Work Text:
Wille didn't mean to start the account.
He didn't.
But one day he was strolling through Instagram when he came across a fan account dedicated to Simon. So really, the account SimonRox447 should be the one to blame.
The picture that SimonRox447 just posted was one Wille had seen a thousand times before: his boyfriend sitting in the empty Forest Ridge common room surrounded by books and other studying materials while giving the camera a look of pure contempt.
Wille loved the photo so much, and had even set it as his phone wallpaper for nearly all of their second year at Hillerska.
Of course, the world didn't know that Wille was the one who took the picture. Simon's fans probably scrolled deep enough into his Instagram history to find the photo- clustered between blurred pictures taken with Rosh and Ayub, of Sara in the stables, or at choir concerts.
Willed remembered spending countless nights wishing that he could be in Simon's Instagram photos when they were back in school. Of course, they had plenty of pictures together from their early days, but those could never be posted online.
Even the most innocent photos where no one would be able to realize that they were dating were deemed 'too risky' by the royal court, apparently.
Whenever fans saw the old picture currently staring back at him, Wille imagined that they probably believed that Simon's exasperated expression was because he was surrounded by two open textbooks, a notebook, and endless index cards. They probably assumed that he was annoyed by school work, but Wille knew that Simon's annoyed expression was because Wille kept distracting him. He pulled him away from studying for their biology test with gentle touches- innocent to any bystander, but carried out with the intention to rile Simme up- while he whispered about all the possible ways they could spend the rest of their night together in Wille's dorm.
Simon had captioned the photo: 'Why is it so hard to study?' and years later, his fans must have assumed that he was asking an innocent question, but Wille knew the real meaning behind Simon's words and smiled at their shared secret.
He had ended up mindlessly scrolling through some of the comments on the fan account's page, each one overflowing with repeated emojis and people expressing their love for Simon. Soon Wille found himself down a rabbit hole of clicking on multiple fan pages, eventually recognizing some of the account names from comments on other 'Simon' related posts.
He made sure to 'like' plenty of photos as he went (how could he not 'like' a beautiful photo of his boyfriend?). And was 'liking' what must have been the hundredth picture when he suddenly realized that he had ten years worth of photos of Simon that no one's ever seen before. If he wanted to, there was technically nothing stopping him from making a fan account dedicated to his boyfriend.
Afterall, the Royal Court would never find out, they only had control over his official account.
After an embarrassingly small amount of deliberation, Wille went through the steps of creating a new Instagram account and settled on naming it 'Simon-Appreciation-Posts'.
He figured it was quick and to the point. Afterall, he just wanted to share his love for his boyfriend with the rest of the world.
Of course finding ways to show his love for Simon was extremely difficult to do considering that until their relationship went public, they weren't allowed to be seen or associated together.
Very early on in their relationship, back when they were still attending Hillerska, the two sat down with Royal advisors who told them that if they announced Simon as Wille's 'official' boyfriend, then he wouldn’t be allowed to have a career in music.
This was their compromise.
Simon could have his time in the media spotlight until the two get publicly engaged or announce their relationship (whichever came first) and then Simon would switch over from ‘pop star’ to focusing on global causes.
So for the time being, Wille was stuck attending state dinners and conferences on his own. And while Wille knew that Simon wasn't necessarily upset about not having to go to those meetings, he does know that his boyfriend had been making lists and educating himself on important topics for years so that he would be prepared when the time comes for him to join his role as a Royal.
Wille thought how dedicated Simon was while he scrolled through his camera roll and selected his first picture to post. The picture itself was actually a screenshot he took on his computer from when Simon and him were video chatting a year earlier while his boyfriend was in Berlin, recording a cover of a song with an artist he had been following for several months.
It took Wille a while to come up with something to write. Afterall, how could he profess his admiration for Simon when he was pretending to be a regular fan instead of his boyfriend?
Words came so much easier to Simon than they did him, but eventually he settled on writing something simple: 'I love his smile. It's so blinding, yet I can't look away.' and added an emoji for posterity's sake.
After it was posted, Wille switched back to his personal account and clicked on the reel that Felice had just sent him and spiraled down another rabbit hole until Simon returned home to their shared residence in Haga Palace, where they lived with Erik.
“What are you watching?” Humor rang in Simon’s voice as he looked over Wille’s shoulder at the video of a cat prancing through a hallway in a witch's costume.
By the next morning, when he woke up with a sleeping Simon tangled in his arms, quietly snoring away, Wille had completely forgotten about the account.
.
.
Over the next handful of weeks, Wille had taken pictures of Simon, of course he had (of the two of them in bed, Simon smiling up at him from the couch, Simon with pasta sauce above his lip), but it didn’t occur to him until the two of them were walking around the grounds of the palace that he had the ability to post another.
Simon was dressed nicely, having just gotten back from lunch with some artists he had worked with in the past when he requested that Wille take some pictures of him.
Back when they started dating, Simon shied away from the camera, getting surprisingly self-conscious when Wille was the one behind the camera.
At the time, Wille had asked him why but Simon had just smiled and said 'Because when you look at me, I feel like you see through my fake smiles until you find a real one buried beneath the others.'
Now from his years in the spotlight, Simon started opening up and becoming much more comfortable smiling, posing, and modeling for pictures at will. His confidence continued to grow over the years and Wille loved to watch it happen.
So when he asked Wille to take pictures of him just because he wanted to pose, Wille didn't hesitate to take out his phone.
Later the next day, Wille opened up the account and discovered that he had notifications for twelve followers.
The account was slowly growing.
.
.
For some reason, Wille got surprised with each follower he gained. It wasn’t like he didn't understand why someone would follow an account dedicated to Simon, but each day he seemed to gain three-to-five new followers and it continued to surprise him. Maybe it's because his own private account did not have more than forty.
For this account though, Wille doesn’t have a set posting schedule. He really only posts when he remembers that he has the account or when there’s a particular photo of Simon that he wants to share. So far in the month and a half that he's had the account, he's posted seven photos, soon to be eight.
The one he was looking at now he'd taken yesterday. Simon had come back home after a morning meeting and Wille couldn't help but take a picture.
Simon looked so carefree and relaxed and captioned it: I love how cute he is without even trying.
He has been noticing with his last few posts that his followers have been wondering where he was getting his pictures from. They asked in his comments section and a few had DM’d him but he never responded to their messages and doesn’t plan to.
He figured that eventually they'll stop asking if he doesn't answer.
.
.
When Maddie texted the group chat to let everyone know that she was visiting for a week, Wille knew that that meant she was telling everyone to clear their schedules.
They hadn’t had a full group reunion in over a year, last meeting up when Walter invited the group to his family's vacation home in the Alps.
By the time Simon and him had arrived at Felice’s home, Sara was already in the kitchen talking to Henry while Stella was behind them making a salad.
Very quickly, Maddie attacked them from behind, wrapping her arms around them in a bone crushing hug while simultaneously investigating Simon’s necklace that Wille had given him for their anniversary.
Once Fredrika had returned from the bathroom and Walter rang the doorbell, everyone had said their hellos, settled into the dining room, and started digging into their food.
It was nice to catch up with everyone. Felice talked about her fashion line, Maddie mentioned a story she covered as a journalist for the New York Times. Sara told a story about her job where she teaches riding lessons for children with disabilities. Henry told the table about the most awkward business meeting of his life that happened at his fathers company while Walter told everyone that he was going to start culinary school in the fall (everyone offered to be his test subjects and try his food), and Stella and Fredrika were currently planning their fourth honeymoon.
After dinner everyone settled into the living room and put on some mindless horror movie while Fredrika passed around a bottle of wine. Simon took a few sips, but otherwise abstained from drinking.
At one point during the night, Simon left his spot in Wille’s lap to braid Maddie's hair. Wille, quite tipsy at that point, started betting with Walter and Stella over who would be the next character to die in the film, and the trio pitched the most ridiculous ways to kill the characters off. By the time the movie ended and Felice put on another, Wille saw that Simon was sitting on a different couch with red wire ears on his head. He couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be cat ears or minnie/mickey mouse ears- just that they were things and they were on Simon’s head.
Maybe he should slow down on the wine.
Slowly as not to topple over, Wille made his way over towards Simon and wrapped his arms around him, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
“Hi,” Wille knew he wore a dopey smile on his face, but he didn’t care, too excited to have Simon in his arms. “How are you doing?”
“I’m having a nice time,” Simon said with a content smile, “I am a little tired, though.”
If it was even possible, Wille pulled himself even closer against SImon’s body. “I can be your pillow.”
“That’s very sweet of you.” Simon tucked some of Wille’s hair behind his ear, “Are you having fun?”
Wille nodded but then added, “I missed you.”
This time it was Simon who turned his head to kiss his cheek.
“Can I take a picture of you?” There was something so beautiful about Simon in this moment and Wille needed to capture it. His face was flush, hair a little askew and the smile on his face was so genuine that it made Wille wish that their friend group could meet up more frequently.
“How should I pose?” Simon asked with a giggle.
“However you want.” Wille pulled out his phone and Simon simply put his fingers under his chin and smiled. Once he took the picture, Wille leaned forward to kiss him and after a moment, three sets of pillows were thrown at them.
The following morning Wille pulled up the picture to Instagram and captioned it: He’s really cute when he’s tired.
.
.
“Hey, babe?” Simon called out from the bathroom.
Wille hummed back halfheartedly. He could hear the toothbrush in his boyfriend's mouth and had been in this situation enough times to know that they weren’t going to have a conversation while Simon was brushing his teeth.
He was proven right when Simon said nothing else and appeared a minute later with a grey towel wrapped around his waist and his phone balanced in his right hand. “Have you heard of an Instagram account called ‘Simon Appreciation Posts’?”
Wille’s eyes widened slightly, pushing off of his pillows to lean his back against the headboard. “What?”
“It’s a fan account,” Simon placed the phone into his hands and, to Wille’s surprise, saw that it wasn’t open on the Instagram page, but a Buzzfeed article instead.
Who Runs the Simon Eriksson Fan Page Filled with Never Before Seen Pictures of the Pop Singer?
Scrolling through the article, Wille noted how the first half showed what the author dubbed ‘the five cutest’ pictures of Simon that the account had posted (as if they weren’t all cute?), along with speculation that the account owner must be Simon’s partner since all the posts contained never-before-seen pictures of Simon. The latter half of the article contained a list of the fourteen most revealing captions that point to the poster being romantically involved with Simon.
Wille was surprised, to say the least. He definitely noticed that the account had been gaining attention. When he looked yesterday, he had nearly two thousand followers, which was definitely more than the average fan account following, but he didn’t realize that people had been talking about the account outside of his comment section.
“Is it your account?”
All Simon did was raise an eyebrow and Wille caved, telling him how he just wanted to share pieces of him with the world. Even if the people seeing the posts didn’t know that it was Wille taking them, it was his way of rebelling against the Royal Court by showing people that there was someone behind the camera who loves Simon and cares for him.
“I know it’s stupid,” Wille admitted, “but I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of each week people speculating about your relationship status and calling you available and I’m tired of pretending that it doesn’t bother me. And I know that it’s selfish and unfair, but all I want to do is be able to hold you in public and to show everyone that you’re mine… even though I know that’ll never be possible.”
“Wille,” Simon said softly.
“No. No, you know I’m right. We’ve sat through enough meetings and etiquette lessons to know that when we do finally announce our relationship, I won’t even be allowed to hold your hand in public because I’m not allowed to showcase any form of PDA.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, tucking some of the longer strands behind his ear, “I’m just tired of pretending that our relationship doesn’t exist.”
“It won’t be forever. By the time we announce it, at least people will know the truth.”
“I know that. I just wish I was able to show the world that you’re the most important person to me.”
“Wille, you already do that." Simon sat down on the edge of the bed, "You’ve given me everything I’ve ever wanted. You gave me love and you gave me the freedom and confidence to pursue a career that I always dreamed of.”
“Maybe." He crossed his arms over his stomach. "But I’m also the person who’s responsible for you giving up your career and it kills me that I’m making you do that!” He placed Simon’s phone on the nightstand, suddenly he couldn't stand looking at the article in his hands. “You know that I would give it all up for you, don’t you?”
Simon nodded, “And you know that I would never want you to do that.”
“You should.”
“Wille,” Simon fully climbed onto the bed, discarding the towel around his waist as he went to sit down on Wille’s boxer-clad lap and wrapped his arms over Wille’s shoulders. “I love you,” He said simply, pressing a quick kiss to his nose. “I know that this is hard on you. It’s hard on me too. But I love you and I don’t want you to give up your life for me. I may have a platform now, but you and Erik have the ability to spark real change and make an actual difference.”
It was a conversation they’ve had multiple times over the years and no matter how many times Simon had said it to him, Wille never stopped feeling guilty for taking Simon away from his dream.
“Baby, you’ve been so patient for so long, but we only have a few months left until we can let the rest of the world know. And once that happens, you know that I am going to put a fight towards every single cause that’s important to me because you are also giving me the ability to create change and invoke a real difference, as well.”
Wille knew that Simon wouldn’t sit silent once he was given his title, that he already had a list of charities picked out and several ideas for his first official ‘passion project’ that he and Kristina had been discussing.
“And we’ll find ways to show affection in public.” Simon pressed their forehead together and Wille leaned into the warmth. “You’re the love of my life, Wille, and I will not pretend to be a statue just because there will be cameras pointed at us."
Wille chuckled, knowing that Simon was referring to his parents and some other more distant relatives.
"And when our wedding is televised across the country, if you think I’m going to ‘stick to protocol’ and give you a chaste kiss during the ceremony, you are dead wrong. It’s our one moment where we will be given free rein over the court's stupid PDA rules and I’m going to take advantage of it and show everyone, whether they’re my fans or those cranky members of government who don’t want to see us together, that you are mine. Because I will finally get to claim you, Wille, and you can finally claim me.”
With that, he leaned down to take Wille’s lips with his own, starting off sweet until he bit at Wille’s bottom lip, a small laugh escaping his throat. Wille lowered his hands from Simon’s waist, grateful that his boyfriend had tossed his towel aside earlier, so now he could trail his fingers against Simon’s taut skin, warmth radiating from his hands.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Wille,” and then Simon slid his hands down into his boxers and Wille’s world exploded.
.
Afterwards, when they were both sated and sleepy, Wille turned his head to look at Simon tangled in their sheets.
He was so beautiful.
"You want to take a picture don't you?" Simon asked with a smile.
Truthfully Wille hadn't even been thinking about that, just admiring the glow of the morning sun as it bounced off Simon's golden skin.
"Are you mad about the account? I can delete it if you want, I know that I never asked your permission to post our photos,” Wille asked sheepishly. He never thought that Simon would have found out about the account, but it wasn’t right of him to post their private photos without Simon’s knowledge or consent.
“I’m not mad, baby.” He reached for Wille’s hand and wove their fingers together, “I actually think it's very cute.”
“You do?”
He nodded, “Don’t delete it,”
“Okay,” the two laid there for who knows how long, just staring into each other's eyes and sending each other small smiles.
“Wille?”
“Hm?”
“Take a picture of me?” He asked in both a quiet, yet confident voice.
Wille nodded wordlessly, reaching for Simon’s phone that he placed on the nightstand earlier. Opening up the camera, he leaned it horizontally against the bed. Wille looked up from the screen and noticed that Simon wasn’t looking at the camera, but above it. At him.
The picture only captured the top half of Simon’s chest and up. In the photo he was laying with his head on the pillow with the corners of their white sheets pooled around his body.
Throughout taking the picture, Wille couldn’t look away from Simon's face. His image was forever frozen as it stared up at him with a gentle, close mouthed smile on his lips.
Wille’s heart fluttered at how in love Simon looked.
“You can post it if you want,” Simon offered, resting his head against Wille’s shoulder after he looked at the photo.
Wille looked back at the picture, Simon looked beautiful with his curls messily strewn on the pillow beneath his head and the sun shining against his skin. But Wille shook his head. He wanted to keep this Simon to himself. There were so many versions of Simon he was able to share with the world, but Simon looked so soft and full of love in their bed… that was something he didn’t want to share with anyone.
.
.
“Damn.”
“What?”
“My DM’s are filled with people asking if you’re my boyfriend.”
Wille’s body went cold. They had been so careful. “Were we spotted?”
“Hm?” Simon looked away from his phone towards Wille’s freaked-out expression and must have realized that there was a misunderstanding. “No, no, not us us. They want to know if the fan account belongs to my partner.”
“Oh,” for a moment Wille thought that his Mamma was about to call him to say that they hadn’t been careful and now Simon was going to need to drop his label before his contract was up, “thank god.” Simon had a pensive look on his face, “What?”
“I’m just wondering if I should respond.”
“To your fans?” He nodded. “Do you want to?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind it, but once I do then Kristina and PR are going to be a nightmare.”
“Oh,” he didn’t think about that.
“I mean, there’s already documentation of the account anyway, and since we haven’t officially had any announcements about us, i-it might not be too bad?”
“I mean, there’s only one way to find out.” Wille imagined that they’d be getting a call from the PR team once they discovered the account anyway so this might just be the best strategy for getting that conversation out of the way.
So that’s how they spent the next half hour, with Simon combing through Wille’s camera roll until he landed on a photo Wille had taken three weeks earlier of Simon looking at his reflection in the mirror and sent it to himself so he could draft up a post.
“Alright,” Simon muttered, doing all final checks, “done.”
Wille pulled out his phone and went over to Simon’s account to ‘like’ the post after kissing his temple.
Since everyone won’t stop asking me about it, yes I asked @Simon-Appreciation-Posts to take this picture of me
As it turns out, surprisingly, his mother was not the happiest with Simon’s post.
“You need to delete the account,”
“But no one knows that it’s me.”
“They will once you announce your relationship later this year!”
“Then I’ll delete it when that happens!” Wille knew he sounded like a child, and truthfully he understood where his mother was coming from… partially, but the account wasn’t something that he wanted to give up yet.
“Wille,” She sighed, “We’ll talk about this during tomorrow’s morning meeting with PR.”
After a lot of deliberation over the next handful of weeks, somehow Wille and Simon were able to convince the Royal advisors to let him keep the account until they publicly announced their engagement in a few months. Once the announcement would go out, they’d delete the account and Wille promised not to create a new one.
.
.
On the morning of his flight, Simon held onto him tightly.
Wille wasn’t going to complain.
Waking up to Simon clinging to his body wasn’t the worst way to start the morning, but Wille also knew that Simon was going to have to leave soon in order to make his flight to New York.
Simon was going to be away for three days, doing an H&M photoshoot and getting interviewed by Jimmy Fallon.
Wille knew that it was only three days and that they had been separated for much longer than that (when he did his military service, when Simon went on tour, when either of them had to travel for business), but he clung tighter to Simon’s body.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Simon whispered into his neck, “wish you could be there with me.”
“Me too.”
.
Wille was able to stream the interview on his computer and set his alarm very early in the morning so he’d be able to catch the episode as it aired.
Unsurprisingly, Simon looked beautiful.
The crowd loudly cheered for him (as they should) and Simon immediately started and maintained a good back-and-forth banter with Jimmy.
“So before you perform for us,” Simon was scheduled to sing two of his songs after the interview, “I want to ask you about a certain Instagram account called ‘Simon Appreciation Posts’.”
Wille’s eyes widened and Simon smiled towards the audience as some guests started cheering, clearly having heard of the account.
“So my understanding is that this account is run by your partner, correct?” Simon nodded. “Alright so why don’t you tell us about it.”
“Truthfully there isn’t much to tell, my boyfriend just one day decided to start an Instagram account where he posts pictures of me. Some of them are older and some more recent.”
“And did you know about the account from the start?”
“No, I, um.. I actually found out about it from a Buzzfeed article.” The audience laughed. “Apparently he posted so many pictures of me that no one had seen before and my fans turned into little detectives.”
“Well, we have a couple of posts here to show the audience,”
“Oh no,” Simon covered his face with his palms, peeking between his fingers to see the picture Jimmy was holding up.
“So can you tell us what’s happening here in this photo?”
The picture on the screen was one that Wille recognized from a dinner party at Felice’s two weeks earlier
“So your partner captioned it ‘He’s so moody why do I love him?’” The audience laughed. “Tell us Simon what did they do to make you moody?”
Simon sighed deeply looking at the picture in Jimmy’s hand before turning towards the camera.
“It’s actually very embarrassing, I don’t want to tell the story,”
“Yes you do,” The audience started to cheer until Simon spoke up.
“Alright, well we were at a dinner party with some friends and, very rudely, they brought up the time when, a couple years earlier, I had been making cupcakes and twenty minutes after I put the trays in the oven, my boyfriend walked into the kitchen and noticed that the bowl of cupcake batter on the table was still full. So apparently I was too excited to eat cupcakes I made that I ended up putting an empty tray into a very hot oven.”
Jimmy smiled at the audience. “Eh, it’s alright. You were just cooking them in the opposite order.”
“Exactly, they just didn’t understand my culinary genius.”
“Alright, we’ve got one more picture here. And it’s captioned, ‘god he’s an idiot but looks so good in white’. Tell us the story behind this one.”
Simon looked at the picture with a small furrow between his eyebrows. Wille recognized the expression as Simon trying to come up with something to say. “Actually, you know what? No, I think I want to focus a little more on that caption, instead.”
The audience laughed.
“You know, when he started this account he was writing captions about how much he loves me, writing things like ‘I’m so in love with his laugh because it reminds me of a Spring breeze’ and now he writes captions like ‘I love him even though he forgot to buy milk after it was underlined on the shopping list.’”
The audience laughed again.
“Is your boyfriend watching now?” Jimmy asked.
“Oh he definitely is.”
“Well now he knows that he needs to step up his game.” Wille laughed, looking at Simon’s crinkled-up face as the audience laughed around him.
“I love him so much, but I admit I do miss my sweet messages.”
.
Wille sent Simon a text after watching the interview telling him that he was so proud of him, and that he’d call him the next day (or the next day for Simon, only a couple hours for Wille).
After that, Wille went back to sleep for a couple of hours before he woke up and saw that there were some stills released from the interview. Simon looked so happy, completely in his element while on stage.
Wille wished that he could have been there with Simon. It wasn’t his first time on an American talk show. Hell, it wasn’t even his first time on Fallon, but Wille wished that he could have been there to give Simon a hug after his interview was over.
They both knew it was impossible for him to be there, but Simon had told him before he left for his flight that he wished Wille would be there to hold him afterward and tell him that he did well. Even though Simon was used to being in the spotlight for the last six/seven years, he still got nervous- whether he was in front of a studio audience or performing in a stadium filled with thousands of people.
Thankfully later tonight Wille was going to drive to the airport to pick Simon up so he could give him the hug he would have given him if he had been there after the interview and tell him how amazing he was.
So for now Wille typed into Instagram, I’m so proud of how far Simme has gone in his career and I wish I could be there to celebrate each milestone with him.
However, Wille didn’t want to disregard what Simon said during the interview and made sure that his next handful of posts were a little more personal in how expressed his love for Simon.
Even though Simon assured him when he called that he wasn’t actually upset with Wille’s captions, Wille still came up with a few sweet messages that he plans to upload.
.
.
The notification for this morning’s Snapchat memories showed Wille a picture from seven years earlier when Simon and him went on vacation with their friends after graduating from Hillerska. Simon was sitting across from him at the breakfast table with wild bedhead since he was in the process of growing out his curls.
Wille loved that trip. It was the last (maybe only) ‘carefree’ trip he was able to take before taking up official duties. He had always been very grateful for that trip since they were able to spend it with their friends before everyone went to University and before Wille began his military training.
He had forgotten about the picture though. Looking at it now, all he was able to remember was that the entire table broke out into a debate that lasted the entire meal. For the life of him, Wille had no recollection of what it was about, just that it started between Madison and Henry. However, he did remember that Simon and him were on different sides of the debate and that they never figured out the correct answer to whatever it was that took up their entire morning.
Wille smiled as he started to draft up a new post, captioning it: I miss running my fingers through his long hair
It didn’t really occur to him until a few days later that Simon has been keeping his hair relatively short these past couple of years and that by using a photo from when his hair was slightly longer, Wille was giving the fans clues to how long they've been together.
.
.
Wille actually laughed out loud when he read the caption on Simon’s most recent post.
Perfect photo on the first take. Must be my lucky day
As the photographer, Wille didn’t remember that being the real story behind the photo and took out his phone to create a new post.
Simon:
Did you have to expose me like that
Ayub already texted me to make fun of me
Wille:
Sorry did I discredit your astute credibility???
Simon:
*frowny face emoji*
Wille laughed. Simon's keyboard had been acting up and he wasn't able to send emojis over text (yet for some reason it worked fine over Instagram) so instead he's been forced to write them out. And, well, Wille can’t help but play along.
Wille:
*smiley face emoji*
*blushing smiley face emoji*
*blushing emoji blowing a kiss*
*purple heart emoji*
Simon:
*no sex tonight emoji*
Wille:
*white flag emoji*
.
.
Wille was seething.
All meeting he couldn’t keep his eyes off of the people across from him and they didn’t even have the common decency to burst into flames.
He’d seen them before but had never spoken much to the pair as they mainly followed the Prime Minister around and carried numerous files, manilla folders, and laptops. Basically any object the Prime Minister didn’t want to hold.
The duo, a stocky overweight balding man and an older woman in a too-tight pantsuit had the audacity to bad-mouth Simon before the meeting began this morning and then sit across from Wille as if they did not insult the love of his life.
Throughout the meeting, Wille started to wonder if his title could actually give him the ability to get away with murder.
He’d been walking through the halls of Drottningholm, where his parents resided when he heard the pairs' raised voices from around the corner. One of the topics that the Royal Court had been discussing with the Prime Minister the previous week was a statement on how to address the country when they will eventually announce that Simon will be joining the Royal Family and taking on active duties before any official wedding ceremony.
Wille had thought that that meeting had gone better than he anticipated. Well, at least he did until he heard two of the Prime Minister's assistants, both of whom have been aware of his relationship with Simon for years, talk about how it was a disgrace that Simon was going to be welcomed to the Royal Family.
“I mean, he’s a pop star! It’s disgraceful!” The woman had said, not even bothering to lower her voice. “His songs are so vulgar- he’d be a terrible influence on children.”
“Have you listened to his most recent song? It was playing on the radio this morning and I had to turn the filth off.” The man said, “He sings about his sex life! No one needs to hear about his experiences- especially not with another man!”
Wille felt his fist clench where he stood. Would he get arrested for assaulting someone? He was behind palace walls, it could work… who would tell, anyway?
The man's voice rang again and it pulled Wille out of his wondering.
“I mean, it’s a disgrace to the whole monarchy. And they expect us to just sit back and allow this to happen?”
“The Queen seems to have lost her edge.” The woman sneered, “Where is her consideration of upholding tradition? She should be ashamed of what she is doing to this country. We can only hope that when the Crown Prince surpasses her that he will reset everything to the proper order.”
Wille couldn’t take it anymore and turned the corner, making his presence known to the couple. He stood still, staring at them until they had no other option but to acknowledge his presence.
“Your Highness,” They both said, one after the other, before glancing at each other before turning and walking into the room for the meeting.
Throughout the meeting Wille’s eyes rarely left the two of them, not catching a word that was actually being discussed. What’s worse is that the two assistants didn’t even appear remorseful or guilty of being caught. Considering the volume at which they spoke, they must have known that Wille must have heard them. They were just lucky that his Mamma and Erik hadn’t been nearby to hear them insult the Queen and Simon, or those two interns would have been escorted out of the palace.
By the time the meeting had ended, Wille stormed out of the room, walking across the palace to his childhood bedroom and locking the door behind him. Pacing around the space, he wanted to call Simon. To rant. To cry. To let out his frustrations. But Simon was in back-to-back meetings all day and Wille didn’t want to pull him away from something important.
So after fifteen minutes of pacing and mental stewing, Wille had an idea.
He logged onto google and searched Simon’s most recent single ‘Breakfast in Bed’, the song those interns hated so dearly, and edited the cover art they put out for it to add a crown on Simon’s head. Wille loved the picture, Simon wasn’t looking toward the camera but Wille could feel his energy bounce off in waves.
Once he selected the photo on Instagram to turn it into a new post, he captioned it: He does look good in a crown and couldn’t wait for those interns to see it and come to the realization that this post was inspired by their hatred.
Wille and Simon did get called into a meeting the following evening to get reprimanded for their flirting in the comments section, but Wille couldn’t find it in him to care.
Especially not since he told Erik about what the two assistants had said about Simon and their Mamma. So during the next morning meeting, the brothers both stared them down, and this time, the assistants kept their heads down, refusing to look at either of their faces.
Wille wanted to laugh at the logic of the couple. They didn’t care that Wille had overheard them the other day, after all, it’s one thing for them to upset the second-born child of the Queen. But luckily for Wille, it’s a whole other story for them to insult the next reigning monarch. So Wille sat back and enjoyed every second of them squirming under Erik’s sharp gaze. That’s what they deserved for insulting Simon.
That high lasted several days and continued to persist when, during a meeting, Wille felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He was able to check on it during a break and nearly laughed out loud when he saw Rosh and Simon’s conversation in their group chat.
Rosh sent a screenshot of the post with the message:
Rosh:
stop flirting on my dash
it’s gross
I don’t want to know any more about your kinky sex lives
Simon:
We didn’t say anything kinky
and it’s not like we fuck fully clothed
Rosh:
WHAT DID I JUST SAY
NO SEX TALK
god i gotta go burn my eyes out now
Thanks for that
Simon:
You’re welcome
<3
Wille knows that the path ahead is going to be difficult, but he’s happy that he has so many people in his life that care about and support him and his relationship.
.
.
Simon:
img.jpeg
Hey can you post this on your account?
Oohhh and give it a nice caption??
Preferably about how hot and sexy and stunning I am
Thanks baby
loooovve you
<3 <3 <3
Wille laughed, shaking his head. His boyfriend was demanding, but he proceeded to open Instagram on his phone.
What Simon wants, Simon gets.
.
.
After ten years in the making, Wille and Simon were officially announcing their engagement in twenty-four hours. Of course they’ve been unofficially engaged since they first started dating and Wille knew that Simon was the one for him. And officially engaged for a little over a year, but soon it won’t be a secret anymore.
Wille was very aware that he had to delete ‘Simon-Appreciation-Posts’ soon, Minou even put it on his calendar so he wouldn’t forget (as if he would). But Wille decided that he would post two photos today and the final picture tomorrow morning.
The two that he chose for today felt very fitting since they were taken during their vacation to Venezuela when Wille actually proposed. They had gone with Linda and Sara to visit Simon’s grandmother.
The first picture was of Simon on a boat. He wasn’t looking at the camera, instead he had just pushed his wet hair from his face and was looking out towards the water. For his caption, he kept it simple. There was no point beating around the bush, if he didn’t write it now, he never would.
Announcement: Legally I have to delete this account in 24 hours (so this is your screenshot warning) I love you Simme
Truthfully, Wille knew that he should have put ‘contractually’ instead of ‘legally’ but eh, semantics.
For the second picture, they were at the beach and Simon had just gotten out of the water and sauntered over toward where Wille was reading to grab his towel. He had asked when Wille was going to stop hiding under an umbrella and get in the water, and slowly coaxed him out of the shade with quick kisses and by rubbing a new layer of sunscreen into his skin.
He may have still gotten lightly burned, but it was worth it to wrap Simon’s legs around his waist and to hold him in the blue water.
‘Announcement: this account is deleting soon (I took this picture during our last vacation and I can’t wait until our next)’
Especially since their next vacation will be their honeymoon.
.
.
The next day when it came time for Wille to upload his last picture, he felt oddly emotional.
His Mamma told him that he had until eleven-thirty to delete the account so there was time to get everything ready for the twelve o’clock announcement.
This last picture they had just taken a few minutes earlier, at sunrise. Simon was dressed in dark colors and the early morning sun shined against the skin of his exposed chest.
He looked gorgeous.
When it came to writing his caption, he was suddenly at a loss for words. He didn’t want to be overly emotional because this didn’t have to be a sad moment. More than anything, Wille just wanted to say thank you to his best friend for sticking by his side and loving him through the years.
’I love you more than words can express. Thank you for being my person and loving me unconditionally. Let’s start a revolution.’
They may have hinted at the engagement in the comment section an hour before the official announcement, but they couldn’t bring themselves to care.
.
.
Simon sat with Wille as he took screenshots of each of the one hundred and seven posts he’s made under the account profile this past year before manually pressing the ‘delete account’ button. Simon squeezed his opposite hand as he pressed confirm.
It felt like the end of an era.
But also the beginning of something new.
.
.
When it came time to post the announcements, his Mamma was adamant that the official post must be published under Wille's account first, then Simon’s a few minutes after. Neither of them really understood why it mattered, the official announcement was going to be unleashed by both the Royal Office and Prime Minister's Office at the same time (noon), so what did it matter if Simon and Wille posted their own engagement announcement at the same time as well?
In the end, neither of them battled the Queen over it.
They’ve waited ten years to tell the world that they were together.
They could wait a few extra minutes.
Luckily for them, the engagement photoshoot was actually a surprisingly relaxing affair.
Part of the reason was due to both Simon and Wille fighting to make sure that the photoshoot wouldn’t be comprised of photos where they stand three feet away from each other, yet claim to be in love. They were going to be the only official queer royal couple in the world and wanted their photoshoot to stand out and show people that they were actually in love.
So they battled hard for the shoot. It took months of meetings and compromises in order to present something to the world that was a little out of the norm for royal photography.
But as Simon told Minou and Jan-Olaf and every other one of the Queen’s closest advisors, there was going to be bigotry and homophobia shown towards them regardless of what the official photos looked like. So by having a more carefree style photoshoot, where the two of them appear comfortable and look more like a normal couple in love than Royals, maybe it would help them appear more relatable to the people.
Eventually, the Royal Court conceded, and they were allowed to wear matching outfits and actually smile and be wrapped up in the other's presence.
It was all Wille and Simon had wanted.
By the time the date of the photoshoot had come around, they had each received a haircut earlier that morning. However for Wille, before the shoot, the photographer’s stylist actually styled his hair so it could be pushed down in the front, rather than entirely out of his face as the Queen requested. The products he put in his hair, along with the strong winds of the day, helped keep his hair pressed down and Wille had to admit that he surprisingly really liked the look of it.
The photoshoot took place outside on a fall day, with brightly colored leaves littered on the green grass and warm, white sweaters pressed against their skin. They took what must have been hundreds of photos that day but the Queen and her advisors selected what they believed to be the nicest out of the bunch and allowed Simon and Wille to select one for them to both post.
By the time they had selected the photo- an unconventional one where Simon’s eyes were closed and Wille was leaning against Simon’s chest- he didn’t even realize that it did not showcase either of their engagement rings. Knowing the advisors, those photos would most likely be released separately. Maybe tomorrow or the day after.
When it came to his caption, Wille wanted to write a million things that he loved about Simon. He wanted to talk about his smile and his kindness and generosity. He wanted to write about his laugh and the way he hums in between sips of his morning coffee. He wanted to write why Simon was the only person for him. How Simon was the air that he breathed and the sun's warm rays. How Simon was his everything.
But of course, that wasn’t allowed.
So instead, he copy and pasted the Royal Court’s pre-written, impersonal caption because he wasn’t allowed otherwise, and wrote: ’I am happy to officially announce my upcoming marriage to the lovely, talented, beautiful @SimonEriksson’
Simon was always slightly more rebellious than Wille.
The caption they provided him with was even smaller than Wille’s, but his message started off with the claim that there will be several upcoming announcements that he will be revealing to his fans very soon. Announcements such as how Simon was going to be stepping away from music and dedicating his time to his appointed Royal duties. All those announcements will be put out soon because once they are officially married, Simon will no longer be allowed to post on his account anymore. Luckily the Royal Court agreed, after a lot of back-and-forths, that Simon did not have to delete his account, but instead would leave it to become inactive.
Wille smiled when he saw that at the end of Simon’s post, after he announced that he was getting married, Simon added to the pre-written caption and called Wille his love.
’More announcements to come, but the most important is that I am getting married to my love @ HRHWilhelmSweden’
However, Wille was aware that Simon was angry at the short message the Royal Court gave him to post and that his boyfriend wanted to write more. In his determination, Simon convinced Kristina to allow him to post a photo of the two of them from when they were students at Hillerska, as well as the official press release photo.
The Queen was surprisingly encouraging of the idea.
Simon knew that Wille wasn’t the biggest fan of some of their photos during their times at Hillerska because they reminded him of how awkward he was. But the picture Simon just posted was one they had taken very soon after they got together on a breezy fall day in November. At the time, Wille hadn’t realized that Simon was going to take a picture until a moment before he did, so he didn’t look the most prepared for the flash. It wasn’t his favorite picture, but he still loved it immensely.
Those two sixteen-year-old boys in the photo had no idea about the journey of love they were about to encounter or how their lives were going to be forever changed.
Wille smiled when Simon’s second post popped up on his dash only a few minutes later.
‘We took this photo as teenagers when we were somehow more awkward than we are now. I would have said yes even back then.’
.
.
Wille was halfway through the book sitting on his lap when Simon’s quiet giggles pulled him away from its pages.
“What’s so funny?”
Simon was looking down at his phone, typing away, “Your brother,” he said simply, “you’re gonna hate him.”
Wille furrowed his brows. He could hate Erik for a lot of different reasons. “Great, what did he do?”
Simon laughed again when he looked up at Wille. “Well, Erik got clearance to make a post on his official account with the PR team’s boring ‘welcome to the family’ shtick and, I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he was allowed to use a really, really old picture of the three of us where you two are dressed like normal people instead of Princes. And, like, I like the photo, but I know it’s one you hate.”
Wille sat up further against the headboard, looking down at Simme warily, “... which picture?”
“Do you remember how back at Hillerska one yea-”
“It’s a Hillerska picture?” He placed his palms over his face and groaned, slowly rubbing at the skin. “God, he did that just to mess with me, didn’t he?”
“Knowing Erik, probably. But it’s from when the choir went into Bjärstad to sing some songs right before Easter Break and Erik showed up for a surprise visit.”
Willed remembered that day. Simon was slightly nervous about performing in public, but there was only a small crowd huddled around where the group sang in the park, and Simon’s voice never wavered.
It was during their second year and Erik showed up right before the performance started, dressed in normal clothing- not even a blazer, so he could show Simon support. The two had hit it off after Wille had introduced them before Winter break back when they were first years, and it made Wille so happy to know that his brother and his boyfriend got along. That they texted and talked and became actual friends.
“Is it the one where we posed as Charlie’s Angels?”
Simon huffed out a laugh, “No.”
“The prom pose one?”
“No, but I forgot that that picture existed so now I need Erik to find and send it to me immediately.”
Wille racked his brain, trying to remember what other embarrassing pictures they took that day. “Oh god. Please tell me it isn’t the picture where your arms were wrapped around me and I looked like I was about to pass out.”
Simon laughed at him, “No, it’s not.”
Good, then whatever the photo was, it can’t be that bad-
“It’s the peace-sign picture.” He could hear the smile in Simon’s voice.
Wille took it all back. Erik was trying to kill him.
Why couldn’t it have been the Charlie’s Angels photo?
’I have been fortunate enough to get to know Simon over these last ten years and am happy to welcome him to the family!’