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Lying on their sides facing each other, with Simon's head pillowed on his right arm and their faces only a few inches apart, Wille could feel his boyfriend's breath against his mouth. Simon was tucking and retucking Wille's stray locks back behind his ear continually as they kept falling out.
After everything that happened, they were finally here again, together, and it felt like coming home. Except this stock-standard assigned dorm room of his wasn't the real home — home was a person.
"I missed you," Wille says, throwing his left leg up over Simon's hip while his hand grips Simon's arm.
Simon smiles. "I missed you too." He closes his eyes and gently rubs their noses together.
Wille pushes away thoughts of the last time they were on this bed, so he can shift slightly over Simon to deliver the passionate kiss he'd been waiting for all day.
He was just starting to get lost in it when Simon pulled his mouth away and sat up abruptly.
"Simon…?" Wille says carefully, lips feeling wet and bereft. Did he do something wrong? Push too hard, too fast? Worried, he sits up next to Simon and searches his face for answers.
"What is it?" He follows the line of Simon's gaze to his new curtains, thick and heavy affairs that are pulled closed and fastened together over the windows with pins. Simon's chest is rising and falling rapidly as his eyes are locked on them.
"Oh." Wille looks down at his lap. Of course. He should have prepared more for this to be a problem, but he'd just been so eager to feel Simon's skin against his again. "We can stop if you want," he says softly. "I'm happy just to hold you."
Simon's hands clench and unclench for a moment as he seems to be having an internal struggle with himself. Then he jerks his head quickly to the side. "No. I won't let him ruin this for us again. But let's move to the other bed."
They stumble off the left bed and fall onto the untouched right, tangling their clothed limbs together. Wille tugs Simon's head down gently to settle it on his chest, because that whole nightmare seems to have affected him even worse than it affected Wille. Understandable since Simon's face was plain as day in it, and he was the one between the two of them who was completely unused to media scrutiny, the feeling of being watched against your will all the time.
And because it was Wille who had escaped the worst of the stigma and attention and left Simon alone. It had to be done, but that didn't mean he felt no remorse for it.
"It's just that I keep thinking about..."
"I know." Wille caresses the side of his face comfortingly for a moment, fingertips sliding into Simon's curls as he buries his nose into it and closes his eyes. The smell of Simon's hair is something that's so uniquely his, and it lulls Wille into an utter state of calm.
"It doesn't seem to bother you as much."
"It does bother me. You just make me feel so safe and happy that I forget about it for a while."
Simon smiles at that, but his face falls again when he says, "It's just that I couldn't stop thinking that someone was watching me all the time. And like I was... exposed and naked. Even though I was fully dressed."
"I know what you mean."
"Every time someone looked at me I thought they were seeing me naked in that bed with you, with my face like... you know, like that. Even with random strangers in public when I went out to get groceries."
"I'm just glad we still had our boxers on in it so they didn't actually see us naked," says Wille. Being an awkward and nervous teenager fumbling through his first times had actually worked in Wille's favour for once.
"Same."
Mostly he was just happy that Simon had started to open up to him, so Wille could comfort him the same way and be the same anchoring presence he had been for Wille, before. He jumps at every chance he gets now to make it right, to bring their dynamic around to an equilibrium.
As he tugs lightly on one of Simon's curls, wrapping it around a finger, he looks at Simon in a way that's so loving, so understanding and accepting, that Simon finds it in him to continue.
"I also couldn't stop thinking before about how our..." Simon swallows. Saying the words aloud somehow made it feel worse, more real. "...Our first time together... was tainted by that."
"They didn't see everything," Wille points out. It's what he had eventually started to tell himself in the lonely, raw and exposed days after the leak and then his statement, when Simon wasn't there for them to clutch at each other. When he couldn't take comfort in sharing a pain that he felt only the two of them understood. That was when he'd started counting the things that hadn't been stolen from him, from them, and holding onto them like precious objects in his hands.
"We weren't even really doing anything in it but kissing." Wille focuses with his eyes closed as he breathes in and out steadily, summoning the memories. "And they couldn't feel what I felt. How beautiful you looked under me, or how your skin felt... or what you tasted like. And there's no sound in it. They couldn't hear the sounds you made."
Simon really shouldn't be blushing at this. It's Wille, who knows all the secret little corners of him now, and Wille gave as much of himself away as Simon did; but everything Wille had just described was so much only about Simon, so he turns his face to hide it further into Wille's sweater anyway.
It had taken Simon a while before he could actually watch the thing in its entirety, but he had to admit he was slightly relieved when he saw that the playback time on the video player showed it was less than half a minute long. Not that it was a huge consolation. When he first got the news, he had been terrified to potentially discover that it was much longer and the entire private, sacred moment between the two of them had been put out into the world.
"But, you know… I couldn't help but feel a little guilty that it happened because of me." Wille's fingers tangle more deeply into Simon's hair, his nails scratching the scalp lightly. "If you hadn't been with the prince, this wouldn't have happened to you. No one would have cared."
Simon's grip on his arm tightens. "I don't want to be with anyone else, Wille."
Wille kisses the top of his head. "Me neither," he murmurs, having received the reassurance he needed. He smiles into Simon's hair, then, and says, "Hey, I have an idea." He sits up and moves to tug the blanket out from under them and throw it over their heads, making their own private cloth tent.
"Now no one can see us, even if they were in here," Wille says.
Simon returns Wille's laugh. It's a bit hot and stuffy under the blanket, but they both ignore it easily. And Wille's proposition seems to have worked, because Simon is now at ease enough to let Wille pull his sweater off in between kisses, and undo his jeans.
When they're finally skin against skin again, the deep aching relief they both feel obliterates all else.
Wille, who's hovering on top, runs a hand reverently down Simon's chest, tracing the motion with his eyes.
"I love how your skin looks against mine." Wille says, spilling his thoughts without moderation, voice soft and private. It feels like so so long since he's seen it, since they've really touched each other.
Simon's skin isn't that much darker than his, but he finds the contrast in tones lovely. It was an example of the many differences between them and signified the fact that they were still so intimately together in spite of it all.
Simon covers the hand with one of his own. "I love how yours feels against mine," he murmurs.
Their eyes meet, and the look Wille gives him is filled with heat. Leaning down, he begins kissing Simon slowly and wetly on the neck. Simon gasps and tilts his head to the side, giving him better access.
It was only the beginning of the journey he made, kissing down the valley of Simon's chest. He makes sure to spend plenty of languid, unhurried time on the foreplay so that they're both properly relaxed first.
Usually, Wille holds back the words of his holiday confession, the words that always hover over his tongue when Simon is around, because he wants to use it to the greatest effect possible. A precise play, Wille saves it to drop into their most private and intimate moments. Sometimes it was for special nights like when they escape his bodyguards to go explore Bjärstad together. Here, he uses those words to tip Simon over the edge.
Simon says it even less, as he's the type to show it with actions instead, but when he whispers those words with his face hidden in Wille's shoulder, Wille's heart feels fit to burst.
And they replace it.
And later, when it's over, Wille is staring up at the ceiling when he says, "You know, you're the only person I've ever said that to before."
"I know, Wille," Simon says. "Same for me."