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The rain is hammering down hard now, thousands of tiny half-frozen spears attacking the strip of exposed skin between hat and scarf on Simon’s face. Hurried figures dash past from one orange-hued streetlight to another, huddling under bus shelters with hoods pulled close. No one’s dawdling in this weather, not even Simon.
Wille had dug out the stats once, finding the numbers to prove that Dublin had annual rainfall pretty much equivalent to back home, but Simon doesn’t believe it. He swears sometimes that the rain is somehow wetter here, an all-pervading moisture that soaks through clothing and leaves you damp all day.
Wille had snorted with laughter at hearing that, nose crinkling and eyes unbearably fond.
Simon pulls his scarf tighter and sets a brisk pace, passing the miserable, bedraggled crowd at the bus stop. He could wait for the bus himself, but his job is close enough to home that the walk would probably be quicker at this point.
He’d lingered for as long as he could at the deli after closing tonight, sweeping the same patch of floor over and over until Dina had spotted him, all but pushing him out of the door with his own broom. She’d assumed that he was simply putting off going out into the rain as long as he could. He hadn’t corrected her. She’s a good boss and a warm and sympathetic ear when he needs it, but he has reasons for not telling her about these particular relationship woes.
He’s not really spoken to anyone. Not about this. His friends here are all Wille’s friends too, and it’s a hard thing to put in a text to loved ones back in Sweden. He’s been bottling it up for weeks, finding reasons to change the subject or walk out of the room every time Wille starts to speak. Lying awake at night with every scenario chasing each other around his head.
He’s soaked through by the time he finally gets home, jeans uncomfortably wet up to his calves and coat dripping all over the hallway floor as he hangs it up. He takes one last longing look at the door to his left, the gateway to dry clothes and clean towels, before turning to his right. One deep breath for courage, then he’s pushing open the door to the living room.
There’s warmth in every sense of the word on the other side, as he knew there would be. Low lamps create a cozy glow, a small, golden oasis against the dark outside. A certain someone, oblivious to the cost, has turned the central heating up full again. Heat hits Simon like a hammer blow as he takes a step into the room. He can practically feel the water evaporating off his skin.
That same someone is cocooned in a nest of pillows on the couch again, headphones on and clearly oblivious to Simon’s homecoming. It looks like Wille’s watching yet another crochet tutorial on YouTube, balls of wool on his lap and a new project between his hands.
The crochet is new, another weapon in Wille’s growing arsenal of crafts to combat the swirling forces of anxiety. His therapist had suggested knitting a year or two ago, a way to occupy his hands and calm his head. After some teething troubles – there’s a misshapen lump of wool over the back of the couch that could charitably be called a blanket – he’d eventually taken to it with enthusiasm and growing skill. The hat and scarf Simon had worn to protect him from the weather tonight were both gifts from Wille, shyly presented the Christmas before last with apologies for the flaws. Simon has worn them every winter day since.
He pauses for a moment in the doorway, taking in the picture before he has to smash it apart. Wille looks so peaceful like this, as relaxed as Simon’s ever seen him. The blanket flung over his legs is soft cashmere, handwoven by a local textile artist who makes bespoke one-of-a-kind pieces. Simon doesn’t even want to think about how much Wille probably paid for it, but he’s all for supporting independent artists, and he has to admit it’s a beautiful thing.
Their home is filled with beautiful things. Not by Simon’s choice. He’s never had an opinion about interior fabrics in his life, and would have been quite happy to furnish the apartment by scooting quickly through IKEA and picking the cheapest option in every aisle. Wille had opinions though. And high-class tastes. And the funds to indulge those tastes.
It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise Wille had turned out to be a bit of a nester. He’d spent his life never choosing a thing for himself. So what if he’d gone a little overboard once he finally had that freedom? So over the last four years their home has slowly filled up with not just blankets, but prints and framed photographs and lamps and elegant little side tables and everything else needed to make a bare apartment into a home.
Simon doesn’t move, fear freezing him into place as he watches Wille frown at the tutorial. He pauses the screen so he can glare at his own crochet hook, a familiar furrow in his brow.
Simon could walk over, take off Wille’s headphones for him. Loop his arms around him from behind, press cold lips against the soft downy hairs on the nape of his neck, drip water from wet curls onto warm skin. Wille would laugh, squirm away, protest without conviction before his face would soften and he’d welcome Simon home with a kiss. Then Simon could change clothes and dry himself off while Wille sorted dinner; his day to cook while Simon is at work. They’d curl up on the couch together under stupidly expensive but soft blankets, plates of steaming food in their hands, and swap stories about their day before bickering gently about what to watch tonight.
The evening would pass like every other evening. And they still wouldn’t have had the conversation.
They fly home for Christmas in less than a week, most likely the last trip back to Sweden before they both finish their studies and graduate in the summer. There’ll be no getting away from the inevitable questions and they’ll need to have the answers. Simon can’t put this off any longer.
He lets the door swing shut behind him with a bang, making Wille jump.
He looks up and his face softens with warm, unguarded affection, exactly as it had in Simon’s imagination. “Hey! You’re home.” Wille scrambles to clear away his project, getting to his feet as he chatters, winding his wool and jamming in the crochet hook. “I made chilli earlier, it just needs heating up. Do you mind microwave rice? Oh, and I unloaded the dishwasher,” he adds, a touch sheepish; an echo of an earlier argument.
Wille had been surprisingly okay as a housemate considering he’d spent the first nineteen years of his life being waited on hand and foot. If anything he was neater in many ways than Simon, and the novelty of cooking his own meals hadn’t totally worn off yet. He still had a few blind spots though. One was an inability to remember plates didn’t magically wash and jump back into kitchen cabinets by themselves.
“How was work?”
Simon steps forward and takes a breath, unsure how to start. “Wille.”
With guilt, he can see the exact moment Wille hears the tone of voice, his body going completely still, head turned towards Simon with questioning eyes.
“We can eat in a minute, I just…” Simon takes another deep breath, like it makes any difference. “We need to talk.”
“No, don’t.” The words burst out, Wille lurching forward before he seems to get himself under some kind of control. “I mean…” He swallows. Straightens his back. “Sorry, go ahead.”
“I feel like you already know what I’m going to say,” says Simon, voice cracking despite himself.
Wille doesn’t reply. Not meeting Simon’s eyes, he bites his lip as if already trying to hold back tears.
The fear roars.
“I don’t know how to say it...”
“It’s okay,” Wille interrupts. “Well, no, I don’t mean that, it’s not…it’s not okay, but I mean I won’t make things difficult. Not this time. You don’t need to worry about anything, I’ll find another place. You can have the apartment.”
Simon stares, the world crashing down in flames around him. “What?”
“For as long as you need,” Wille tells the wall. “Or whatever…whatever’s easiest.”
“So that’s it?” Simon’s voice breaks completely, angry tears starting to fall. He can’t even look at Simon while he breaks his heart? “We can’t even talk about it, you’re just leaving me?”
“Talk about…?” Wille finally turns to face him. He seems confused. “Aren’t you leaving me?”
“What? No! …Wille? Shit, Wille!”
For a moment he thinks Wille has fainted. Already pale, he’d somehow managed to go a shade or two whiter, swaying alarmingly before stumbling back on to the couch.
Throwing his own confusion aside, Simon is there instantly. Crouching on the floor in front of his hyperventilating boyfriend – if he can apparently still call him that – he rests his hands on Wille’s knees, trying to catch his eye. The latter with some difficulty, Wille staring through him as if not seeing him at all.
“Can you hear me?" Simon digs his fingers into bony knees, trying to hold back his own panic. “Try to name five things you can see.”
“It’s not...” To Simon’s surprise, Wille laughs, getting his breath back under control. He places his hands over Simon’s, squeezing gently. “It’s not a panic attack. I’m okay. Sorry, I just… It was a shock.” He meets Simon’s gaze again, tears still threatening to fall. “You’re really not breaking up with me?” he asks in a voice so small it could break your heart.
“No!" says Simon, reassuring despite his own shock and confusion. “How could you think that?”
“Come on, Simon.” Wille gives him a hard look. “You’ve been so unhappy. For weeks. Maybe longer, I don’t know. You wouldn’t tell me what was wrong! And then every time I’ve tried to talk to you lately about the future, what we do after graduation, you keep shutting down on me, or leaving the room, or finding excuses not to talk about it.” He swallows, voice thick with emotion. “I thought you didn’t know how to tell me you wanted to break up. What else was I supposed to think?”
“You weren’t supposed to think I was going to leave you!” says Simon, sharp and defensive. He knows he’s screwed up.
The longer he’d gone avoiding the conversation, the more difficult it had become. He’d just never realized things had got this bad.
“I’m sorry,” Simon admits. “You’re right.” He slumps back, falling heavily onto his heels, hands still resting loosely in Wille’s. “I didn’t know how to say it.”
“Say what?”
“I don’t want to go home.”
Wille blinks, and Simon keeps talking, rushing the words out.
“I know that was always the plan, to study abroad for a few years and then go back home, and I know it’s what you want, but…I love our life here. I love our friends, I love our home.”
I love that no one recognizes us here.
I love how free and light and happy you are here.
I love that we’re two thousand miles away from the Royal Family.
I love how much you smile here.
I love how much I smile here.
“I’m not saying we stay here forever,” Simon goes on, unnerved by Wille’s blank face, normally so open with every emotion. “But I don’t think I’m ready to leave yet.”
Wille’s hands flex on top of his; then, like a thaw from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head, every part of his body relaxes until he starts to smile.
Simon watches and dares to hope.
“Simon, why the hell do you think it’s what I want? To go home?”
“It’s not?”
“Are you kidding? The last few years have been the happiest of my life. By far. Like…” Wille removes his hands so he can gesture wildly, pushing his hair back from his forehead. Simon’s fingers feel cold without them. “Fuck, zero contest! You know that. I thought you knew that,” he adds in a quieter voice. “Remember the other day? What Hannah said?”
Simon did remember. They’d been hanging out with a few of their closest friends. The conversation had somehow got onto everyone’s parents, and Hannah had turned to Wille and innocently asked what his parents did. Even though she knew, she’d genuinely forgotten for a moment. In this room, he wasn’t Wilhelm of Sweden, the Crown Prince who’d refused the throne and run away; he was just Wille.
He’d replied, deadpan, “Not much of any use”, and everyone had laughed and moved on. Including Hannah, blushing deep as she’d realized. But Simon had seen the look on Wille’s face. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget it. No lottery winner or world-record-breaking athlete could possibly have looked happier than Wille was in that moment.
“Why on earth would I want to go back to being recognized everywhere I go? Having security follow me everywhere again, and people sneaking pictures on their phones and the media picking over every move I make?”
“But…you kept talking about it! Enthusiastically!” He’s endured months of Wille talking about how nice it will be once they’re back where they belong, showing Simon apartment listings and asking for his thoughts, looking at PHD options at Swedish universities, greeting Linda cheerily on a video call with a ‘won’t be long until we’re back home for good’.
“Because I thought it’s what you wanted! I know how much you miss your mom and Sara, and you said you get tired having to think in English all the time, and you’re always complaining about the weather here—”
“Because it’s always raining!”
“It honestly doesn’t rain here any more than it does back home, but that’s my point. I thought you weren’t happy here, and I was showing that I was okay with going home. I was trying not to be selfish,” he adds, the effect rather spoiled by the petulant pout on his face.
Simon laughs. It bubbles up and over like a spring, pouring out of him as he lays his head down on Wille’s lap and shakes with helpless, hysterical laughter.
He feels Wille’s hand on his head, gentle fingers in his hair before Wille joins in, his own giggles mixing with Simon’s until the whole room seems to be shaking with the force of it.
Eventually their laughter dies away. Knees beginning to ache, Simon gets to his feet, ready to sit down calmly on the couch and have a proper, grown-up conversation. Then he changes his mind, swinging a leg over Wille’s legs so that he’s straddling his lap, face to face.
Wille blinks happily at him in surprise, lips curving into a smile and hands coming to rest at the top of Simon’s hips.
“So. You thought I wanted to go home and I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Yep.”
“But neither of us actually wants to go home.”
“Nope.”
“So…I guess we’re staying then?” He looks up at Simon, nervous and hopeful, and Simon is so full of joy he could burst.
“I guess we’re staying.”
He loops his arms around Wille’s neck, pulling them together, nuzzling his nose against Wille’s cheek and breathing him in.
“I guess we really should have had this conversation weeks ago,” murmurs Wille, voice quiet against Simon’s skin.
“I guess we’re both idiots,” laughs Simon, still giddy.
He can sense Wille isn’t totally sharing his euphoria though. He pulls back and raises his eyebrows, waiting for more.
“I thought…” Wille sighs. “I really thought we’d got better at the whole communication thing.” He sounds unbearably sad, twisting Simon’s heart.
“Yeah.” Simon matches his tone. “Me too.”
Maybe they’ll never quite get it right. Too much baggage, two troubled and fractured childhoods leaving scarred tissue behind, their rough edges constantly catching on each other, never quite healing. But they keep bumping along together somehow. Every day they make it through is another drop of balm on old wounds.
“We were both scared,” says Simon.
Wille nods, acknowledging the truth of it. He tilts his head forward, bringing their foreheads together again.
Simon breathes him in, drinking in his fill of this beautiful, messed-up, exasperating boy. A grown man now in fact, but no less infuriating. His heart swells with a wave of fond affection, washing over him so strong it leaves him breathless.
“Would you really have gone back home if that’s what I wanted? Even if it would have made you miserable?”
“It wouldn’t have been all bad,” says Wille, unconvincing. “There’s things I miss too. Would have been nice to be closer to Felice, to family.”
“But you’d have done it though. And pretended to be happy about it.”
Wille makes a kind of self-deprecating humming noise in reply but doesn’t deny the accusation, breath gently tickling Simon’s nose.
“Can we make a pact?” Simon whispers. “Next time we need to make any major life decisions, we talk to each other first instead of second-guessing what the other one wants?”
“Sounds good,” Wille sighs, closing his eyes. “But for the record, wherever you are, that’s where I want to be.” His eyes fly open again and he hastily adds, “In a non-clingy, non-creepy stalkerish kind of way.”
Simon laughs. Giggles, really, so full of love and joy it can't help but bubble up and over.
“Seriously, I hope you noticed how mature and sensible I was being when I thought you wanted to break up with me. I spent weeks practicing that.”
“Nooo.” Simon pulls back so he can look Wille in the eye, hot guilt twisting in his gut. “I’m so sorry. I just was scared to talk about it. It never occurred to me that’s what you’d think.”
He’d thought they were stronger than all that now, secure in their future together and the life they were building after awkward teenage years of fear and uncertainty.
But perhaps there were other scars that ran deep, ones Simon hasn’t thought about in a very long time. He remembers a breathless boy standing in the road on a summer’s day, the world all green and blue and gold, asking if Simon was sure he was over him – like that was even an option, as though it could ever be possible for Simon to move on.
He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears as he speaks, slow and purposeful, parroting Wille’s words back to him. “But for the record, I’m not going to break up with you. Not today, not ever.”
Wille smiles at him, fond and indulgent. “Okay. You can’t promise that though. And that’s all right,” he adds quickly, as if reading something into Simon’s expression. “I would never ask you to.”
Why not? thinks Simon.
He’s standing on the edge, he can feel it, the air thick and heavy with anticipation. It’s a joyful feeling though, a giddy swoop in his stomach. He’s at the top of the rollercoaster, about to plummet to earth, fear and excitement tingling through every nerve.
“Why not?” he repeats out loud. “I can promise that. I want to.”
Because that’s the point, isn’t it? They were so young when they fell in love. Too young to make any kind of promises about a distant and uncertain future.
But that was a long time ago. They’re not kids any more, holding hands on the shore against the vastness of an uncharted ocean of infinite possibilities. They’re adults, building a life together, piece by piece. One handwoven cashmere throw and petty argument over whose turn it was to unload the dishwasher at a time.
He can promise this because he wants to.
Simon’s never been able to work out the exact color of Wille’s eyes; warm brown in some light, soft hazel in others, even sometimes the faint trace of green or colors he can't even name. Right now though he could swear there’s golden flecks in the irises as they focus on his, every tiny change of emotion written there for Simon to read. He can see the exact moment when Wille realizes what he means, breath catching and holding in the air between them.
A golden promise. He can make that. Or platinum maybe. He doesn’t know much about rings, or jewelry in general. He’ll have to do the research.
He brings his hands up, holding Wille’s face – his life, his future – between them. He’s been living in fear for weeks, scared of breaking everything they’d so carefully built. But right now there’s not a trace of fear in his veins, not with Wille’s eyes fixed on his.
Simon doesn’t even phrase it as a question, absolutely secure in the answer he’ll receive.
“Marry me.”