“I was going to stay here on the weekend. Just to study.”
“My little brother, staying behind to study? Come on, we haven’t brotherly bonding time in weeks.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll go.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up.”
Wilhelm startles awake and upright to the sound of a beeping monitor.
“Where’s Erik?” he demands, looking around the hospital room he’s in. There’s two bodyguards he doesn’t recognize, and they’re sharing the kind of look people get when they don’t want to tell him something.
“The Crown Prince is in another room,” the woman says. “Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince Consort are with him.”
“Is he alright? He’s fine right?”
The two strangers exchange another look.
“Her Majesty the Queen will speak to you.”
Erik is in a coma. Erik is in a coma, and the doctors don’t know when or if he’ll ever get better. They say it’s a miracle he even survived.
Matters of the state stop for no one, and Wilhelm’s visit from his parents is brief. His mother insists on sending Wilhelm back to Hillerska as soon as possible, to give the nation a sense of stability. Wilhelm knows what she means is that the public cannot think that both heirs are dying. She talks about Wilhelm stepping in for crown prince duties, if Erik does not improve by Christmas break. Wilhelm tunes it out. Erik will wake up any day now.
His parents leave. Wilhelm sits there, blank and unable to move, heart monitor beating faster and faster until a nurse comes running in. She asks Wilhelm to breathe with her and Wilhelm can’t open his mouth or move his hands or do anything to tell her he can’t.
Later, nurse gone and bodyguards outside, Wilhelm starts worrying again. He needs to know what’s going on. His phone is gone, likely in the same wreck as Erik’s Ferrari. The bodyguards won’t tell him any more than he already knows. The hospital room does have a television, and the television has news channels. Erik would tell him not to look, but there’s no one to stop him now. The crash is on every chyron, on the lips of every talking head. There are no details on Erik, or him, only that both princes are in the hospital.
Wilhelm can’t stop looking.
Wilhelm gets one visit. One of his new bodyguards, Malin, wheels him to Erik’s room.
The first thing he sees is how unnaturally still Erik is. In a white bed in a white room surrounded by grey machines, Erik looks washed out. For a moment Wilhelm thinks he’s losing his vision to a fainting spell, but he isn’t even able to pass out.
The only colour in the room is a tasteful vase of flowers, newly cut, tucked away on a corner table. Wilhelm keeps expecting Erik to snark about them, but Erik is still, silent. He places his hand in Erik’s, like they’re five and thirteen again.
He wishes it had been him.
Wilhelm departs for Hillerska the following week with a cast and newly fitted crutches. His face is a series of bruises, but despite the blatant plastic and metal accoutrements, he gets a full layer of makeup to greet the paparazzi outside the hospital.
Malin helps him out of the Audi, but Wilhelm stubbornly makes his own way up Hillerska’s stairs. He never realized how many stairs Hillerska has until today. He curses every single one in his head.
The headmistress and housefather lead Wilhelm to his new room. The headmistress says, “We thought it would be more comfortable for you while you recover.” Wilhelm understands that, like everyone else, they are treating him as the crown prince now, de facto if not de jure until Erik wakes up. If Erik wakes up.
Wilhelm collapses on his bed, heart pounding out of his ribs, and tries to think of anything else.
A minute or an hour later, his phone buzzes. It’s a text from Simon, saying, There’s security outside your room… I dunno if they’ll let me in.
I’ll come out.
Wilhelm sits up, runs his hands through his hair. He pushes himself out of bed, jerks the door open, and peeks out. Simon is loitering at the end of the hallway, staring at his phone. A tension that’s been with Wilhelm since the hospital leaves, and he gives Simon a tentative, encouraging nod.
“This is Simon, my friend,” Wilhelm says to Malin. A bit of confidence has newly sprouted inside him, and he asks, “Could you let him in when he’s here?”
“We’ll let you know if he’s outside,” Malin responds. Wilhelm can live with that.
He lets Simon enter first, lets his hands brush against Simon’s coat as he follows. He shuts the door.
“‘We’ll let you know,’” Simon mimics in a sing-song tone, and loses it giggling into Wilhelm’s shoulder.
Wilhelm shushes Simon, tries to cover his mouth.
Simon grasps his wrists and pulls them down. “She won’t hear us,” he laughs. His eyes sparkle as he leads Wilhelm by the wrists backwards and into the bed.
Later, hair mussed and clothes wrinkled, Simon helps him unpack. They set out Wilhelm’s frog prince, his string of LED lights. A photo of Erik and Wilhelm that Simon’s clipped from a magazine, because Wilhelm brought no photos to Hillerska. A folded piece of handwritten sheet music, to remember Simon by.
“It’s what I was singing when we met,” Simon says, soft and bashful.
Wilhelm scans the mountains and valleys of notes easily. “I remember. You wrote it out?”
“Yeah,” Simon whispers. “Still can’t really read it though.” He shuffles closer, comes to a stop in a breath away from Wilhelm. “Maybe you should give me more lessons.”
“I will,” Wilhelm promises, and closes the distance again.
The days pass, a haze of lessons and classrooms with brief flashes of clarity tucked in the nooks of Hillerska with Simon. Wilhelm’s off the rowing team for now, doctor’s orders, though he comes to practice some mornings to cheer Simon on. August mistakes it as dedication and team spirit; Wilhelm doesn’t correct him.
No one will tell Wilhelm anything about Erik — not his parents, not Minou, not Malin or Joakim. No one even mentions Erik around him. He starts worrying that something has happened to Erik and everyone has neglected to tell him. He starts reading the headlines between classes for any scrap of news, even though Erik was the one to tell him to never read headlines. Simon finds him, once, in the dark, clutching his phone in one hand and his heart in the other, and leads him from the window to his bed and holds his hands until time and space make sense again.
“How are you,” Simon asks.
Wilhelm raises his head, stares into Simon’s soft eyes. He turns his hands in Simon’s, tangling up their fingers in hopes they’ll never be apart. “Better now.”
Simon’s warmth lulls him to sleep.
Wilhelm suspects politics or privilege, but in two weeks he gets to skip class for a check-up. He leaves Hillerska in an Audi, with only his security team and two drivers to escort him. The prognosis is positive; his leg is healing fine. Doctor Edgren repeats every care instruction that Wilhelm has already heard. After, even though it’s not on the schedule, he asks Malin to lead him to Erik.
Erik looks paler and smaller, somehow, in his hospital bed. The monitors on the machines are busy beeping reassuringly, drawing and redrawing the same incomprehensible graphs. Erik, though, is still. Wilhelm’s hand lurches into Erik’s. Like this, he convince himself that Erik is warm, Erik is real, Erik is alive.
Wilhelm sees Simon’s text on the car back to Hillerska. How was your check-up?
It went fine, Wilhelm replies. He fiddles with his phone. He types and deletes and re-types. I saw Erik.
Do you want me to call?
Wilhelm dials. It connects immediately.
“Hey,” he says.
“Fuck, are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Wilhelm says, because he doesn’t and Simon’s the only one left he can talk to. “I wasn’t ready to see him like this.”
“You didn’t get to visit him before?” Simon says it so matter of fact but he knows Simon’s mad on his behalf.
“I did,” Wilhelm clarifies. “When I was still in hospital. It’s realer now.”
There’s a pause, a moment of muted static. “I wish I could be there with you right now.”
“You are,” Wilhelm whispers into his phone. “You are.”
The cast comes off and the crutches are taken away. Wilhelm stands up, gingerly, and it takes every childhood lesson for him to walk without a limp. He gathers his coat and prepares to thank Doctor Edgren for the last time.
Just before he speaks, Edgren tells Wilhelm he has to come back every week for physiotherapy.
“I thought I’m fine?” Wilhelm asks, even as he’s discreetly shifting weight off his injured foot.
“No, you’ve lost muscle mass in your leg while you were in a cast,” Edgren explains. “You’ll need time and guidance for a full recovery.”
It’s the last thing he’s ever gotten, Wilhelm thinks. His hand hovers over a lingering bruise, caked in makeup.
That night, he does his physical therapy exercises in his dorm room and struggles to even balance on his left leg. After the prescribed minute, he lets his leg buckle and hits his bed headfirst.
He doesn’t have crutches any more. His leg has to be perfect, now.
That night, lying in bed and unable to sleep, Wilhelm texts Simon. Have you ever wished an injury wouldn’t heal?
Simon calls. “What’s going on, Wille?”
“I got my cast off,” Wilhelm says.
A shuffle, on the other side of the line. “That’s good, right?”
“It’s like everyone’s moved on, but Erik,” Wilhelm whispers. “Even me.”
Wilhelm isn’t sure if he can still swim. He doesn’t ask Doctor Edgren, and stays off the rowing team. Everything else goes back to normal, though Wilhelm has to catch himself on banisters or walls sometimes when his leg aches, though he’s still going for physio every week.
The press have moved on, convinced like everyone else that Wilhelm is fully recovered and ready to step into the role of crown prince. There’s already speculation about what the annual royal Christmas video will be like this year. It’s more detail than anything Wilhelm’s been told.
Wilhelm calls Simon, to talk of anything else.
Simon finds a weekend to sneak away from home and stay in Wilhelm’s room. With Malin and Joakim stationed outside barring anyone but Simon entry, it’s the one place Wilhelm has for himself that he can feel safe in.
The room is silent but for a faint echo of students enjoying themselves outside in the clear afternoon, and the sound of Simon breathing, alive, beside him.
Simon’s hand reaches towards his hair, and Wilhelm doesn’t manage to hide a wince when a finger brushes against a bruise.
Simon reciprocates his wince and pulls his hand away. “Fuck, sorry, I thought you’d healed. I’ll be more careful.”
“I have to put makeup on it,” Wilhelm says. “Every day.”
Simon lets his hand fall into the space between their laps. “Is that why you aren’t rowing?”
Wilhelm’s lips twitch with nerves. “No but. Yeah. I’m still in physio.”
“That sucks,” says Simon. “I thought you were only visiting your brother.”
“I wouldn’t accept that kind of special privilege,” Wilhelm says, harsher than what Simon deserves. He turns away and bites his lips.
Simon’s warmth envelops Wilhelm’s hands. He brings them together, holds them as one. “No one would blame you.”
Wilhelm stays silent.
“It’s your brother. No one would blame you.” Simon lifts a hand again, more carefully this time, and slowly tucks Wilhelm’s bangs back. “You’re allowed to worry about him. You’re allowed to want to see him.”
Gently, carefully, Simon rearranges them until Wilhelm is lying in his lap, bruise on the side facing away from Simon without Wilhelm even noticing. Slowly, he tangles his fingers in Wilhelm’s hair. “Tell me about him,” Simon says. “Tell me about your brother.”
Wilhelm blinks drowsily. “Don’t you know?”
“About the crown prince, maybe. I want to know about your brother.”
So Wilhelm talks. Talks about Erik giving him piggyback rides around the palace, about Erik turning state events into games, about Erik always knowing when Wilhelm needing space and finding a way for Wilhelm to have it.
“He’d get in trouble, whenever he helped me run and hide. He only ever got into trouble because of me.”
“He sounds like an amazing brother,” Simon murmurs.
“He is.”
Wilhelm thinks he should feel bad that’s he’s talked about himself for so long, so he asks Simon about how he met Rosh and Ayub. Simon talks about meeting them in grade school, about how Rosh is the cool one and Ayub the fun one, about Rosh’s love of football and Ayub’s love of video games.
“You have such good friends,” Wilhelm says. He wonders if he would have had such friends, if he’d been normal and not a royal.
Simon hears what he doesn’t say. “I’m your friend.”
“You are,” Wilhelm says. He wants to tell Simon that he’s more than that, but he isn’t brave enough.
All he can do is pull Simon down, pull Simon closer. Until there’s nothing between them but warmth and laughter, bare skin and tangled legs. Until his eyes have studied every jut of bone, his lips have kissed dimples and divots, his hands have traced every intimate place. Until all he can see and feel and know is Simon, here, real, safe.
Headmistress Lilja calls Wilhelm to her office all of a sudden. The entire walk there he worries that it’s going to be Erik. Something happened to Erik. Erik is dead.
What he gets is very different.
“Where were you last Saturday night?” the headmistress asks.
“I was in my dorm room.” Wilhelm doesn’t much go anywhere else these days.
“Was there anyone with you?”
That was the night Simon stayed over. Wilhelm stays silent and stone-faced.
“You’re not in trouble,” Lilja adds. “There was an incident that happened on school grounds, and we are asking everyone the same questions.”
Wilhelm wonders exactly what kind of incident there was, that even he is in the headmistress’s office. He makes up his mind. “Simon was with me.”
“Do you remember when he left?”
“Around nine,” Wilhelm says. “He had to catch the last bus.”
Lilja smiles, a sham congenial turn of her lips to encourage rapport. “You’re on the rowing team with Simon?”
Wilhelm smiles back, equally fake. “I’m taking a break from the team, but yes.”
“Would you say Simon has a lot of friends at Hillerska?”
The politic answer would be yes, but Wilhelm is beginning to get an inkling there is something being talked around. Is Simon being bullied? “Simon is close with his sister and me,” he says. “Some of the other students look down on him, because of his background.”
“Are any of those students on the rowing team?”
Wilhelm hides his grimace, his racing mind. “Yes,” he says, curtly. There’s a few more perfunctory questions before Lilja lets Wilhelm go.
Wilhelm texts Simon. Can we go out tonight?
Of course. I’ll show you around Bjärstad.
He takes the bus into town with Simon. The trip starts inauspiciously; Simon pays for Wilhelm when Wilhelm has no transit card or app.
“Where do you want to go?” Simon asks.
“Anywhere,” Wilhelm says.
Simon takes him to a kebab shop, where Wilhelm buys their food. They eat as they wander, Simon pointing out occasional landmarks that only local teens would appreciate. For an interim, Wilhelm lets himself be a normal boy out on a normal night with his not-quite-boyfriend. He spots an empty field and pulls Simon down to lie on the grass like a normal boy would.
“Hey,” Simon says, head propped on his elbow, contentment woven in his lips.
Wilhelm traces the faintest hint of streetlights in the curls of Simon’s hair. “Hey,” he says.
There’s a lull in the air, a car puttering in the far distance. Wilhelm wishes he could have this forever. But as loathe as he is to ruin the spell, Wilhelm’s asked Simon out tonight for a reason. He forces the words out. “Is anyone bullying you at school?”
A small furrow touches Simon’s brows. “No more than usual. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” Wilhelm says. “The headmistress was asking me weird questions today.”
Simon jolts upright. “Oh fuck.”
Wilhelm scrambles to a sitting position. “What? What’s going on?”
“I — fuck. How do I say this.”
“You can tell me,” Wilhelm vows.
Simon breathes out, a jarring, audible thing. “Shit. So. August owes me money.”
Simon is the only person beside Erik that Wilhelm trusts, but even still, Wilhelm can’t process what Simon’s just said. “August owes you money?”
“Yeah, for the booze? For your initiation.”
Wilhelm’s eyes widen. “That was you?”
Simon fiddles with his jacket. “Yeah.”
Wilhelm can’t help but grin. “That’s pretty cool.” It clicks, suddenly, and Wilhelm’s mind plummets. “Did the school find out?”
Simon clenches his fists, releases them. “August convinced me to sell him pills. He started selling them to pay me back, because he’s broke.” That’s bad. That’s much worse than anything Wilhelm thought. Alcohol might not be worth an expulsion, but drugs definitely are. Selling drugs absolutely is. “One of his friends was caught with them and August decided to pin the blame on me.”
Wilhelm sits there, hands grasping frigid grass. There’s nothing he can think to say.
“August tried to buy ADHD medication from Sara but Sara refused, and he’s had it out for the two of us since,” Simon recounts. “That’s what I told Lilja.”
“Did he — did he try to buy medication from Sara?”
“He did,” Simon replies.
Wilhelm swallows. “Sara always tells the truth, so the headmistress will believe her when she says the same.” Wilhelm pauses. He reaches out, grabs Simon’s hand to reassure Simon as much as himself. He shoves his question out. “Did you use me as your other alibi?”
Simon looks straight into his eyes. “I did,” he says, frank and without hesitation. “I’m sorry.”
Wilhelm doesn’t know how he feels about this, about Simon and August each trying to throw the other to the wolves. He supposes he’s already said his part to Headmistress Lilja, and none of it’s in his hands. His heart is oddly calm.
“If you want to turn me in, I understand,” says Simon.
Wilhelm turns Simon’s hands in his and imparts his promises. “I wouldn’t. I won’t.”
Wilhelm gets a strange text with a link on Lucia night. He sees the first frame of the video, and knows immediately what day it was taken. He can’t believe he forgot the curtains, that he was so stupid. It’s like the party that sent him to Hillerska all over again. Except now it’s worse, because that’s Simon’s face, and Wilhelm might have grown up under the spotlight but Simon didn’t. Simon doesn’t deserve this.
Simon can’t deny this. He doesn’t want Wilhelm to deny it, either.
In the royal car, his mother’s disapproval lingers in the silence. When she speaks, it’s only about his position. His privilege. “You are the only one who can take over as Crown Prince after Erik,” she states.
“Erik’s not dead,” Wilhelm spits out. “Stop talking as though he’s already dead!”
His mother says he’ll get a visit to Erik after the interview, like he’s a child who needs incentive for good behaviour. He knows what Erik would say. To keep up appearances. To reflect well on the family.
Wilhelm bounces a ball in his gilded, impersonal room and imagines a future as the crown prince.
He thinks about Erik, in his hospital room, and prays to the empty air.
He’s shut in his room for remainder of the weekend.
Are you coming back to school, Simon texts.
My mother thinks it can’t be worse than the palace, Wilhelm replies. Yes.
Good. I miss you. A pause. I’m proud of you.
School is odd, now that everyone can acknowledge that he and Simon are together. The staff do a phenomenal job of pretending nothing happened, although they do ban Simon from Wilhelm’s room. Among the first years of Forest Ridge house, there’s an unspoken pact to leave space for Wilhelm and Simon to sit together in the dining hall. It’s an unexpected gesture, a kind one, but it leaves the two of them to eat in self-conscious silence while Wilhelm’s housemates hold stilted conversations around them.
Wilhelm and Simon find their escape on the grounds. The leg only gives Wilhelm small twinges now when they meander about the lake, out of sight of gossiping students and disapproving staff. The change to their relationship feels too new, too raw, and Wilhelm doesn’t know what to say to Simon to make it better.
“Are you allowed out?” Simon asks, as they make the same turn for a fourth time.
“No,” Wilhelm says, hands tucked in his pockets. “Joakim is now posted outside the window to make sure there are no more lapses in security.”
A hint of a smile forms on Simon’s face. “I’m surprised they still let me around you,” he says.
Wilhelm lets out a small, jaded chuckle. “Not much they can do about it now.”
A hand grasps Wilhelm’s arm and brings Wilhelm to a stop facing Simon. “I miss you,” Simon confesses. The words form a tangible plume in the cold air.
Wilhelm brings his other hand up, and laces their fingers against the wool of his coat. “I do too.”
Wilhelm gets a call from Minou. Erik’s woken up. They’re saying it’s a miracle.
It’s the middle of a school week and Wilhelm has physio in a couple days anyway, but he kicks up a fuss and a two-Audi motorcade delivers him to Karolinska University Hospital that night.
Wilhelm sees Erik upright, moving, and rushes to him.
“You’re here,” he blurts into Erik’s hospital gown. The fabric is so thin that Erik’s warmth seeps through it, grounding him.
“I’m here,” Erik says. The fabric rustles, and slowly a hand comes to rest in the small of Wilhelm’s back. “I’m here.”
Wilhelm lets go long enough to ask Erik if he needs or wants for anything.
Erik laughs, a sound Wilhelm’s desperately missed, and tousles Wilhelm’s hair. “I have a whole hospital here,” Erik says. “How’s Hillerska while I’ve been away?”
Wilhelm fidgets, stays quiet and hopes Erik’s heard nothing.
Erik gives him a look, the one that says he knows better and has already forgiven him, and reaches his now-frail arms out for a hug. Wilhelm collapses back into him.
“A sex tape?” Erik says, in the teasing voice that Wilhelm’s missed so much.
Wilhelm says nothing. Nods twice into Erik’s shoulder.
Erik leads Wilhelm down and tucks him under his chin. “Do you love him?”
Wilhelm clutches Erik tighter. “Yes,” he whispers. It’s the first time he’s admitted it to anyone, even himself, and he feels warm and anxious and weightless.
Erik sighs into Wilhelm’s hair. “What’s done is done,” he says. “It’ll be fine. I’ll take care of it.”
“It was August,” Wilhelm says, all of a sudden.
Wilhelm feels Erik tense the slightest bit around him. “August what?”
“August who posted the tape.”
Erik tries to push Wilhelm’s shoulders back and Wilhelm complies and loosens his hold. Erik says to him, “No one told me that.”
“No one told me either,” Wilhelm mutters. “Felice figured it out. Mamma already knew.”
Erik purses his lips. “She’s buried it, of course.”
Wilhelm scoffs. “Of course. I guess I can only be glad he didn’t try to blackmail me over it.” At a small hint of confusion on Erik’s face, Wilhelm adds, “August is broke. We’re paying the tuition for his final term.”
“And he still posted that video? The fucking devil, he should be glad I’m still in the hospital or else I’d go rip his fucking guts out from his fucking skull.”
To hear Erik, who speaks in public relations, say this kind of diatribe makes Wilhelm relax, comforted that there’s one person in his family on his side. The security detail, Malin and one of Erik’s, dutifully pretend they heard no bodily threats from the crown prince.
Erik looks at Wilhelm. Studies him, as only an older brother could. “Tell me about Simon.”
Wilhelm does. He tells Erik about class, about choir, about rowing. About exploring the grounds of Hillerska with Simon talking about nothing at all. He tells Erik about Simon’s goldfish, about Simon’s friends.
“Then I want to meet him.”
“Here?” Wilhelm questions. Seeing Erik this weakened is only for family and household staff.
“Yes,” Erik says, the way he does when he’s made up his mind. “Here.”
Simon takes the train up from Bjärstad. Malin agrees to escort him into the hospital as Erik’s security is also around to protect Wilhelm. It’s a three-hour trip one way, so Erik has also arranged a room for Simon to stay in overnight. It’s at a boutique hotel and under neither prince’s name. Erik doesn’t say it’s for Wilhelm too, but Erik’s mirth says enough.
When Simon walks through the hospital room door, Wilhelm rushes to hug him. Moments, minutes later, they let go of each other, and Wilhelm takes Simon’s wrist and leads him to Erik’s bedside.
“Simon, this is my brother Erik. Erik, Simon.”
Simon, the boy who has no time for teen nobility and flirted fearlessly with Wilhelm, hesitantly mumbles, “It’s an honour to meet you.”
Wilhelm leans into Simon and teasingly whispers, “Now you’re shy around a prince?”
“He’s your brother!” Simon whispers back. “I need to impress him.”
Erik interjects, “I can hear you two, you know.”
Simon hides his head in Wilhelm’s shoulder.
“Please, sit,” Erik says. “Wilhelm, I can’t reach your hair from here.”
Wilhelm rolls his eyes, but obliges by sitting down and dragging Simon with him. He leans in enough so that Erik can ruffle his hair.
Simon laughs at the result. “You look like you’ve been out in a storm.”
Erik smiles, his loose, private smile. “He looks better this way, don’t you agree?”
Wilhelm shakes his hair loose and runs his hands through it. “Of course you’d bond over messing up my hair.”
In response, Erik ruins his hair again. He follows it by telling Simon embarrassing stories about Wilhelm’s childhood. They’re the silly ones, about teaching Wilhelm to ride a bike or to ice skate, that are fit for public consumption and make them sound like ordinary people. Simon, in turn, tells Erik about Wilhelm teaching him to read music and him sneaking Wilhelm out of Hillerska. That gets Wilhelm the eyebrow raise.
“I’m glad Wilhelm has someone like you at Hillerska,” Erik says, and though Erik seems proper and cold Wilhelm can read the honest acceptance in the turn of his lips.
Wilhelm nudges Simon, gives him an encouraging, sideways smile.
Simon’s face blooms. “I’m glad to have someone like Wilhelm at Hillerska too.”
The drivers drop Wilhelm and Simon, plus security detail, off at an unassuming hotel tucked away in a residential district. Wilhelm has no idea how Erik managed to talk their mother into Wilhelm staying here, with Simon no less. Wilhelm had fully been expecting to sneak out of the palace.
The hotel room turns out to be a split-level suite. It’s cozy, like Simon’s house or some of the hidden corners of the palace, and Wilhelm is glad for it. He doesn’t want Simon to feel uncomfortable. Malin and Joakim settle themselves outside while Wilhelm and Simon catalogue the care package Erik arranged. There’s junk food, a lot of it, and a couple of controllers for the Playstation by the television. Wilhelm suspects it’s brand new.
Simon pulls something out of the basket. “Condoms and lube,” he calls.
Wilhelm hides his face in Simon’s chest. “I hate Erik. As soon as he’s discharged from the hospital I’m going to suffocate him with a pillow.” He insists Simon put away those supplies.
They end up eating junk food on a capacious hotel bed and chatting about anything and everything, from Simon’s video games to Wilhelm’s engagements. Wilhelm was worried, after everything, that his and Simon’s relationship was on a slow decline from hypothermia to death. Having this night, knowing that they are still the same people after everything, is a breathtaking relief.
The hotel sends up dinner, and they decamp to a breakfast nook. There are plates and plates of food.
“This is way better than the food at Hillerska,” Simon says. “I was starting to think rich people had no tastebuds.”
Wilhelm, a rich person with no tastebuds who burned his tongue the first time he ate Simon’s mother’s cooking, gives Simon a light kick.
They try everything, swapping things they hate onto the other’s plates and making fun of each other’s choices. At one point, Simon tries to feed him, only to end up with Wilhelm choking and Simon hitting his back as hard as he can.
When the crisis is over, Simon collapses onto Wilhelm’s back. “We’re never doing that again,” Wilhelm says.
“Definitely not.”
Later, food mostly done and empty plates in a corner, they settle back into the warm, soft bed.
“So,” Simon says. “Want to play a video game?”
“I’m sensing a pattern,” Wilhelm says. “It does turn you on, doesn’t it?”
Simon swats Wilhelm. “For real this time! I’ve never touched a PS5 before!”
“Neither have I,” Wilhelm says. “I’m not allowed.”
“Then we have to,” says Simon.
They buy a few games, Simon picking since he actually knows some of them. Simon is a better player than Wilhelm. That’s not saying much because Wilhelm is terrible, and the two of them quickly stop trying to win and start trying to prank each other in the most outrageous ways possible.
They stop playing when they’re falling over each other laughing too hard to do anything but gasp and dissolve into giggles again.
Wilhelm grabs the controllers and lets them tumble to the ground, and looks up into Simon’s face, lit by a warm cartoon glow. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Simon breathes. “How are you?”
“Good,” Wilhelm whispers. He leans in and closes his eyes.