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Somewhere, halfway between the football field and his own bed, it suddenly isn’t fun anymore. Not that it ever really was fun, but Wilhelm does not actually know where the line between putting on a charade of being fun in front of someone else and the genuine feeling is. Because he has been fun, happily poured liquor down his throat, laughed too loud, fake it till you make it, if he pretends hard enough it actually fills up the void in his chest for a short, short time. Now it is irreversibly back, he can see how it floats out and fills up his whole body, how it seeps out through his fingertips and starts covering the ground underneath him. Everything fucking hurts, everything. Erik is not there anymore. The thought still makes him dizzy, Erik is not coming back. It was Erik, lying there in the coffin, Eriks funeral that he attended. His memories are hazy, the anxiety before the service had been so overwhelming that he could barely move. But then two smooth, white pills seemed to appear from nowhere, sedatives, his mother had whispered when she put them down on the nightstand next to him. And all of a sudden it became almost too easy to completely turn off instead. He observed himself from afar as he stood in the church with a hard-set face and did everything he could to stay away from the thought that it was Erik, something that had once been Erik, that was inside the coffin in front of him. And now he will never come back. And Wilhelm himself has gotten drunk and high and has laughed his way through the evening even though he is actually just sad.
He stumbles over something, maybe it’s a root, and is thrown back into the present again. It can’t be that much further if he is already in the woods. He is not quite sure how he has made it all the way here, just remembers the football field, the taste of rubber on his tongue, Simon’s voice over the phone. Simon who hates him. Who is going to leave him. Who laughs maliciously behind his back, at him and his pathetic attempts to figure out who he really is. Wilhelm can’t keep up with the speed of his own thoughts. He has told Simon that they can’t see each other anymore, only to days later call him in the middle of the night, messy and desperate. God how could he do such a thing, how couldn’t he just have reflected over it for just a second or just not have taken those pills so that he could have gotten home by himself or whatever the fuck else, just not been such a hypocrite. Simon Simon Simon. He can suddenly sense an arm around his shoulders, a body next to his own that carefully keeps him upright, guides him. Simon must still be here. Fuck. He slowly turns his head towards the other person, blinks hard a couple of times just to make sure what he sees is real. It really is Simon.
“I’m sorry”, Wilhelm manages to blurt out but barely recognises his own voice.
“You don’t have to apologize, I told you that. I’m here now, okay?” Simon answers. Wilhelm can’t remember saying it before. Simon shouldn’t be here, Simon shouldn’t say that it is alright, he has not deserved it. But he wants nothing else. He tries again to string the whole course of events together in his mind but parts of it are already missing. An epiphany in the football field; everything is fake but not Simon and not the never ending tangles in his brain that he knows are feelings of affection, the ones that do not disappear however much he tries to get them to. Now, maybe it has just been half an hour, nothing is fake anymore, reality has presented itself again, forcefully, and now there is nothing more real than every step, every breath, every drop of rain hitting his skin. Everything hurts, reality is a low, humming noise that he thinks will never quiet down again.
At last he finds the strength to continue speaking. “You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here, I should… I don't know, I shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be anywhere. And you shouldn’t save me,” he says, or at least he thinks so, he is not sure what words are coming out the way they are supposed to or if he really finishes the sentence or if Simon can even hear him. But he gets an answer.
“It’s going to be alright, or it will at least feel better. I promise. But we need to go home now, okay?”
Wilhelm nods, puts more of his weight against Simon and contemplates what the sudden burning feeling behind his eyelids means. He figures out that he probably wants to cry, but seems to have forgotten how to do it. He doesn’t even know if he has actually cried, since Erik died, just knows that everything is black and intangible and far too definitive. The world has been distorted and he has ended up on the wrong side of something that is infinite. There is nothing else than the void inside him, the raindrops occasionally making their way past the bare trees and down onto his face. And Simon’s steady arm around him, that doesn’t let go no matter how much he falters.
They keep walking like that, quiet but still somehow united through the night. There is still something grinding Wilhelms insides, something that he probably should say but that he can’t for the life of him remember. Maybe it is just sorry, again. Just when the silhouette of Skogsbacken makes itself visible through the trees, he has to stop to throw up. He is not ready for it and probably vomits on his jacket, on his shoes, so fucking disgusting, he is so fucking disgusting. He is so unbelievably fucking disgusting but Simon still has one arm wrapped around him and carefully strokes wet strands of hair from his forehead with the other, whispering comforting syllables into his ear. He shouldn't do that, Simon should not stay with him when he is this damned disgusting and this inconceivably alone.
“Go home, Simon. I’ll be fine on my own,” he makes an attempt to step himself out of Simon's hold but he can’t, his limbs won’t fully obey him. Instead, he masks it as a maneuver to wipe his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket – that too so bloody disgusting, he realizes mid-movement, why is he so incredibly disgusting? “I’ll go home and sleep it off, it’s fine. You don’t have to…”
“Wille, you must realize I can't leave you like this? You can barely walk. I’m helping you and that’s because I want to do that.”
He wants to trust Simon, that this is true, that he wants to be here. Or maybe he doesn’t exactly want to be right here, why would he want that, but his voice is calm and steady, not annoyed or tired, so maybe the essence of what he is saying is true.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t have been here otherwise. Promise”
“Okay. So you’re not angry with me?”
“No, I’m not angry. I got really sad the last time we spoke, but I get that everything is chaos for you right now.” Simon bites his lip, hesitates, but keeps going. “I mean I want to be with you, but if it doesn’t work that’s just the way it is I guess. I respect that, I’m not angry.”
“Are you sure?” The burning feeling of tears behind his eyes comes back but this time it is different, it is rather filled with some sort of relief, some sort of hope that Wilhem doesn’t quite dare to grasp. “I want to be with you too.”
-
When he finally manages to wiggle in through the window he has no strength left. The whole world is spinning when he closes his eyes, and definitely not in the fun way anymore. He knows that not even a minute passes, but it feels like hours before Simon too jumps down from the windowsill, before a pair of warm and soft hands bring him back to reality again. The hands help him take his jacket off and untie his shoes before they disappear. He misses them immediately, thinks that he sways on the spot – or maybe it is still just his head trying to drag him out into something unknown. When he forces himself to open his eyes he does so to the sight of the hands, or well Simon, holding a glass of water before him. When he takes it to his mouth and hesitantly starts drinking one of the hands lands on his shoulder. The world straightens up and he dares to keep drinking. Dares to look Simon in the eye. He dares to thank him, isn’t sure whether he says it out loud or just with a revealing gaze, but he says thank you and he means it.
Soon after that he falls asleep. With his feet against Simon’s thigh, an anchor that keeps him tied to what is truly real.