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Sometimes Wille’s touches were intentional, and sometimes it was like breathing, a second nature. Though he often reached for Simon first, reassuring pats or an arm on his waist, those touches felt like they were for both of them. Simon didn’t grow up lacking in that department like Wille did. His entire life, people avoided Wille’s large emotions, which were often accompanied by some form of physical outburst that would inevitably cause the people around him to back away from the storm. It was never that way for Simon. Instead of sprawling empty spaces and never enough time, Simon grew up in a small house, with no shortage of noise or other people. There was a time when he was little that he and Sara even slept in the same bed. Linda would plant sloppy kisses on his cheeks and forehead leaving smudged red lipstick stains, sometimes until he protested and shoved her off. And it came naturally, to their family anyway, to hug and touch and kiss.
But there were times Simon felt smothered, when he wished there was a force field around him that was impenetrable, impermeable. That his slight frame didn’t fool people into thinking they could be so permissive. When August ruffled his hair, the few times it happened, it made something sticky and aggressive lurch in his stomach. Maybe it was retribution when Simon finally got his hands on him, albeit too early for when he should have, before he knew what real anger felt like.
And when Micke shoved him against the wall, Simon wanted to scream, and for days after he felt braised fingertips on his cheeks, could feel Micke’s breath like a dog on his face. It was the first time that Micke had done something so drastic, but it didn’t mean Simon didn’t fear worse when he was younger and Micke’s body got looser, his movements unpredictable as he stumbled around the kitchen.
Nothing could’ve prepared him for how it felt to have Wille’s hands on him. Or what it felt like to invite someone in.
And then there was Marcus. He thought about that as little as possible. At the time it felt right. There was no force pulling Simon towards him, his body didn't react the same when they touched. If he put it in Wille's terms, it was an eclipse, blocking out light so Simon couldn't see anymore. And he didn't love him. That was the biggest thing. Why, and how, would he touch someone he didn't love?
These days, Simon felt guilty that when Sara or Linda or Rosh or Ayub would hug him, there was a split second where he wished that embrace came from Wille, though for them respectively it didn’t last. However, the feeling tripled when they were being pulled apart, when Simon was split in two by a country and a boy. His mamá held him and all he could think about was that he wished it was Wille’s hands piecing him back together, and yet they had done nothing but fight whenever Simon talked about himself, in those days anyway.
For them, touches reformed. Wille liked to talk about feeling like they were made for each other, like they drifted together because they were always supposed to, and it was that simple. Simon disagreed. Each touch created something new from the ashes. Wille’s hands glanced down Simon’s back in the shower, as he was getting dressed in the morning, and it was a factory reset, starting from nothing, full of potential and light.
Simon often woke up to the feeling of Wille’s fingertips on his face, flitting over his eyelids and down his nose, brushing at the invisible hairs rather than the skin. A ghost touch. He never told Wilhelm these things because he knew it already, paving over each time someone else’s hands or lips had been there, taking them back to zero where touch wasn’t a written story, just a sensation, and if there was a story to be found in the way Wille’s hands felt on Simon’s skin, they would write it together.