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Two days after abdicating, Wilhelm shaves his head.
It's three months after his eighteenth birthday. Wilhelm and the court have gone through enough paperwork to deforest a small country. The whole thing had felt more like waking up in the middle of surgery than a legal proceeding. He never wants to look at the word conveyancing ever again.
Now the rush of summer has slowed into late August. The heat hangs around like syrup clinging to the end of a spoon. Wilhelm's hair sticks to the sweat on his shoulders in clumps, as Felice rakes the electrical razor through his hair and takes it off. She has his head in a firm grip, but her fingers are gentle and shaking. His teeth rattle together every time she gets close to his jaw.
“Are you scared?”
“That it's going to look bad?” Felice puts down the razor and tries to brush the clippings off his neck with a damp towel, “this was your idea.”
She steps away, and Wilhem sees his head in the bathroom mirror. His hand flies to his head. He has a scar on the left side of his scalp, apparently. He looks alien and older. He doesn’t look like a prince at all.
“I know,” he says. He doesn't stop smiling.
When he opens the door for Simon, he says: “I cut my hair.”
Simon stares at him like he's grown an extra head.
“Oh my god,” he mumbles, and his hand does the same thing that Wilhelms did an hour ago, “Oh my god, Wille…I can't believe you did this without warning me.”
“It looks stupid right?”
Simon's palm strokes his naked crown. His smile breaks into a laugh.
“No,” he says. Wilhelm is grinning like a maniac.
“I actually think it suits you. Very Britney Spears.”
Wilhelm does the inevitable and leans forward to wrap his arms around Simon.
“It looks stupid,” he mumbles into the flank of his boyfriend's neck. He’s warm. He smells like sunscreen. “I want it to look stupid.”
“Okay then,” Simon kisses his cheek.
In the kitchen, Sara switches between radio stations. A woman with a loud laugh gives advice on how to be single. There's a political press conference somewhere. There's an ad for insurance. Sara stops on a station and catches the tail-end of Come on Eileen .
Wilhelm and Simon are piled on the bamboo lounge-set on Felice’s balcony. Simon's hand is still stroking his scalp and has barely stopped since Wilhem opened the door. The back of his neck is two hills with a valley in the middle, in which a thumb slots perfectly into place. He's resting between Simon's legs. He closes his eyes, and the daylight is pink against his eyelids.
“I think I’m going to get a tattoo.”
Simon hums. Wilhelm feels the noise against his body. Ribcage rattling like leaves in the wind, “if that’s what you want.”
Pain and sadness always feel outsourced and ancient. There is such a thing as generational trauma. Joy always seems derived from the present moment. To a point where happiness and presentness seem to be synonymous. Maybe that’s why he feels younger now than he did a year ago.
Simon's finger surges down over his forehead and strokes the valley between his eyebrows, “but I think you should sleep on it first."
In the following weeks, Wilhelm borrows a pair of Simon’s baggiest hand-me-down jeans and wears them almost every day, until the denim is stained and crumbles at the seams. He wears T-shirts. He smokes a cigarette in a bar. He reads inappropriate literature on Felice’s balcony. The 120 Days of Sodom. Histoire d'O. Story of the Eye. Venus in Furs. Frisk. Ada, or Ardor. He drinks buckets of homemade lemonade and cheap wine.
There’s a picture of him in Hänt i veckan with his short hair and ill-fitting clothes and an article speculating if he has cancer. His mother sends him a screenshot. he types out “ I don’t ” and hits send. And that’s what he makes of that.
(at night when he’s alone, Wilhelm watches car crash demonstration videos. Families of foam dummies in rear-end collisions, head-on collisions, side-impact, side-sweep and rollover accidents. Multivehicle. Single-vehicle crashes. He watches the dummy's plastic pelvis shatter, as both its legs are forcibly crushed by the crumbling cockpit of the car. Polyester seat and chromium dashboard closing in on itself like a big metallic fist.)
Wilhelm has sex with his boyfriend in a public bathroom and on a beach. He smokes weed and buys more ugly clothes. Fuchsia colored pants. A black fur coat. Highlighter-colored sunglasses. Designer jeans and leopard-printed underwear. Though he only wears Simon’s jeans and plain t-shirts. When Simon asks him about it, he waves him off and mumbles something about symbolism. He donates all his blazer jackets. Simon goes along with all of it, ( “if that’s what you want” ) even though Wilhelm can tell by the tension in his eyebrow when he laughs that he doesn’t understand it. Wilhelm doesn’t feel the need for or the ability to clarify.
He doesn’t get any calls from his mother. He feels relieved and sad at the same time.
A week before school starts again, the four of them get in the car and drive to Felice’s summerhouse. The drive is passed with eye-spy and telling Sara when to turn left or right. The air smells of warm asphalt and lilac trees. They stop for ice cream on the way, and arrive at the Ehrencrona’s cottage with sticky fingers. It has a porch, an overgrown garden with three sun-bleached plastic lawn-chairs, and a shed full of bikes and a lawnmower all crammed together like fish in a tin.
“This is nice,” Simon puts his hands on his hips after they get out of the car, “this is very nice.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I just wasn’t expecting it to be so wholesome ,” Simon gestures to the lawnmower, “they even cut their own grass.”
“Maybe they hire a guy,” Wilhelm comes up behind him and puts his chin on his shoulder, “maybe this isn’t Felice’s house at all.”
Simon leans backward and places his hand on top of Wilhelm’s as it comes to rest on his lower abdomen. He slots perfectly into his arms. Wilhelm is once again smugly grateful for his growth spurt. His boyfriend's back is warm like a rock in the sun.
“Leading me to an isolated location under false pretenses….” Simon mumbles to himself, “I knew I never should've trusted you. What are you going to do to me now?”
Simon turns around in his arms and looks at him with open eyes. And Wilhelm thinks: did you know that when you look at me, it is a salvation?
Before he can say anything, Felice opens the door and yells at them to come inside.
In the evening Wilhelm lays Simon naked on a bed and inspects every orifice he finds.
He runs his finger over his boyfriend's teeth and under his tongue. Into the wax in his ear canal and the brown rim of dirt under his fingernails. Licks the cavity above his cupid's bow that leads into the tip of his nose. He sniffs his eyebrows, armpits, his wrists and in between his legs. He smells metallic and warm. Simon lies back and watches him do all this with a matte gaze. Fascinatingly still and willing. He never resists any of Wilhelm’s movements. Wilhelm goes about the examination with a determined and patient attitude, until Simon comes. As insisting as the stinging nettle creeping out from under the porch.
They run out of groceries three days in.
Sara doesn’t feel like driving, so Wilhelm and Simon wrestle two bikes free from the shed and set off towards the nearest Aldi, a town over. They ride along the motorway. Squeezed between the road and screaming yellow fields of rapeseed. It's downhill one way, but uphill the other.
“I swear to God!” Simon exclaims into the air. He has raised himself high into the air by standing on the pedals, and is trodding with harsh staccato movements. Sweat is pearling along the rim of his hairline, “Sara is so dead. Next year I’m getting a fucking driver's license.”
Wilhelm is too out of breath to answer.
They ride the rest of the way in silence. When they reach the dirt road that winds off the motorway and turns towards the summerhouse, Simon gets off his bike with a huff and stretches his legs.
“When are you getting one?”
Wilhelm stops next to him, and fiddles with the plastic handle of the shopping-bag on his luggage rack, “What?”
“Your driver’s license.”
“Oh…”
Something is clutching inside his chest. Like a lump in his throat, but further down. He feels restless, “I don’t know if I’ll get one...”
Simon rolls his eyes, “There won’t be anyone to drive you around anymore, Wille.”
“I know…”
They trail off, and Simon stops walking. He nudges down the kickstand with a metallic klang, which forces Wilhelm to stop as well.
“Wille?”
“I don’t think I can.”
"Why not.”
“Because my brother died in a car crash.”
Simon drops his hands at his side, “oh...”
Wilhelm cringes, “sorry.” he mumbles.
The topic of Erik has always felt like a cold shower or a vaccination. Something that has to be dealt with. Clinically. This kind of conversation is the same as cracking open a can of peaches. You have to eat the whole thing in one go, or it'll go bad in the fridge. Wilhelm is way too aware of Simon’s body language. Stiff around the edges. Waiting for a Wilhelms cue.
Wilhelm sighs and lets go of the bike. They're surrounded by backyards and plush bush fences. He drops to his knees in the shadow of a mirabelle tree. Sits in the grass and takes a breath, “Sorry. I don’t know why that sounded so angry.”
“I should have thought of that…” says Simon, but Wilhelm shakes his head.
“It’s not your job to predict what I’m thinking.”
Simon opens his mouth to apologize again. But he closes it and slowly sits down next to Wilhelm. He fiddles with the grass between his sandals. But he watches Wilhelm closely.
“He was the first person I was going to tell, you know.”
“Erik?”
Wilhelm hums. He sits quietly for a little bit. Cars hurl past on the highway. It sounds loud like an animal breathing unsteadily. He cranes his neck and looks out into the rapeseed fields in the distance and decides to speak.
“The last time we spoke on the phone was the week before we were supposed to go home for the weekend. He was supposed to come and pick me up. But I told him I wanted to stay.”
“Because you wanted to stay with me?”
Wilhelm nods. He smiles into his elbow. “I didn’t tell him that. But he could see it all over my face. Kept asking who the girl was, what was her name? I must have been red as a lobster. I just laughed at him and hung up. My heart was beating so fast. But I remember deciding that the next time I saw him I was going to tell him. That he was going to be the first to know. Other than you of course. And then the next day he died.”
Simon has stopped picking at the ground next to him. His body is quiet. Wilhelm doesn’t want to look at his face. He's afraid he'll lose momentum. But he reaches out and touches their knees together. It takes the edge off. After a moment, he breathes in and keeps talking.
“I think that was probably what hurt the most in the beginning. That I didn't get to tell him. I became so fixated on it. I lay in bed almost every night, going I never got to tell him, I never got to tell him . Over and over again. He was the only person I ever wanted to tell, you know.”
"Yeah..."
"And then what August said about the hazing… it was... I felt like I was losing him all over again. Like this person I was talking to in my head was just... just that...someone I made up in my head. I started doubting everything. Even stuff that was completely unrelated. I became spiteful and cynical. You know how I was back then. I was so angry. Not just with Erik, but with everyone."
"Were you angry at me?"
Wilhelm thinks a little bit. There's a fine crisp line between the sky and the ground. He looks towards the vanish-point and feels the breeze swelling around his head.
"Maybe. No. Not really. I wish that things between you and me could've gone differently. But I don't blame you for any of it if that's what you mean."
“Yeah…” Simon takes his hand, and leans against his side, “I get it.”
"Sometimes I forget he's not here. If I hear a song he liked on the radio, or if I think of something funny to say, I go wow, I haven't called Erik in a while. I wonder how he's doing."
Simon makes a pained noise and squeezes his hand, "It makes sense. It sounds awful, but it makes sense. He died so suddenly. That takes a while to get used to. Of course you weren’t okay."
"I know," he swallows, "he was... he was the only person who I could talk to. Before I met you. And Felice."
"I think about him too sometimes."
"Yeah?"
"I wish I could have met him."
"Me too."
“Obviously he meant a lot to you. It sounds stupid, but like, he practically raised you right?”
Wilhelm nods.
“Sometimes, the way you phrase things, and your mannerisms. I wonder how similar they are to his. If there are parts of you I'll never fully understand because I don't get the point of reference… but as sorry as I am that you lost him, I'm really grateful that you had someone like him in your life when you were growing up. Even if it ended too soon. I wish I could have met him and told him that.”
Wilhelm kisses Simon's knee.
"I think he would have liked you."
Simon smiles and Wilhelm’s heart squeezes its way into his throat.
“I’m sorry I’ve been acting a bit crazy the last few weeks,” Wilhelm waves his hand around, “I guess I’ve been coping with…stuff”
"It's okay,” Simon strokes his head, where his hair has already grown a centimeter longer, “there are worse ways of doing that.”
Wilhelm hums. Kisses the inside of his boyfriend's wrist. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
They walk their bikes the last of the way home, where Felice and Sara are waiting. Tomorrow is another day, and Wilhelms hair will keep growing. They’ll start a new school year and make new friends and forget that summer was ever there.
Wilhelm gets the outline of a frog tattooed on his back. It’s leaping across his spine and into the air.