need to do this," the Queen concluded softly, "then I urge you to consider it. The world will not be kind."

He wanted to believe that she was doing this for his sake. He really did. But it was still difficult to understand her. "See, that is what bothers me the most about this whole thing," he said with a groan, running a hand through his hair. That wasn't quite true; what bothered him the most was not being able to be with Simon, but his mother's recalcitrant insistence that a queer Crown Prince would be rejected by the citizenry was also way up there. "You're the Queen of this entire country, but you seem to think your subjects are all just horrible people!"

It continued to baffle him. He knew, logically, that his mother was not homophobic, at least in a personal sense. If they weren't royals, she probably would not have a problem with any of this. No, the issue seemed to be the shaking up of the status quo, of hundreds of years of legacy, and the idea that her son, her heir, was going to be the one to do it. That's what she was struggling with. But that meant she was bent on upholding a homophobic system, and that made her actions homophobic.

But she didn't have to do that; she'd put herself in that cage all on her own, regardless of what the vast majority of the country actually supported. Wilhelm didn't understand how that made any sense. "You raised me to love Sweden, and I do," he reminded her, steadfast. "And it's because I love it that I trust most people will, eventually, understand and accept me as I am."

"Most of them will," she conceded, uncrossing her arms and resting her hands on the edge of her desk at her sides. Wilhelm had never cared for opinion polls or anything along those lines, but his mother certainly would. She knew he was making a good point. "But," she added, "a not-insignificant number of them will not. You have to be realistic."

"I am being realistic, mother," Wilhelm threw back, annoyed that even when he had the facts on his side, she was still dismissive. "This is going to get out no matter what. It's only because I've been actively fighting against it that it hasn't already." And he was very aware of that, especially in light of her earlier reminder that denying his involvement in the tape had been his own decision when it came down to the wire. If he had been strong enough to resist the pressure, clear enough as to who he was and what he wanted, they wouldn't even be having this conversation. Everything would be out already.

"But I can't do that forever," he continued. "All I can do is try to give myself— and Simon— some time." And, really, that's all he was asking for, wasn't it? Time. Time for everyone to adjust, as Simon had said. Time to process, time to think, time to gauge people's reactions, and then make decisions based on that reaction. Not just based on... fear and feeling overwhelmed and jumping to the worst possible conclusions.

"You'll never be able to win over everyone," his mother insisted. "It's just not possible."

She said that like Wilhelm didn't know that already. That's not what he was saying at all. "Well, then, why even let it bother us?" he posited instead. "Isn't that the whole point of the huge PR machine we have behind us? To minimize the discontent? Isn't that kind of your whole thing?" He gestured in her direction, throwing her hypocrisy back at her: when it came to her opinions, "public perception is everything;" but when public perception was on Wilhelm's side, well, then it just wasn't enough. Was he getting that right?

"I don't understand why this has to be such a big deal," he continued with a groan, rubbing his eyes with one hand. His head hurt. "We can get it to a point where, sure, it makes headlines for a while, but then... I don't know, Prince Andrew over in the UK says or does something terrible, and people here will just be relieved that the worst thing I ever did was fall in love with a boy."

The Queen sighed. "I wish it were that easy."

Wilhelm tugged at his hair just so he would have something to do with his hands other than wave them angrily at his mother. "It's only hard because you're making it harder!"

"Well, I'm your mother," she snapped back. "It's my job to worry about your life decisions."

He couldn't help but scoff at that one. "Funny, I thought your job was being the Queen of Sweden." Embittered by her refusal to see things from his perspective, he shook his head, making his way toward the window. He could see the lake outside, and it reminded him of Hillerska. That made him think of Simon, wonder what he was doing right at that moment while Wilhelm was stuck in a circular argument with his mother.

His gaze stayed fixed on the water, the wintry sky reflected on its glossy surface. He breathed deeply again, in and out, before speaking up. "I was going to say it, you know," he admitted in a low, subdued tone. "That I lied during that interview. That it was me on the video." His hand almost went up to his mouth so he could chew on his thumbnail, but he realized halfway through the movement what he was doing, and instead put both hands inside his pockets. Looking agitated would only make him more agitated.

"But I didn't because... I don't think it will make anything better," he added with a half shrug. "And honestly, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to put a part of me that I don't think I even understand yet myself out there for everybody to scrutinize and speculate on. Not right now."

He turned back around, away from the window, to look at his mother. "But I will," he promised, serious. "Someday. Because I... will be King"— it still felt surreal to say it— "and I understand that whether I like it or not, I owe myself, my identity, to the Swedish people." He shook his head. "Not every detail, maybe. Some things are, and should stay, personal. But the important parts... those, they do have a right to know."

The Queen was watching him, her expression inscrutable, but letting him say his piece. He squared his shoulders. "And this is important, Mamma. It's a part of who I am," he affirmed, wondering if maybe behind her guarded expression, his mother was still hoping he was wrong about this. That this was just some kind of experimentation he'd eventually grow out of.

It wasn't. He wasn't certain of many things regarding the situation he found himself in, but he was certain of this. Certain that his feelings for Simon were real, whatever that meant for him as far as labels were concerned. What they had was real. Perhaps the only real thing in Wilhelm's life.

"And yeah, maybe I won't end up with Simon for good; that's always a possibility. And maybe I'll never like another boy but rather end up marrying some... heiress from Montenegro or whatever," he said, though the idea sounded ludicrous to his ears. What he felt for Simon was so intense, so big that he couldn't comprehend how it even had room inside his chest. Surely a feeling so strong could never just... fizzle out, right? But, intellectually, he understood some of his mother's concerns. He was young— they both were— and neither of them was thinking about forever. Things could change in the future; he knew that.

"But the part of me that fell in love with him is not going to disappear," he said. And that was why, if he was going to go down this road, it had to be about more than just what he was feeling right now or about a relationship that may or may not go the distance. "That wasn't something he did; it was in me. It was a part of me all along." He loved Simon so much, and at the moment he wanted to be with Simon as long as Simon would have him, but his coming out had to be about him, about who he was, and that's why he needed time to understand himself before making any kind of public statement.

The Crown Prince was meant to be a role model, indeed, even in this aspect of his life— especially in this aspect of his life. If he was going to put his sexuality out there for people to dissect, he wanted it to mean something, to help people who were struggling with their own as much as he had.

That meant he couldn't mess it up. It's why he needed time. "And I want to be able to share that on my time. At my pace."

His mother looked like she was about to say something, but Wilhelm wasn't going to let her refute that. She'd lost that right when she hid the truth about August from Wilhelm to get him to do her bidding. "But if you keep pushing me to keep it hidden," he continued before she could get a word in edgewise, "to lie about it, and it hurts Simon— or anyone I love— then I'm going to go public with everything," he warned. "Whether I'm ready or not, I don't care. I'll go straight to social media. We've seen that it works, haven't we?"

The Queen's brow betrayed her surprise. "Well, that's a threat if I've ever heard one," she retorted, clearly referencing their previous conversation when Wilhelm had given her "notice" that he wasn't just going to sit on his hands while Simon's life was ruined. "You know, you may think you're all grown up, but the fact is you're still sixteen." And there it was again, the double standard: When it came to matters of public perception, he had to be mature. Responsible. A grown-up. But when he wanted to do something she disagreed with, he was just a child who needed to be managed. Un-fucking-believable. "I am still your mother, and I have every right to take away your phone, your computer—"

"Right, and you're also going to keep me away from anyone who has a phone or a camera for the rest of my life? Sounds doable," he interrupted her sarcastically. He wasn't going to fall for it this time. "What else? Are you going to pull me out of school? 'Cause you saw what happened yesterday. I'm pretty sure I could walk outside the palace gates and yell for someone to record a statement, and a journalist would just pop out of the mist."

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed them at chest level, not defensively, but to clench them around something other than air. His jaw tensed. "So unless you're planning on explaining to the Swedish people why you're keeping their crown prince locked away in a tower like freaking Rapunzel until the day he ascends the throne," he added, signaling brusquely toward the door, at the rest of the palace, with one hand, "I don't think this idea of yours is going to hold much weight."

Despite the level of control the institution of the monarchy exerted over his life, if there was one thing Wilhelm had learned from the Hillerska Strike for Justice, it was that he wasn't completely resourceless. It was about time his mother learned that lesson, too.

The Queen let out a "ha" sound under her breath, choosing to call his bluff. "You won't do that. You know how important the Crown's reputation is, Wilhelm. Taking your grievances to the public will only make things worse."

"I don't want to do it. It's the last thing I want to do!" Wilhelm shot back somewhat anxiously. It wasn't a nice feeling, to be here basically threatening his own mother for some minuscule degree of freedom. He did not feel good about this. Still, he felt he had to do it. "I'm telling you what I do want, though, and you're not listening. So what else do you expect me to do?"

He covered his face with his hands for a moment, closing his eyes to tamp down the edge of dizziness that was starting to fog up his brain. Then he straightened up and fixed his mother with a determined stare. "You keep telling me that I'm going to be King, so I have to own it. Well, this is me owning it. Isn't that what you wanted?"

Once again, the Queen regarded her son and heir solemnly, mulling thoughts Wilhelm knew he could barely fathom. Her mouth was closed primly, her brow furrowed slightly, but she didn't look angry, for once; just contemplative, if Wilhelm had to hazard a guess.

After a minute or so of complete silence, still without uttering a word, his mother pushed away from her desk and carefully walked toward him, kitten heels clip-clopping against the parquet floor. Wilhelm waited, unsure what her reaction was going to be, and too drained from this entire argument to bother being apprehensive.

When she reached him, she looked up at him and reached up to caress his cheek softly with the back of her hand. It was a familiar gesture. Wilhelm closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. It crossed his mind that Linda cradling his cheek the day before had felt ten times warmer than any time his own mother had done this as far as he could remember, but if this was the most affection he was allowed to get from the Queen, he'd still take it. How sad was that?

"Oh, my darling," she said quietly, her gaze soft, almost sorrowful. "I just don't want your life to be harder than it needs to be."

Wilhelm breathed out heavily, his shoulders dropping as he met her eyes, weary. "Having to hide who I am all the time will not make it any easier, Mamma," he whispered in response, heavyhearted. He just wanted her to understand him, to support him, to choose him over the Crown, at least once. Just once.

His mother studied his expression carefully, silently, for a little bit. He couldn't read her expression, but he thought he saw a little sadness there. Melancholy, maybe. Perhaps a sliver of pity, though he didn't know if that was a good thing. He met her gaze regardless, begging her to be on his side without outright saying the words. Then she pulled her hand back, and he steeled himself for disappointment.

Instead, she sighed. "I swear, Wilhelm, after all the grief you've given me about this, you better marry this boy," she quipped, almost in a mutter, shaking her head as she turned and made her way back to the desk.

His first thought was that he didn't know what was with people this weekend making jokes about him and Simon getting married. For fuck's sake, he was sixteen! And this was his mother, no less! The Queen of Sweden! She hardly ever joked about anything. Did she even mean it to be teasing? Regardless, he could feel his face getting hot and he knew he had to be blushing, much to his eternal embarrassment.

He was about to turn to the nearest wall and hide his face against the Rococo wall panels when the underlying meaning of her words actually clicked in his brain.

He looked in her direction, wide-eyed— her back was to him as she fiddled with the documents on her desk. He spoke regardless, probably a little hoarse but entirely too loud, as he was compensating for the thundering sound of his heartbeat in his ears, fueled by a burst of sudden hope that he hadn't experienced through this entire conversation. "...Is that a yes?" he asked, waiting for a reply on bated breath.

She looked back at him from the corner of her eye, over her shoulder. "It's a 'you've left me no other choice,'" she clarified sternly before going back to the papers. "Your father did suggest I may have to give a little, so..." she offered by way of an explanation for her change of heart. She trailed off, sounding a little annoyed at having to capitulate, but Wilhelm couldn't be bothered by it any less as long as she was allowing him what he'd asked for.

After passing a few pages back and forth, she finally closed the folder, papers stacking together with a loud thud. She turned to him again, addressing him directly in her more rigid, disciplinarian tone. "Regardless, until you're ready to make a statement, you have to keep things perfectly respectable," she decreed, all no-nonsense practicality. "And I mean everything: public appearances outside of school, interviews, social media..." She paused momentarily as if reminding herself of all the public avenues they'd have to keep an eye on.

"We might need to get everyone at Hillerska to sign a confidentiality agreement," she added, almost more to herself than to him. "Your little rally from yesterday might actually give us the perfect excuse for that if people really think someone is going around the school recording students in the privacy of their dorm rooms."

Wilhelm frowned, his excitement faltering already at the turn the conversation had taken. "Someone was," he reminded his mother pointedly. After all, he'd been the one recorded for posterity in an intimate moment by his own bastard of a cousin. He would know.

"But he wasn't caught, was he?" she returned just as sharply. "And now we can use that to our advantage." Wilhelm finally understood what she meant, and he hated that she made it sound like this whole "letting August get off scot-free" thing had all been part of some grand plan to eventually allow Wilhelm to be with Simon. It wasn't. She'd been rolling with the punches as much as Wilhelm had, and she'd made wrong decisions along the way, and protecting August had been wrong. Just because she was (even reluctantly) on Wilhelm's side now, that didn't make what she did before any less hurtful.

That said, he wasn't going to antagonize her when he was finally getting what he wanted, so he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. There'd be time to figure out where he and his mother stood later. For now, all he cared about was Simon, and being able to live his truth on his terms.

If she noticed his discomfort, she didn't mention it. "But it's important you give yourself some plausible deniability, Wilhelm— no, I'm not going to make you deny anything," she intervened before he even had a chance to complain. "I understand you're very much opposed to that. But we need to give the communications team a cushion to work with if we want them to dodge direct questions. Too much of that and people start losing their trust in us. That would be disastrous."

Wilhelm thought about that and... felt it made some sense. After all, that was more or less the same reason why he hadn't revealed the truth about the video himself. He didn't want to undermine the people's trust in the Crown, for their own good as well as his own, because he'd need the goodwill when he finally did decide to come out to everyone. And he did believe some good could come of Sweden remaining a monarchy, as long as the monarchy changed with the times. He could be that change— or a step toward it, at least. But that meant he couldn't have people thinking he was shady or deceitful. He didn't want to alienate his subjects any further. He had to play this carefully, even if it involved the kind of PR maneuvering he despised.

It's like he told Simon the day before: he hated it, but he had to live with it. He couldn't change it; he could only try and make it a little easier for himself.

He glanced toward the window again, toward the lake, for just a few seconds before formulating a response. It was a way to keep his focus on the only real thing that came out of this entire excruciating episode. The only real thing he had in his life. "And if I do that... I can be with Simon?"

"Yes," his mother said, and as Wilhelm let that single, magical word wash over him, he felt his eyes start to water again. "On a limited capacity," she added, emphasizing the keyword there to clarify her meaning. "But this is a big risk you're taking here, Wilhelm; you have to be responsible. More than ever before."

She rested her weight back against the edge of the desk again, pinning him in place with a stern look. "And if anything goes wrong— anything— you come to me immediately. Do not handle anything on your own. I'm serious. One centimeter past the line into the obvious, and the game is up. For all of us."

Wilhelm swallowed hard. If there was one thing to be said about having his mother in his corner, aside from the obvious fact that she was his mother and he wanted her to support him, was that she was much more seasoned at dealing with the politics of media than he was. Maybe she didn't know much about social media, but she knew how the media machine worked at the fundamental level, and she was much steadier in the face of the turns of the tide than Wilhelm felt he would ever be. He was in over his head as it was, flailing at the waves to keep himself above water. His mother's experience, regardless of any other tensions that still existed between them, felt like an anchor he was completely untethered to just a day ago.

He nodded. "I understand, Mamma."

She acknowledged his acceptance with a tip of her head. "And I hope you understand as well that we will have to look into Simon and his family. Don't groan at me—" He'd been about to do just that, and had to hold the reflex back once he got called out.

"It's standard procedure," she continued. "Unless he's killed someone, it should be fine. Everyone has unflattering entries on their record. We just need to be prepared for any eventuality."

Wilhelm winced. This was one of the things he was worried about: having to put Simon and their family through the background investigations. The digging up of every negative thing that had happened in their lives. Given what little he knew from Simon and Sara about their estranged father, he couldn't imagine all of that would be pleasant to relive. Still, better to deal with it now and formulate a plan in case any of it leaked, than have it drudged up by the press and be caught flat-footed by it.

He bit back his complaint. Just because he and Simon could be together now (at a private level, at least, but not in secret), didn't mean they could just breeze through the necessary formalities. There would always be some balance between openness and privacy; it was just a question of what level of exposure they were both comfortable with. He'd just have to make sure to explain everything to Simon very clearly.

"Can I be the one to tell him, at least?" he asked, resigned that it had to be done at all but hopeful that it was not an unreasonable request. "I would rather you not sic Minou on him unexpectedly."

"She'll be charmed to know what you really think of her," the Queen commented dryly, and had he been talking to anyone else, Wilhelm might've rolled his eyes. He'd said far worse to Minou's face more than once, so she probably held no illusions as to what the Crown Prince thought of— well, of her job, mostly. They didn't interact much on a personal level; he always just saw her as an extension of his mother, so to speak.

"But yes, you may," his mother continued, pushing just slightly away from the desk and joining her hands in front of her. Her posture was perfectly pristine still, but noticeably less tense. "And once the formalities are done, perhaps it would be a good idea to invite them over for dinner with us. The household can arrange it. Maybe for Easter?" she suggested tentatively.

To say that he was shocked by the offer would be an understatement. He'd expected, at best, that his mother would be tolerant of his relationship with Simon for the optics— after all, she couldn't look like she was not supportive of her son— but it would never have occurred to him that she might attempt to actually build a relationship with Simon and his family.

That was more than he ever dared hope for, and he found himself getting unexpectedly emotional. "Really?" he asked, almost afraid that asking for confirmation might break whatever miraculous spell his mother was under.

The corners of her lips crinkled up in the smallest of smiles, somewhere between amused and yielding. Wilhelm couldn't remember the last time she'd actually smiled at him. Genuinely smiled. Before Hillerska, probably. It had been at least a good few months. "Well, if he's going to be a fixture in your life, we might as well get to know him," she rationalized, but Wilhelm didn't care about her reasons; it was enough that she was trying. It meant the world.

He was so overcome with appreciation and hope that he barely recognized his feet starting to move and taking him across the room toward his mother. Next thing he knew, he was throwing his arms around her and hugging her tightly in a way he hadn't since he was a pre-teen. She was clearly surprised by the gesture, too, given that she let out an "Oh!" as he collided against her. For a second he worried she might pull away, chide him for being too sentimental, say that it was unbecoming. But she didn't.

"Thank you, Mamma," he breathed out shakily past a lump of emotion in his throat. He didn't know where this left him with his mother; it certainly didn't absolve the way she handled things before, or make up for not understanding him and dismissing his needs, let alone placing such high expectations on him all his life. It didn't erase the distance put between them by the weight of the Crown, which Wilhelm was sure would still be there in the future.

But the fact that she was at least willing to give his relationship with Simon a chance, give Wilhelm a chance... that mattered. And he was allowed that, wasn't he? He was allowed to revel in the possibility that his mother might care for him more than she did her title, at least for a little while.

She didn't hug him back, exactly— even discounting her position as monarch, she just wasn't a particularly huggy person— but one hand lightly rubbed at his side while her other hand softly carded through the hair at the back of his head. "I do love you, my sweet boy," she whispered into his ear, as his face was pressed against her shoulder. "I'm sorry I have to be strict with you. I just want you to do well."

"I know," he muttered back, voice muffled by the fabric of her blouse and the cushion of her shoulder pad. Somehow, he felt both happy and sad at the same time. Happy that his mother had finally said what he'd been longing to hear for so long. Sad that it took this long for her to say it. That it might take even longer for him to hear it again. It wasn't fair, but he ached for it regardless. She was his mother, after all.

He squeezed her tight for a moment just because he could, because he didn't know when he would get to do this again anytime soon, then relaxed his hold. "Okay," the Queen said as they pulled back, her voice still soft and conciliatory, "you go back to school. I'll take all of this to the media team, get them prepared."

Wilhelm nodded in acknowledgment. His mother combed her fingers through his hair a couple of times, making sure it looked presentable, then brushed a stubborn tear away from the corner of his eye. She smiled at him again, a little wistful. He took that as his cue to head out.

He paused as he reached the door, leaving it half-open as he turned back to look at his mother. She hadn't moved. "Mamma?" he called tentatively. She looked at him, expectant. "I miss Erik so much," he said, his voice breaking.

He heard her breath catch. She lifted her fingers to her lips, almost as if trying to physically hold back a sob. She looked down at her side at a picture frame standing on her desk. Wilhelm couldn't see the picture from that angle, but he was pretty sure it was a picture of him and Erik when they were babies, maybe an exact copy of one he had in his room.

When her gaze returned to him, her eyes were watery and, he thought, tinged red. "So do I, sweetheart," she admitted with a similar tremble to her words. "So do I."

Wilhelm was still wiping tears from his cheeks when he got to the car. Once Malin was inside as well, and after informing their driver they were headed back to Linköping, the prince pulled out his phone. There was only one person he wanted to talk to after everything that just happened. On my way back, he texted Simon.

It only took a few seconds to get a response, like Simon had been waiting for his message. How did it go?

It was a lot, Wilhelm wrote back, but not in a bad way? He didn't want to give Simon the impression that something had gone wrong and cause him to worry for the next two hours. Wilhelm was just... still trying to wrap his head around it.

I'd rather tell you in person, he wrote again. Can I stop by yours?

Of course, Simon texted back right away, the words followed by a heart emoji.

Wilhelm smiled down at his phone, pressing the screen to send a red heart right back. Then he flipped his phone closed and leaned back against the leather seat back of the town car. He closed his eyes and let himself dream of happiness, freedom, and love.

Chapter Text

"Hey, we did something amazing yesterday," Felice had declared in the group chat on Saturday. "I think we deserve a celebration! I'll arrange it with Housemistress Anna; just leave it all to me." And that is how Sunday evening found Simon, Wilhelm, and the girls taking over the Manor House common room.

Simon sat at the foot of one of the couches, back resting against the edge of the seat. Sara was on the couch directly behind him, with Stella lounging on the other end of the couch. Wille sat sideways directly beside Simon, propping himself up with an elbow on the couch cushions, his long, lanky legs stretched out perpendicularly across Simon's lap. Maddie and Fredrika took up the other couch, with Felice curled up in an armchair like a queen on her throne.

Despite Felice's assurance that she'd figure out the logistics, there hadn't been much of a plan to this "celebration" other than hanging out and goofing off, but as they settled in after dinner, Madison suggested they play a party game she used to play with her friends back in the US. Apparently, it was something like truth or dare, except without the dare part. Or maybe it was more like twenty questions, except not with yes/no answers? Simon wasn't sure, and he had a feeling it was more something Maddie and her friends had just made up themselves.

She called the game "Truth in a jar," and it involved everyone writing down one or more questions on scraps of paper, folding them over, and placing them inside a jar. Then the person whose turn it was would pick one slip of paper out of the jar, read it out loud, and everybody would have to answer the question. If someone didn't want to answer, they could pass, and would usually be required to take a drink. Because they were in the school dormitories, they weren't doing the drink bit (though Simon was highly suspicious of the black-and-teal water bottle Stella had been nursing for a while and refusing to share with anyone), so in essence, they didn't have to answer any questions they felt uncomfortable with.

This suited everyone just fine, so Fredrika promptly pulled out a notebook and a set of colorful gel pens from her purse and started handing blank pages and glittery pens out to everyone. Simon couldn't help but snort when he reached out to grab his and caught a glimpse of a full-page doodle she had drawn on the page she flipped to the back of the spiral-bound notebook. "Does that... does that say 'let them eat cake'?" he asked, incredulous.

Fredrika stared at him for a second like she had no idea what he was talking about, but then seemed to figure it out as she flipped the notebook over and looked at the doodle. "Oh! Yeah, it's a Marie Antoinette quote. Didn't it come out really cool? I used these other pens I have that mix two colors instead of just one."

It did look pretty cool, he had to admit (he didn't know Fredrika could do typography, but then again, he'd never talked to her much before that day). But the artistry of it wasn't really what was giving Simon pause. "Why... would you want to have that quote on your notebook?" he asked, honestly bewildered.

Maddie took a look at the doodle in question over Fredrika's shoulder and snickered. Wille looked between her and Simon curiously, but also almost warily, like he was getting ready to stop an argument should it erupt. Felice watched it all with a relaxed, amused smile.

Fredrika gave him a wide-eyed, confused look. "What?" she asked, shifting her gaze between Simon and the doodle a couple of times. She looked around at her other friends, most of whom were trying really hard not to laugh. "It's a nice sentiment. She was being generous, wasn't she? Offering everyone cake and all."

The fact that she asked that question completely unironically had everybody bursting into giggles. "Yeah, that's not— that's not what that means," Wille pointed out, chuckling, as Simon himself was too busy gasping for air between guffaws to properly point that out to poor Fredrika.

The ditzy brunette pouted. "Why is that so funny? Everybody likes cake," she protested, only succeeding in sending the entire room into a fit.

Stella leaned over Wilhelm's shoulder, addressing Simon directly in a theatrical whisper. "She's really bad at history. Let's just move on," she suggested cheekily, pointedly ignoring the indignant huff her roommate let out at her words.

After a bit more ribbing back and forth, they finally got to writing down their questions. Simon only asked two, and they were pretty general since he didn't know most of the girls well enough to come up with some incisive, fun, more personal questions to make the game more interesting. He was sure he wasn't alone in that, though, as he heard Wille mutter "I'm going to be so bad at this game" to himself more than once. The girls didn't seem to have that problem, with all of them throwing a whole bunch of questions into the glass vase the Housemistress had helpfully procured for them to use as the titular "jar." Fredrika had written down like fifteen questions— "as revenge for making fun of me," she said with a smirk.

It wasn't even particularly hard to tell which questions were whose when they finally started playing. For example, the spicy/crazy ones were Madison's (Simon tended to pass on the spicy ones, as it would be way too obvious that all of his sexual experience was with Wille and people already knew entirely too much about their sex life for him to disclose even more information. Wilhelm wisely did the same, without them even needing to agree on it beforehand). Felice asked insightful questions about their personal and family lives, and their plans for the future. Stella seemed focused on bad exes, for some reason, or bad romantic experiences in general. Fredrika asked about crushes, boyfriends, and celebrities. When "What is your favorite animal and why?" came up, they all knew that one was Sara's.

(Simon was surprised to find out Wille's favorite animal was a frog. There was a story there, he was sure, but Wille didn't offer any more information.)

It was Maddie's turn to pick a question, so she picked a slip of paper out of the jar and grinned to herself as she unfolded it. "Oh, this is a good one," she warned everyone. "What is the thing you least wanted to do that you still did for your crush?" she formulated the question slowly— Simon guessed because she was translating from Swedish— and it prompted a few groans to ring out among the others.

The stories that came up in response were as varied as the girls themselves. Maddie's involved drinking some asinine alcohol concoction that left her puking her guts out for three days straight. Felice had gone to some stuffy high-society party full of old people and then promptly been ditched by the crush in question. Stella was still quite upset about dumbing herself down for some boy.

Sara had brought up the time she stood in line for hours, outdoors, on the coldest winter day in Linköping in nearly a decade, in an attempt to score VIP concert tickets for some boy band she was obsessed with. Simon remembered that day very well, as he'd been standing right there with her, and he didn't even like that band all that much. To this day, he could still feel the cold in his bones.

Then everybody turned to Wille. And while the boy tried valiantly to pretend that he wasn't aware it was his turn to answer, his rapidly reddening cheeks betrayed him. Eventually, he groaned loudly, burying his face in the fabric of the couch upholstery. There was silence for a heartbeat as everyone waited for him to 'fess up, and when it came, it was just one word: "...Rowing."

Madison swallowed back a giggle. Fredrika actually squealed. Felice let out a surprised "Really!"

Simon's eyebrows arched high in his forehead in surprise at the unexpected revelation. "Wait. Like, rowing now, rowing?" he asked, just to clarify for the record that the crush Wille was referring to was him and not someone else. He knew Wille had done some rowing before coming to Hillerska, so he couldn't be completely certain, but the way Wille was acting certainly made it seem like he was talking about Simon.

Wilhelm let out a huff. "...Yes..." The word was muffled by the couch cushions. He sounded so resigned that everybody laughed. Finally, he pulled his face back away from the furniture and clumsily attempted to explain, tips of his ears as red as a stoplight. "Like, initially I started rowing because Erik— you know— but honestly I would've quit a long time ago if it weren't for..." He awkwardly gestured in Simon's direction, resolutely avoiding Simon's surprised and amused gaze— as well as everyone else's.

"Had he told you about this?" Madison asked Simon, curious.

Simon searched Wille's face. If he truly was mortified about this, Simon would do his best to steer the conversation in a different direction. But although Wille still looked like he was a second away from spontaneously combusting, his shoulders were shaking with laughter, and when he finally did meet Simon's gaze, he gave him a sheepish but fond smile.

Simon took that as a go-ahead. "First time I'm hearing of it," he told the girls with his hands raised at his sides innocently, prompting them to dissolve into cackles. And though he was playing it up for laughs, it was the truth: Wille had never mentioned it, even during rowing practice, and now that the season was over, it was even less likely to come up.

Fredrika sighed dramatically. "I wish someone would love me enough to practice a sport they hate for me."

Felice flung a throw pillow at her, hitting her straight on and causing the headband she was wearing to end up skewed sideways on her head. Stella laughed. "I pity the poor boy who takes up horseriding to impress you. Daisy will kick any male specimen who comes within a few feet of her right in the 'nads."

"That's true," Fredrika conceded with a pout as she fixed her hair, and Simon made a mental note never to come anywhere near Fredrika's mare. "It's so romantic, though...!"

"Okay, okay," Wille interrupted, still adorably flushed. He waved his arms as if trying to erase everything that was said since the last question was asked. "I've said my piece; my turn is done. Can we keep going now? Who's next?"

Unfortunately for the blond boy, it was Simon's turn to answer, and he took his sweet, sweet time deciding whether or not he should continue teasing Wille (he just made it too easy!) or be a little more serious with his response. Subjected to his maybe-boyfriend's (is that what they were? They had to have that talk, but it had only been two days since they got back together so they hadn't gotten around to it) big, begging puppy eyes, Simon decided to cut him a break.

"I can't give you any details," he started carefully, keenly feeling Wille's eyes on him, "but I'm gonna say... getting woken up at two in the morning and having to bike all the way to the Bjärstad football field in the middle of an utterly frigid night."

"Ah," Sara gasped, putting two and two together. "Is that what that was?" Simon quickly turned to give her a sharp shake of the head, signaling for her not to say anything else. She seemed to get it because she didn't ask anything else.

Madison caught the gesture and groaned. "Oh, come on! You can't just say something that vague and not explain any further," she complained.

Simon snickered, shrugging. "Sorry. If I tell you anything else, the Royal Guards may need to kill you." The girls laughed. Wille gave him a quick, grateful smile, but he needn't have bothered. It's not like Simon was eager to share, himself. Enough of that night had already been desecrated by the unwanted attention of the world; he wanted them to be able to keep the few private moments they had left of it to themselves.

Questions kept going around, the mood light and buoyant for the next few turns. Simon was kind of surprised by it, honestly. He hadn't been sure what to expect when Wille mentioned that Felice had proposed this little "victory get-together" over group chat (he wasn't even in the group chat at that point, so that alone said something about how included he felt). He was game for it, sure, mainly to spend more time with his sister and Wille, and Madison was always cool to talk to, but he had never interacted much with the others, and wasn't that something of a stereotype, anyway, inviting the gay friend to the all-girl sleepover?

But these girls had risked getting punished by the school to help him when they didn't have to, so he felt he owed them at least the benefit of the doubt. Even if he was more the type to normally spend his weekends playing Call of Duty with Ayub or watching a movie with his mother rather than gossiping about boys with Felice's friends.

And he was having fun, he had to admit; sure, they could be a little shallow and entitled, but it was nice to just chill and joke around with different people every once in a while. And Sara trusted these girls. And Wille could use more friends at school. So, really, he was better off just getting over his hangups and letting them in. They were good people.

Fredrika picked out one more question, "What is the worst way someone has hit on you?" and groans rang out among nearly all the girls.

"I have so many of those, I don't think I can choose just one!" Felice whined. The others commiserated with her so earnestly that they had Simon both chuckling and thanking the universe that he 1) wasn't a girl, and 2) had limited romantic experience, regardless of his gender or sexual orientation.

They jumped into the most awkward, uncomfortable, and sometimes ridiculous experiences they'd had with overly arrogant, misinformed, or even straight-up awful boys who thought they were God's gift to women because they were moderately good-looking and had money. Sometimes, as one of them was speaking, another one would chime in to point out some detail they were unintentionally leaving out, or to remind them of an entirely different encounter they'd had that could also count as a response to the question.

They got so into it, giving three or even four responses each, bandying outraged and amused comments back and forth, that Simon thought they'd never get to him and Wille with the question. Soon enough, though, it was Sara's turn. She thought about it for a little bit— Simon knew sometimes she had trouble recognizing when people were flirting, so he couldn't remember off the top of his head if she'd ever told him about any interactions she found particularly bothersome— and then she shrugged. "I guess when August kissed me in the stables," she said bluntly like everyone had known about it already.

It took a few seconds for what she said to dawn on Simon. When it did, it landed with a thud, however. He turned to look at his sister over his shoulder. "Wait, wait— what?!" he exclaimed. "Sara, what even— When did this happen?"

"Oh, you didn't know?" Felice asked, sounding surprised. "I posted about it on my Insta story when I broke up with August."

"Well, I must've missed it," Simon retorted curtly. "Excuse me if I was a little preoccupied with other things." Which was an understatement if there ever was one. Between becoming a low-level drug dealer, nearly getting expelled from school, and getting outed to the world on a sex tape featuring the Crown Prince of Sweden, Simon had several more pressing matters at the time than keeping up with Felice's social media.

Right away he felt bad for snapping at her, though. It wasn't Felice's fault that he was unaware of this. "Sorry, just—" he half mumbled at her before turning back around to look at his sister. "Sara, what the hell?"

She let out a long-suffering sigh. "Simon, it's fine."

"It's not fine! Who the fuck gives him the right—" He started squirming around in an attempt to get up, but he didn't get very far as he was pinned in place by Wilhelm's legs. "Wille, get off, I have to go murder the bastard—"

"She's got it sorted," Wille assured him, briefly exchanging a look with Sara without pulling his legs off Simon's lap. Okay, this new buddy-buddy thing they had going on was... weird, Simon thought, but he'd get back to that later. He had bigger issues to deal with at the moment. Like finding a way to go look for August and punch his lights out.

"Besides," Wilhelm continued, "we just got you out of a suspension. Don't you go undoing all our hard work now." He sounded like a total smartypants and Simon hated that it made him want to kiss Wille's dumb (adorable) face.

He threw his head back with a resigned huff. "Fine," he conceded reluctantly. It's not like he really wanted to hurt August— he really wasn't a violent kind of guy, and he knew Sara could take care of herself; he was just protective and wanted to make sure the fucking asshole wasn't taking advantage of his sister. He wouldn't be opposed to putting a little bit of fear on the older boy, though; he knew from previous experience that kind of thing worked with August, and since he'd managed to evade any other repercussion anyway... Simon couldn't let him dodge this one.

He twisted around in place so he could look at Sara again. "But you're okay?" he asked, just to make sure.

"I'm fine," she reassured him with a quick, small smile. "It's like Wille said: I dealt with it. It's done now."

He didn't miss Sara calling Wilhelm "Wille" just then, and though he was still confused about how this newly found rapport between the two of them had come about, he had to admit it was nice to see them interacting so smoothly. He knew more than anyone how much Sara struggled to find people she trusted, who would see beyond her neurodivergence. Wilhelm struggled, as well, to find people who were real, who wanted to be near him for him and not just his title. You couldn't get any more real than Sara, and you couldn't get any more considerate than Wille. Perhaps them being friends was a more positive development than Simon first thought it would be.

He poked at Sara's thigh. "Why would you not tell me, though?" he asked, more than a little hurt. Hadn't she just recently been upset at him for not holding up his promise of not keeping secrets from her? Stones and glass houses, Sara, he thought.

She had the decency to look chagrined as she answered, "It's complicated." It was barely noticeable, but Simon knew her better than anyone, so he didn't miss the way she shrunk in on herself, just a little. It made him worry there was more to this than just an errant kiss she didn't want.

"But I will tell you," she added, sincere. "Just... tomorrow."

Simon groaned, narrowing his eyes at her in mock suspicion. "Ah. Is this what it feels like when I do that to you?" he asked teasingly. Sara grinned at him. Oh yeah, she had definitely done that on purpose.

"Boo to August, yay for sibling love!" Madison chimed in, beaming. The rest of them chuckled. "Now, who's next up?"

Simon didn't get his turn until after Wille, and now he felt obligated to end the round on a good note because Wille's answer involved the time some woman in her forties accosted him on the streets— when he was thirteen years old— demanding he put a royal baby in her belly. The crazy lady was promptly taken away by security, thankfully, but it was just another reminder of the dangers children raised in the public eye, and Wilhelm in particular, faced on a daily basis.

Understandably, Wille's story had brought down the collective mood a bit (Simon could see that Wille felt a little bit guilty for that— clearly he hadn't meant it that way, but the question just lent itself to some not-so-fun responses, so nobody really blamed him for it). So Simon racked his brain for a good one that would get everyone back to a more upbeat position. It was only when he thought back to Wille's admission about the rowing team that a funny moment crossed his mind.

He smirked mischievously; he couldn't help it. "Well, one time during rowing practice..." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wille's inquiring gaze turn toward him sharply. Simon's grin widened. The girls, likewise, seemed immediately curious as to where he was taking this; Fredrika actually hugged the couch pillow to her chest and leaned forward as if that would allow her to hear him better.

"...we were basically done for the day, right?" Simon continued, getting more into the story as he recalled the details of that day. "So I was trying to get the boat back to dry land without falling in, as usual." He chuckled to himself; he didn't hate rowing, but he'd be the first person to admit that he was pretty terrible at it.

"And Wille was standing at the dock, so he started giving me some tips— which I do appreciate—" he added for Wille's benefit. "I did need the help." In sneaking a look at the blond boy sitting beside him, he could tell exactly the moment it dawned on Wille which encounter he was talking about. He still didn't know where Simon was going with it, though.

"And then August stopped by with his usual bullshit," Simon sneered with a roll of his eyes. He really hated that, in hindsight, August was so inextricably linked to even the smallest moments between him and Wille. It rankled. "And Wille had to go with him at that point, but before they left..." He paused for suspense. "...he patted me on the shoulder."

Madison let out a howl of laughter so loud that she had to press her face against the backrest of the couch to keep the noise levels down. Sara snorted. The others giggled more quietly. Felice gasped. "Wille!" she exclaimed. "You did not!"

"What?" Wilhelm, wide-eyed, looked at each of them for an explanation of why that was so funny. Finding no takers, he turned to Simon, now looking a little mortified. "What's wrong with that? I was trying to be supportive!"

Simon had to laugh at Wille's genuinely clueless expression. It was cute. "You're kidding, right?" he asked cheekily. "That was the single most 'no homo' moment of my entire life!"

The girls practically screeched at that, almost in unison. Wilhelm gaped at Simon like a fish, and as the laughter rang out around them, Simon could see the bright flush on Wille's face come back with a vengeance. "What— I didn't—" he stammered hopelessly. "That's not what I—" At that point he just outright gave up on defending himself, instead letting out a loud groan and burying his flaming face against Simon's shoulder, which was shaking with mirth.

Simon looked down at this silly, silly boy he absolutely adored, and let himself be hopeful for the first time in weeks. To be clear, Wille still carried the weight of the world— or at least Sweden— on his shoulders, and there were no guarantees that their relationship wouldn't just crash and burn all over again. Though they thankfully had a few more allies now, it was still going to be a constant uphill battle, and there would still be pain along the way.

But when Wille looked up at him sideways, having finally succumbed to the inevitability of laughing at himself, and their gazes met in a gentle, affectionate exchange in plain view of their delighted classmates, Simon had to believe they were, at least, in it together. He had to.

And maybe that was just a pipe dream and he'd just end up getting his heart broken and his spirit left in tatters all over again, but right now, looking into Wille's eyes and feeling the weight of the emotions swirling inside him that only Wille had ever provoked, he couldn't help but think that he'd rather have this than not, no matter how much it hurt along the way.

Maybe that was stupid. Maybe he should know better by now. Maybe he was just setting himself up for disappointment all over again. But it was the only way he knew how to be.

"Oh my God, you two are just too cute," Felice gushed, pulling up her phone and snapping a picture of them. Her thumbs were flying over her phone's virtual keyboard in a fraction of a second. "This needs to go up on Insta..." she muttered, more to herself than to them, as she frantically tapped on her phone screen.

It seemed like her own words and actions only hit her a moment later, and she stopped abruptly, looking up from her phone to give Simon and Wille an apologetic look. "Oh. Sorry, I shouldn't have— I can delete the picture if you want," she offered, recognizing that she hadn't asked if they were okay with any of it before taking a photo of them. Normally this wouldn't be an issue between friends— Simon had done it himself countless times— but given Wille's position, and after everything that happened last term, their situation was a little different, and Simon appreciated that she'd thought of that before posting.

Simon thought Wille might jump at Felice's offer to delete the pic; it had only been one day since his big argument with the Queen, after all, and Simon would understand if Wilhelm didn't want to rock the boat too much, too soon. To his surprise, however, he straightened up and away from Simon's shoulder, and said instead, "Can I see it?"

Felice promptly handed him her phone, and Simon couldn't see from the angle he was sitting in what was on the screen, but he kept a careful eye on Wille's reaction to it. The blond boy stared at the screen for longer than necessary, probably, a soft smile gracing his features. Then he turned back to Felice. "Yeah, you can post it," he said easily, handing the phone back to her. "And tag me, will you?"

That surprised Simon, but if Wille thought it was okay, he wasn't going to argue, at least when it came to this. Wilhelm knew best when it came to the public eye, and he knew best how his mother would react to anything he put out in the public eye. The tag didn't make the effect of the post on Simon any better or any worse. Simon had set his Instagram account to private back when the sex tape mess happened in December, which is why he only shrugged when Felice asked him if he was also okay with her tagging him.

"Okay, done!" Felice said once she hit post, and she was about to hand the phone back to them so they could look at the result when a knock on the doorframe interrupted her.

"It's almost lights out," Housemistress Anna chimed in, poking her head into the common room. "Boys, time to start heading back to your dormitory."

So they started picking up after themselves, moving the furniture back where it was always supposed to be. Maddie said she would keep the leftover questions and save them "for next time," and Simon was, quite unexpectedly, looking forward to it. It had been really fun, hanging out with the girls. He'd love to do this again.

Afterward, Simon and Wille, trailed by Wille's bodyguard Sören, made their way across campus toward Forest Ridge, chatting animatedly about their evening. "I still don't know how to feel about you and Sara being best friends all of a sudden, by the way," Simon said, amused, as they walked into the building.

Wilhelm made a face. "I'd hardly say we're best friends," he said as he led Simon to the Housemaster's quarters to check in. "But it's good, isn't it? Better than when she hated me, I guess." He shrugged. "She's your sister. I want her to like me."

"That's sweet," Simon said with a chuckle. "I feel like I should warn you, though: if you really want to be friends with her, it's not a one-and-done thing. You'll have to keep working for it." He grinned like the cat that ate the canary. "She's very high maintenance."

"Oh, yeah?" Wille laughed. "I'm gonna tell her you said that."

"Ah, so it starts," Simon quipped as Wilhelm informed Housemaster Göran of Simon's arrival. Simon was being annoying about the Sara thing because he liked teasing Wille, mostly, but the truth was, the more he thought about Wilhelm and Sara being friends, the more he warmed up to the idea. His family and Wille were the two most important things in his life, and he wanted them to get along. It was so important to him that they did.

The housemaster met up with them outside Wilhelm's room, handing Simon a warmer blanket for the extra bed they were 100% not going to use. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather stay elsewhere, Mr. Eriksson?" the man asked knowingly. "There are empty single rooms upstairs if you'd prefer that. You'd have the whole space to yourself, and there would be no need to inconvenience the Crown Prince."

"That really won't be necessary, Housemaster," Wille intervened instead in his best "public relations" voice. He had what Simon had come to think of as his "practical" smile on. It was the smile he put on for press photos or to make small talk with stuffy high-society types: a smile that was perfectly polite and serviceable but also did not reach his eyes. "Simon has said he doesn't mind sharing, and I've got a perfectly good extra bed in my room. It's not an inconvenience at all."

"Right," Simon agreed. "I don't need a whole room to myself." He smiled at the housemaster in what he hoped was a beatific manner. "I have a note from my mom if you'd like to see it," he added, trying really, really hard not to burst into giggles. Behind him, he heard Wille only half manage to stifle a snort.

This whole situation was just so absurd. Simon wasn't allowed to bunk with his sister because... heteronormativity or something, so he had to stay at Forest Ridge per the school rules. But at the same time, everyone knew he and Wille weren't just two bros innocently sharing a room (no homo), so the administration didn't know how to handle such a circumstance. They couldn't outright refuse to let him stay, because that would be discrimination on the basis of his sexual orientation (and probably gender discrimination, too, since Sara had been allowed to stay with Felice and Maddie last term and no one even blinked at that).

Considering the school had just barely avoided an all-out student revolt due to, in part, discriminatory practices against Simon, he couldn't imagine they were eager for a repeat performance anytime soon. Plus, no one was about to bring up the sex tape in front of the Crown Prince after he'd already denied any involvement with it, so the administration had no choice but to let it go. They just didn't have to like it.

Clearly, the housemaster wasn't buying Simon's innocent act, because he narrowed his eyes at them. "That's all right, Mr. Eriksson," he muttered in a monotone. The man's gaze shifted from the two of them to Sören, who was standing at the back, as if expecting Sören to be the responsible adult and put a stop to this "nonsense." Thankfully, babysitting the prince was not in Sören's job description, so Sören's only response was to stare back at the man with a perfectly professional, stony expression.

The housemaster sighed. "Very well," he said tersely. "Just allow me to remind you that there is a strict code of conduct to be adhered to while at the school dormitories." He was clearly not happy he even was required to say this. "Please do not make it necessary for the administration to have to intervene to uphold those rules."

Simon frowned. Did the housemaster seriously think they would just jump each other the second Wille's door closed? Because: 1) that was one time; 2) once again, they were far from the only students to have ever had sex on school grounds; and 3) they weren't even going to go there that night, anyway.

He and Wille had talked about it, actually, the night before, when Wille told him of Felice's "victory party" idea and suggested Simon spend the night in Wille's dorm instead of making his mother drive all the way to Hillerska in the middle of the night to pick him up. Simon didn't mind staying with Wille (the housemaster's side-eye notwithstanding), but they had both agreed that it might feel a little bit weird to do anything in the same place where they were recorded and exposed to the world just a few weeks ago.

They had only just found their way back to each other after several agonizing weeks apart. They did want to spend as much time together as they could, but maybe that time together didn't have to involve sex just yet. Not that night, at least; not in that room. They didn't know how they might feel in the moment, but they didn't want to risk it feeling off and making things awkward or uncomfortable, so they agreed to just remove the pressure and take it off the table for that night. It felt too soon.

The housemaster didn't know that, of course, but that didn't mean he was allowed to make creepy assumptions about their relationship or their sex life, for fuck's sake. Simon was about to make an incisive comment when he felt Wille's hand at his elbow, almost like he was physically pulling him back.

"We'll make sure of that, Housemaster," Wilhelm said, in a far more diplomatic manner than Simon would have.

"Very well," Housemaster Göran acquiesced, still sounding reluctant. He turned to go back to his quarters but paused halfway through the motion. "Oh, and Your Highness," he said, addressing Wilhelm again, "you might want to keep your drapes closed."

"Will do, Housemaster," Wille replied in the exact same tone as before, which the housemaster seemed to think was agreeable enough. He nodded at them (Simon guessed that was his version of a parting greeting), then turned around to go back the way he came.

As soon as the man turned the corner and went out of sight, Simon and Wilhelm exchanged a glance and burst into laughter in unison. With a quick "Good night" at Sören, they made their way into Wille's room, still giggling at the sheer ludicrousness of the conversation they just had.

Simon dropped his bag at the foot of Wille's bed while Wille went to close the drapes on both windows. Not because Housemaster Göran asked him to, but just because it was a good idea regardless. They weren't going to risk it, even if they didn't plan to do anything inappropriate in the room. Anyone could just walk by, and neither of them trusted the new security measures.

At some point during the break, the school had installed security cameras outside the dormitories just to say that they were doing something. Their intentions were good, and the idea made sense on paper, but the system wasn't particularly sophisticated, and Simon didn't see how the cameras would be of any use when they could be beaten by a hoodie. It might give pause to any gangs of thugs in clown masks looking to break in and kidnap and torture a prince of Sweden, perhaps, but other than that, there was little point to it. So they were going to keep the drapes closed, regardless.

While Wille took care of that, Simon pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked up Felice's Instagram.

The first picture that greeted him on her feed was a picture of him and Wille, cropped a lot closer than he thought it would be given the distance at which Felice had been sitting from them when she took it. Of course Felice would have the fanciest phone with the best camera quality in the market.

Wille's forehead was pressed against Simon's shoulder, his chin turned slightly to the side so the camera caught about three-quarters of his face. He was looking up at Simon, his brown eyes gleaming almost golden thanks to the Insta filter Felice had applied to it, even through the curtain of his bangs, which fell intermittently over one side of his face. His cheeks were flushed, and a closed-lipped, somewhat chagrined but wide and genuine smile graced his features.

Simon, meanwhile, was seen from the forehead down, dark curls just peeking in from the edges of the pic. His face was turned to the side so only his profile could be seen as he met Wille's gaze adoringly, and he was grinning openly, clearly caught mid-laugh. This may have been his bias speaking, but he thought the photo looked almost intimate, like a posed studio photo taken by a professional photographer. The dreamy filter probably just added to the effect. The caption read "If we fight this fight together, we can win @kronprinswilhelm @simon_simme99," followed by an emoji of the victory hand sign.

The like and comment counts were racking up, he knew, but Simon could not tear his eyes away from the photo. He'd been curious earlier, certainly, but the truth was, he hadn't been prepared for the onslaught of emotions that would flood his soul at seeing a picture of himself and Wille being openly affectionate with each other, not in secret or released clandestinely but proudly, the depth of their bond out there for the entire world to see.

He could understand, of course, how on paper it could all be explained away as perfectly platonic. Two good friends having fun, caught in a candid occasion. But then he focused on the way their gazes came together almost magnetically, the sheer joy and softness of the moment captured in a single second, and he couldn't imagine how anyone out there could look at that picture and not see love in every pixel. It took his breath away.

Wilhelm came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Simon's waist and resting his chin on Simon's shoulder. "It's a nice picture, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yeah," Simon agreed, his response coming out more like a sigh. He swallowed heavily; his throat had gone dry. He lifted his gaze from the screen, turning his head so he could look at Wille. "Thank you," he whispered fervently.

Wille chuckled, the small resultant tremor reverberating through Simon where his body and Wilhelm's were pressed close together. "It's just an Instagram post," Wille said like their real connection finally getting on main was just something that happened every day.

Simon shook his head, his cheek brushing against Wille's with the motion. "No, it's more than that," he countered.

He turned around in Wille's arms, moving his own to rest around Wille's torso, his hands lightly stroking Wille's sides. He looked up at his boy, peering deeply into those warm brown eyes he was absolutely gone for, and finally— finally— said the words that had been threatening to burst out of him for over a month: "I love you, Wille."

Wille's smile froze when Simon said it, slowly morphing into an astonished expression in the pregnant silence that ensued. He was looking at Simon in a way that had become familiar to Simon by now. A kind of intense, layered stare that made Simon's heart both soar and break at the same time: Soar, because he gazed at Simon like Simon had hung the moon, like he was the center of his universe. Break, because he looked like he couldn't understand how, couldn't believe, someone would say those words to him.

Simon let him process the words as needed, holding his gaze so there would be no doubt that he meant what he said, that he meant to say it, that he wasn't just saying it because it's what Wilhelm wanted to hear. He could almost see in Wille's eyes that he was running through all those possibilities in his mind, overthinking every movement, every gesture. He wanted to make sure that Wille knew he was here, he wasn't going anywhere, he wasn't taking anything back.

That's not to say he wasn't feeling nervous himself; his heart was beating like crazy inside his chest. It's not like it was some brand-new revelation: Wille had said it first, anyway, and it was easy enough for Simon to use the word "love" in his inner monologue— had recognized his feelings for Wille for what they were a while back. But he wasn't the type of guy who threw those words around like they were nothing; there was an inherent sense of vulnerability in loving someone, but with Wille, there was no holding back that feeling, no locking it up inside to keep himself safe and detached. He couldn't. And he didn't want to, honestly; especially not after this week.

So he waited for Wille to say something, carefully ignoring the furious drumbeat inside his ribcage. He waited until Wille seemed to start breathing again, shakily letting the air out of his lungs and lifting his hands to cradle Simon's face. "I love you, too," he finally said, his voice full of wonder. Then he threw his arms around Simon's shoulders and clung to him impossibly tight, prompting Simon to close his eyes and bury his nose against the soft, probably expensive wool of Wille's sweater.

"I love you so much," Wille said again, almost in a gasp, and then he was pulling back and pressing his lips against Simon's desperately, fiercely, and Simon would have it no other way, giving back as enthusiastically as he was getting.

They kissed and kissed and kissed, pulling each other as close as humanly possible as they tangled together, breathing into each other's mouths. But close did not feel close enough, and though in the back of his mind Simon could distantly recall they'd agreed to keep the physical off the table for the night, it was like an abstract concept now as he felt like the entire world was reduced to just the two of them, and Simon found himself craving for more contact, more warmth... just more.

Wille didn't catch on to where Simon's thoughts had wandered until Simon's hands found their way under Wille's sweater and started teasing the waistband of Wille's jeans. That got his attention real quick, and he pulled back from the kiss rather abruptly.

"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice husky and breathless, making him sound a little dazed. He shook his head as if to clear it of the fog of desire, searching Simon's face carefully for any doubts or discomfort. "I mean, it's not that I don't want to; it's just... we don't have to," he added pointedly. Simon didn't blame him for pulling the brakes. They'd agreed on this earlier, after all; Simon had just... changed his mind.

"I want to," Simon assured him, leaning in to capture Wilhelm's lips softly, sweetly. He kissed a trail of fire down Wille's jaw, up to his ear, and then down. "I love you so much," he echoed Wille's words from earlier, a delicate whisper against the sensitive, pale skin of Wille's neck. "Let me show you."

"Yes," Wilhelm exhaled in a sigh, closing his eyes and throwing his head back as if to give Simon's lips more access to his neck. "Please."

Between more kisses, shivers, and gasps, they stumbled backward until the back of Wille's knees hit the edge of his perfectly good extra bed, the world outside those four walls completely forgotten, along with what it might or might not have to say about their relationship. For now, they were together, and they were in love; they'd deal with all the rest in the morning.

It was a good thing they'd made sure to close the drapes this time.