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There’s a shirtless Simon in his bed, his pajama pants riding low on his hips under the covers, and Wille’s arms are slung protectively around his chest and hips, keeping Simon’s back pressed against his chest. He wonders if Simon can hear how steady and strong his heartbeat is here in the quiet of the dorm room, the curtains pulled shut, the only light in the room coming from the strip of LEDs over his bed. Simon thinks he should get some more decorations to make it feel like home, but Wille doesn’t know how to tell him that he’s never had a home before Simon, and that Simon himself is the only thing he needs here to feel at peace. They promised no more secrets, but Wille keeps some of these things for himself because everything with Simon is still so new and fresh and he doesn’t want to fuck it up like he always does.
They’ve talked more in the past week than they ever have before. It’s been a week since Wille once again went viral, but this time for admitting his role in the video he had previously denied, and he and Simon have been sneaking into Wille’s dorm room for some quiet whenever they can. The Palace has been fairly quiet since that day, with his mother most likely going over various outcomes and options with the Court and the press teams, but Wille has yet to hear about any of it. He’s sure he’ll get pulled away from Hillerska and Simon’s warm embrace soon enough to do a press junket or another interview or something, or maybe even some well-photographed charity projects at some foundation or another, but for now he just has to wait for the other shoe to drop.
These are the thoughts Wille keeps to himself. No more secrets doesn’t mean tell me everything. It doesn’t mean ruining what Simon thinks of him by showing him the anxiety, the restrictions, the fear. Simon told him he was brave for making that statement at the jubilee, and Simon had told him he loved him. Simon had kissed him and said he was proud. If he knew about the anxiety and panic constantly threatening to bubble up, maybe Simon would take it all back. So Wille doesn’t tell Simon these things, because no more secrets doesn’t mean show me what ugliness lies right beneath your surface. So Wille says nothing.
Wille is used to keeping things inside, anyway.
“Rosh wants to know if we’re going to her game on Saturday,” Simon says from his arms
Wille presses a kiss to his bare shoulder and pulls him closer. “Mm, that doesn’t sound right.”
He can feel Simon rolling his eyes with a playful smile on his lips. “Okay, she asked if I was going to her game. You’re my plus one.”
Wille chuckles into the junction where Simon’s neck meets his shoulder, inhaling the sweet, coconutty scent of his shampoo and something so distinctly Simon that makes Wille fall in love with him all over again. “Does she want me there?”
Does she hate me goes unsaid.
“She wants me there and I want you there,” Simon assures him. “It’ll be fine if you just be the polite prince you are and compliment her game. Plus, Ayub will probably sing your praises if you buy him a hotdog, so you don’t have to worry about him, either.”
“Boiled or grilled?” Wille asks, teasingly.
Simon laughs and turns over in Wille’s arms to kiss him gently under the red lights of the LED strip above his bed.
“Ayub made so much fun of me,” he groans against Wille’s chest. “He knew I liked you even before I did.”
Wille smiles at him and kisses him again. They get lost in it, in the push and pull and the way their bodies come together like they were made to slot into place like this, but are rudely interrupted by Wille’s phone ringing from its spot on his desk. He groans but disentangles himself from Simon’s embrace, flipping the phone open to see who’s calling.
“It’s mamma,” he says tightly, feeling Simon’s head resting on his shoulder.
“Answer it,” Simon says softly, pressing a kiss to his neck. His arms come around Wille’s waist. “I’m here.”
Wille nods and presses “accept” before holding the phone up to his ear.
“Wilhelm,” his mother’s voice says over the phone. There’s shuffling and muttering in the background, making him think she’s stepping out of a meeting to call him. “Wilhelm, you need to come back to the Palace.”
Wille goes rigid, the day where Malin tried to force him out of his room still too fresh in his mind––the way her fingers dug into his skin, the way the lacquer of the desk got pressed under his nails, the sound the snow globe made when it shattered on the floor. He blinks and tries to steady his breathing, remembering hints from the pamphlets and Boris to stop this before it gets worse and turns into a full-blown panic attack.
“Why?”
“So we can discuss your options, Wilhelm. Your little…spectacle has certainly not gone unnoticed by the press, and you need to make a statement to elaborate.”
You need to come back to the Palace. You need to clean up your mess.
His free hand rubs at his chest as he tugs his bottom lip between his teeth. “I’m not leaving Hillerska,” he says, automatically catching her double meaning. He knows that if he leaves, there’s a very likely possibility he never gets to return. She’ll lock him in his room, make him do private tutoring, take away his phone––anything to keep him, the “problem,” from doing more harm to her precious Crown. Simon’s breath hitches behind him and Wille closes his eyes and leans back into him to try and reassure him that things will be okay, even if he doesn’t feel certain about that himself.
“Wilhelm––”
“And I’m not making a fucking statement. I said everything I needed to at the jubilee, okay? Do you remember what happened the last time you made me make a statement when I specifically told you I didn’t want to say anything? Do you remember our conversation at the beginning of this term?”
He can feel Simon’s confusion from behind him––this is one of those things they haven’t talked about. No more secrets doesn’t mean tell me every dark thing you did while we were apart.
His mother is silent for a moment. The silence is deafening and cracking through his ears and reverberating through his bones. “You would really give up the Crown for this boy?”
He shouldn’t––he’s only sixteen, August is a terrible choice for a world leader (figurehead or not), he and Simon have only been officially together for a week, and he still has a lot to work on––but he would. For Simon? For the chance at happiness? At a normal life? He’d give anything to relieve himself of all of this fucking pressure.
“Abdication is not off the table,” he chooses to say, trying to sound slightly diplomatic and adult and not like the terrified sixteen year old boy that he is, “and if you’d like to test me on that, be my guest. Otherwise, I suggest you let me hang up now.”
He waits for a moment, wondering if he’s just overplayed his hand.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” is mother says before the line clicks and she’s gone.
It’s silent in his room, save for his increasingly rapid breathing, and even though he tells himself he’s on the verge of a panic attack, it doesn’t stop it from happening. He’s gasping for breath and tearing himself out of Simon’s arms to collapse on the ground with his back against the other bed, his knees pulled up to his chest, his eyes wide and panicked as he tries (and fails) to get air into his stubborn lungs. From across the room, Simon is gaping at him and looking absolutely terrified.
“Wille,” he starts, “what’s––what’s happening?”
Wille shakes his head.
Simon is looking at him like he’s a wild animal. Maybe he is––maybe this is when Simon will see how fucked up he is.
“You need to breathe, Wille! Do I––what can I do? What’s going on?”
Wille shakes his head again and waves a limp, flailing arm in the direction of his desk. “Drawer,” he manages. “Pamphlet.”
Simon nods frantically and turns to the desk, opening the drawers until he finds the one Wille’s tucked all of his self-help books and pamphlets in––he’s gotten a few notebooks that detail what he’s supposed to write about in order to help him find his triggers and better manage his anxiety and panic attacks, too––and rummages around until his fingers find the new pamphlet on panic attacks and anxiety. He holds it up and looks to Wille for further guidance, but Wille is still struggling to get enough air into his lungs to function and is desperately wishing this hadn’t even happened in the first place.
Simon knows so much about him, the good and the bad. He knows how much Wille loves physical touch, how he loves Mariokart even though he isn’t good at it, how kanelbulles are his guilty pleasure, and how he’s always wanted to learn how to bake. He knows, too, that Wille is impulsive, self-centered, heartbroken about Erik, and has some of the worst coping mechanisms known to man. What he isn’t supposed to know, though, is just how broken Wille is most of the time. He’s untethered and drifting out in the sea, bobbing helplessly in a too-strong current, and Simon doesn’t know that he’s a lifeline. He has so few lifelines these days, since he became Crown Prince, that he has to keep them close to his chest so nothing takes them away from him. He feels like a stubborn child with a teddy bear, often cowering in the corner and pressing these things against his heart, but he knows what it’s like to lose them. He doesn’t know if he’ll survive losing them again.
“It says to, uh, list five things you can see?”
Wille nods in recognition, even though his breathing is still erratic and tears are streaming down his cheeks. “Carpet,” he manages after a moment. “Desk.” Each breath is painful, but he feels more air coming in every time. “Socks. Bed. You.”
Simon nods and looks down at the pamphlet again. “Can I sit in front of you? Is that okay?”
Wille nods and watches as Simon lowers himself to the ground, pressing his back up against the opposite bed, leaving plenty of space between them.
“Four things you can hear?”
“My h––heart,” he says, his voice cracking halfway through. “Birds.” It’s getting easier now. “Your voice. People in the hall.”
Simon nods and shoots him a soft, still slightly panicked smile and looks down at the pamphlet again. “Three things you can touch?”
“Carpet. My pants. My hair.”
“Two things you can smell?”
“Your shampoo,” he manages, “and the air freshener.”
Simon nods again. “Okay, and one thing you can taste?”
“Tears.”
Simon looks back down at the pamphlet and then up at Wille again. “Can I touch you? Hold you?”
Wile nods and Simon scoops him carefully into his arms, letting Wille rest his head against his chest and listen to the gentle beat of his heart.
They’re silent for a moment as Wille’s breathing returns to normal, but he can feel panic still present in the back of his mind and as a weight on his chest because he doesn’t know what Simon is thinking or feeling right now. Is this the end? After everything, is this truly uncontrollable thing the thing that makes Wille “too much?”
“Wille,” Simon whispers, “what was that?”
Wille closes his eyes and tries to memorize the feeling of Simon’s hands gently carding through his hair, the smell of Simon underneath his shampoo, the warmth that radiates from him when they’re like this. He doesn’t want to let a single thing slip into his periphery just in case this is the last time he’ll have Simon like this. He’s lost Simon before without taking stock of all of these things, without committing them to memory, and he’s certainly learned from that mistake.
“Panic attack.”
Simon hums softly above him. “Is that…Does it happen a lot?”
He wants to lie––the lie of no, never is resting on the tip of his tongue. His mother would tell him to lie because Royals aren’t supposed to be flawed like this and they’re supposed to be better than this, but Wille won’t lie to Simon. Never again.
No more secrets.
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
“Maybe you should talk to someone?”
Wille bites the inside of his cheek and resigns himself to the entire truth. “I do. I see Boris, the school counselor. Mamma made me if I wanted to stay here.”
Simon pulls back so he can look at Wille in the eye, and Wille can see that confusion and fear still lingering in Simon’s eyes, but there’s something warm there, too. “I’m really proud of you,” he says. “I’m so happy you have someone to talk to about this.”
Wille manages a weak smile and feels his cheeks heat at the compliment. “I hated it at first. But he…he’s helped me a lot.”
“With the panic attacks?”
He nods. “And other things. It’s, uh…he says I’ve got a panic disorder. It’s a kind of anxiety disorder, apparently.” He chews on his bottom lip, not sure how much he should share. The more he says, the less afraid he feels of Simon’s reactions, but it’s still the first time he’s talked to anyone but Boris about any of this. “He thinks I should try medication in the future. That it might help make it…less overwhelming?”
“Thank you for telling me,” Simon says, pressing a kiss to Wille’s forehead. “And can I ask you something else?”
He nods.
“Could you tell me more about it and when you feel like you’re getting one? Today was...it was really fucking scary to see you like that and not know what was happening or how to help you.”
Wille opens his mouth to apologize, but Simon covers his mouth with his hand before any words and leak out.
“Shh, I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad, okay? It’s not your fault and you’re not allowed to apologize for it. I just want to know what I can do to help.”
Wille presses a kiss to Simon’s palm which makes Simon giggle and retract his hand, instead moving it to cup Wille’s jaw, his thumb brushing back and forth on his cheek.
“Physical touch grounds me, usually,” he muses. “This is the first one I’ve had in front of another person, so I don’t know if it’ll work…”
“Wille,” Simon cries, his other hand coming to cup Wille’s face, too, “I hate that you’ve been going through this alone. I hate that I pushed you away and hurt you and––”
“You’re not allowed to apologize for it, Simon,” Wille grins, quoting his boyfriend back to him. “We hurt each other and we forgive each other, right? It’s in the past.”
Simon shoots him a lopsided grin. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t. You want me to have a nice Christmas.”
Simon groans and rolls his eyes, moving away from Wille and getting to his feet. He offers a hand to Wille and helps him up. “Is that your way of saying ‘I love you’ now or something?”
Wille flushes and settles his hands on Simon’s hips, loosely gripping the fabric of his soft pajama pants between his fingers. “Maybe I like pretending that’s what you meant.”
Simon’s face softens. “Wille,” he whispers, closing his eyes and standing on his toes to brush their noses together, “tell me again.”
For a moment, Wille doesn’t know what Simon is talking about, but then he catches on and he can’t help but smile at his beautiful, sappy boyfriend. “Simon,” he says gently, “I love you.”
His eyes are closed but he can feel the words on Simon’s lips as they brush against his own while he says, “I love you, too.”
No more secrets.
“I love you more than anyone.”
Soft brown eyes meet his own. “You’re my favorite person. I love you.”
Wille grins and pulls Simon into another kiss.
He isn’t alone anymore.