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Wilhelm had Simon’s boxers halfway off when the knock landed heavy on his door. It was getting late, and he honestly thought that if they just ignored it, whoever it was would just go away. He figured it was just one of the other boys who needed packing tape. It was a frantic night — all of them were moving out for the summer after the third years’ graduation the next morning. If they ignored the knock, the person would get the hint and go ask someone else.
Simon squirmed impatiently below him. Wilhelm pressed an apologetic kiss into his inner thigh, but he didn’t continue his movements yet. He had no intention of ever finding out who was knocking on his door in the middle of the night, but the walls were thin, and Simon wasn’t quiet — he never had been. They never had been. He would wait until whoever it was had moved on. Then, and only then, would he resume his task of getting Simon naked. Something he’d been looking forward to all day long.
“Wilhelm—” Simon’s voice came out strained and stretched as he squirmed.
“I know, I know,” Wille whispered. “Just give it a second. They’ll get the hint in a—”
But a second knock landed heavy on his door. This time, it sounded just about as impatient as Simon was clearly becoming. Wille let out a loud huff and dropped his forehead down on Simon’s thigh. One time. One time with no interruptions before they had to separate for the summer. That’s all he wanted. That’s all he needed. “Not now!” he called, hoping his extremely annoyed tone would make the other person leave.
“Yes, now!” Nils was on the other side of the door. He knocked again, harder this time.
“Nisse, this is really not a good time!” Wilhelm tried again. Nils knew what was going on in this room. He had to. Because he was the one who often helped keep the housemaster and the prefect distracted when they forged Simon’s sign out page. Simon spent the night, and did so often, purely because Nils helped them make it seem like Simon had already left. Nils knew what was going on. Especially on the night before everyone went home for three months. Wilhelm had hinted to most of the Forest Ridge residents and made it more than clear what was going to happen in that room, specifically to avoid situations like this — where he had Simon exactly where he wanted him and someone came knocking on his door.
“It’s an emergency, Wilhelm,” Nils called back. This man’s idea of an emergency was wearing cotton and cashmere at the same time. Whatever it was, it could wait.
Simon groaned loudly, cursed something in Spanish, and shoved Wille off of him. He pulled his boxers back up as he made his way to the door, though he didn’t bother with a shirt, nor did he bother to fix his hair. It looked like they had been in the middle of something. It didn’t matter, and Wilhelm honestly hoped it would make Nils uncomfortable. Simon flung the door open without a second thought about their situations . Wilhelm thought he was scary when he was angry.
“The fuck do you want, Nils?” he asked loudly.
The boy on the other side of the door, to his credit, didn’t let his surprise show on his face. That was the thing about Nils — even when he was absolutely and entirely unprepared, he always pretended like he’d seen it coming. He walked into every situation with the confidence of a cis-het white man and it usually worked . He took a quick inventory of Simon’s mostly-naked body in front of him, but didn’t let his eyes linger. He acted like it was no big deal and moved on . “I’m in a crisis, Simon. Obviously I’m looking for your boyfriend.”
Wilhelm sat up on his knees so Nils could see him over Simon’s shoulder and made sure he was frowning as animatedly as he physically could. He was not happy, and he needed Nils to know that. “Whatever this is, it can wait until morning, Nisse.”
Nils responded by shaking his head and then shoving his way into the room without asking. “No, it cannot, Wilhelm. I’m having a gay crisis.”
If Nils had expected Simon to know about his and Wilhelm’s private conversations, he was mistaken. Wilhelm had never once told Simon the contents of those private meetings. As far as Simon knew, Wilhelm and Nils each had a massive sweet tooth, and met every few days to eat candy until they had sugar highs. Sometimes even smoke a cigarette if the week had been stressful enough. Never once had Wilhelm told Simon that half the time they were talking about Nils’ sexuality and discreet hookups. It wasn’t his place, and he knew it. It was private.
So Simon didn’t know. He hadn’t known. Or, at the very least, Wilhelm had never given him any kind of confirmation. And, to be fair, he had never asked. He lived in his half-way world of assuming, but never fully knowing. He was content with that until this very moment when Nils had announced it to the room, and probably half of the hallway while he was at it. Thin walls weren’t only thin when it was Simon making noise. They were always thin. Too thin.
Simon closed the door behind Nils as he stepped into the room. Wilhelm was finding his way to his feet as the three of them all plainly ignored that two of them were in their boxers. If looks could kill, Nils would have been six feet under. Maybe farther. Wilhelm was fuming. And Simon wasn’t entirely thrilled either, though he was more baffled by the situation than angry at this point. It wasn’t every day someone interrupted you mid-blowjob, and then randomly told – announced to – you that they were gay.
“Nils, we’ve had every conversation we can possibly have. I can promise you I will have nothing else to say,” Wilhelm said. Nils bounced on his feet and bit at his nail — a habit he had unwittingly picked up from Wilhelm during their time together. Wille pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply. Nils had no intention of leaving this room without some kind of answer, and Wilhelm, unfortunately, knew that. “Alright, look, this is how the conversation will go from my end: yes, Nils, you are gay. No, Nils, that’s not a problem. No, Nils, you don’t have to come out. Yes, Nils, it is alright if you want to come out. No, Nils, I will not tell your parents we slept together to soften the blow of their only child being a homosexual. Am I missing anything?”
“I think I’m in love with Vincent.”
There was a pause. In the conversation, in the way Wilhelm was breathing, in the spinning of the fucking world. Everything, for just a moment, stopped. Simon audibly yelped at the sudden influx of knowledge that he’d previously been in the dark to and had no intention of learning about until now. Wilhelm, though, stood frozen in the center of the room, no longer thinking about the fact that he was half naked, nor that his boyfriend was also standing there, half naked.
“Okay, yeah, that — that’s a new one,” he managed to squeak out.
As if on autopilot, Wilhelm moved to his suitcase sitting in the corner of the room and picked up two t-shirts, handing one to Simon before pulling the other over his head. He didn’t bother with sweatpants, knowing they’d be discarded soon anyway. Again. He pulled out the top drawer of his desk and picked out a candy bar for each of them. Nils took his regular spot on Wilhelm’s spare bed and Simon climbed in beside Wilhelm on the used one. Then it was just the three of them, silently eating candy in a room that felt heavy.
The silence stretched too long. Simon had long since finished his candy bar, and Wilhelm was slowly following him. Nils, however, had only made it about halfway through. He was barely eating at all. He was far too distracted by something he was staring at in the corner of the room. That wasn’t normal. Nils had an enormous sweet tooth and a stomach the size of a chasm. He could eat seven candy bars in the time it took Wilhelm to open his first on most nights. Nils not having an appetite — especially not having an appetite for candy — was surely what would bring about the end of the world.
“So, why do you think you’re in love with Vincent, exactly?” Wille asked slowly. There really wasn’t a more subtle way to ask this question. He’d been trying to find one for the last fifteen minutes and there simply was not a better way to ask. Because – really – Vincent?
Nils finally looked away from wherever he’d set his gaze and looked at the two boys sitting on the opposite bed. He’d been in this room before, he’d just never been here with Simon. There had always been evidence of Simon there — a t-shirt thrown there or a sneaker tucked here — but he’d never really had to face the fact that it was Simon’s. He knew it was Simon’s, and he was constantly faced with the fact that Wilhelm and Simon were a couple, but there had never been a moment were Nils looked across at Wille and realized Simon was an integral part of all of who he was.
He didn’t like Simon. Never had, and probably never would. Simon was loud, and he was opinionated. He didn’t really fit in and Nils was polite, but there was just so much to dislike about the younger boy. He liked that Wille liked Simon — he liked that Simon seemed to make Wille a better version of himself — but he didn’t think he’d ever come around. Not like some of the others in his social group had. He and Simon didn’t have much in common. In fact, they mostly differed.
Was he really going to bare his soul in front of a person he didn’t even like?
But if anyone in the world would know what Nils was going through right now… it was probably, regrettably, the brown gay kid that had fallen for nobility. For the highest nobility, at that. Yeah, fuck, Simon was useful.
Nils shrugged his shoulders, fingers tightening around his candy. “Well, I want to suck his dick, for one.”
Wilhelm sighed heavily and hung his head. Nils thought it sounded far too much like disappointment for his liking. “Nils, you don’t have to be a pillow princess one-hundred percent of the time,” he groaned. Simon shifted uncomfortably beside his boyfriend. This was clearly more information than he’d been prepared for. Wilhelm didn’t seem to notice, though. “You can want to suck his dick and not be in love with him.”
“Oh yeah? And how did that work out for you, pretty boy?” Nils snapped, motioning – probably too harshly – at Simon, who had curled up in the corner with the rest of Wille’s chocolate after Wille decided he was no longer hungry.
“I’ll have you know I was well on my way to loving Simon before I realized I wanted to suck his dick. Thank you very much,” Wille said. He crossed his arms and pouted like a toddler, which didn’t at all contrast with the words that had just come tumbling out of his mouth without so much as a thought behind them.
Simon swallowed down the rest of the candy slowly and then pointed at the door. “Should I go, or—?”
“No, sosse, you might actually be helpful for once,” Nils sighed. The audacity of the rich.
With his mouth agape, Simon blinked once, twice, a third time. Wilhelm shook his head at Nils. That was quite obviously not the right thing to say, but on top of that, he had already pissed Simon off a few times that day, and Simon was scary when he was mad. “Okay, you walked into my room mid-blowjob, so you don’t also get to be mean.” Simon chucked the candy bar wrapper at Nils, who let the trash hit him gently in the head.
Then, because he hadn’t dug his grave deep enough, Nils just kept going. “It’s not your room. You don’t pay for it!” he argued.
This time, it was Wilhelm who stepped in. “Thin ice, Nisse.” His voice was cold and low, almost a growl. It was entirely unlike how he normally sounded with Nils. “Thin, melting ice.” He was getting impatient. This entire ordeal was just bad timing on everyone’s part, and Wilhelm was impatient. There were things he would much rather be doing right now, and he was not above throwing Nils out of the room just so he could go back to sucking Simon’s dick.
And they all knew that.
Nils sunk back and leaned his head against the wall in defeat. He kept moving his eyes up towards the ceiling until he couldn’t see either of the other boys. “It’s not just sex,” he whispered. God he hated this. He hated this. Why did he think this was a good idea? Sure, he’d talked to Wille about stuff like this before, but it had always just been about hookups. Purely physical, get-off-and-get-going type of things. Kalle from Sprucewood is good in bed and Pär from Forest Ridge is not , and so on and so forth. It had always been about sex when he talked to Wille. It had never been about this. “I mean it is. It is about sex. I want to have sex with him. A lot of it, but like… with feelings.”
Simon glanced over at Wille, who was much more accustomed to Nils bullshit than he, and then narrowed his eyes at the older boy. Patience was not Simon’s virtue, it never had been, and he had been very patient. All day long, in fact. All he wanted to do was get Wille’s hands back on him. He no longer had patience to spare and especially none for a boy he didn’t get along with. “You want to have sex with feelings with him?” he asked.
Nils looked back down from the ceiling with a glare. “Yes, Simon, I want to have sex with feelings.” He had never actually said that before. Never experienced it. Sex and feelings were two separate things to him. Things that never overlapped. The fact that they were overlapping was strange and terrifying.
Wille sighed and leaned back into Simon’s chest. He knew this was going to last awhile, he might as well get comfortable. Simon wrapped his arms around him on instinct. They didn’t have the same issue as Nils. Sex and feelings had always overlapped for them. There had been no point in which they could consider them separate. Not with each other, at least. And even when they had been trying to have sex with other people, it was to get over their feelings. Sex and feelings were complimentary concepts to them.
For Wille and Simon, sex and feelings had always been intertwined. To have one without the other was – well, it wasn’t them.
“What kind of feelings, Nisse?” Wille asked.
Nils shifted uncomfortably on the bed and pulled at the sleeves of his sweatshirt. And now that he thought about it, he could not remember if this sweatshirt was his, one of his hookups’, or Vincent’s. He never got this nervous. Especially not around Wille, who was, quite possibly, the person who knew him the best. Well, except for Vincent. Which is why this whole thing was so fucking confusing.
“It’s — I mean, it’s… it’s like I want to be around him all the time,” he began. It was an understatement. Nils knew that was an understatement. He didn’t know how to explain just how big of an understatement it was. “When he’s not around, I look for him. Actively. Every time someone walks through a door, I’ll look up and hope it’s him. And at first, I told myself that’s just what it was like to have a best friend. I’ve never had a best friend, so I told myself that’s what this feeling was.”
It sounded ridiculous, when he looked back on it now. He should have known his feelings towards Vincent were a crush almost as soon as he’d met him. They’d been in middle school when they met, and he’d been drawn to Vincent almost immediately. Standing across the room at a New Students and Parents Mixer, Vincent had caught his eye instantly. It was hard not to notice Vincent back then. He stood a foot taller than everyone else and had dyed pink hair . Neon pink hair. Thankfully, the other boys had hit puberty and the hair dye washed out, but by then, the damage had been done. Nils had noticed him.
And Vincent had been…
Well, he hadn’t been kind. Vincent had never been kind. He’d been tolerable enough to be around. After about a month — a long month — of making fun of Nils for being nouveau riche, he decided having the new kid around wasn’t all bad. They weren’t fast friends, but Nils had been relentless. Eventually, he found himself in the friend group. A little over a year later, he found himself at Hillerska with that same group of boys, minus a few who had transferred elsewhere or continued in public education. And by their third year, it was mostly just him, Vincent, and August.
And then it was just him and Vincent.
“Vincent’s best friend was August for so long that I just got used to that feeling being one sided,” he said. He wasn’t ignorant to the way Wilhelm and Simon both winced at the mention of the Crown Prince’s second cousin. They had never told him what happened, not exactly, but he had theories. Vincent did too. That was why the three of them didn’t hang out as a trio anymore. Nils hated to say that he was relieved when his friend fell from grace. It was true, though. He was relieved when August fell from grace because, suddenly, he wasn’t second best anymore. Not to Vincent. “But, like… I don’t think it’s a one sided friendship . Vincent has said multiple times that I’m his best friend, so I know it isn’t a one sided friendship. But he doesn’t feel like I do, so what I’m feeling must not be friendship.”
“Yeah… that’s not how you’re supposed to feel about a best friend,” Wille sighed. He leaned more into Simon and picked up his hand. Simon let him toy with his fingers.
“How do you know?” Nils asked.
“Because my best friend is a girl, Nils,” Wille sighed loudly. Other than Simon, Wilhelm’s best friend was Felice, and Nils knew that. Wille honestly did not know how much longer he could take this. He was impatient by nature, and so was Simon, and they had both been very patient all day long. He no longer had patience to spare. Especially none for Nils, who could have — and should have — figured this out with him a long time ago. “So is Simon’s, for that matter, and I can assure you that neither of us has ever wanted to fuck our best friend. Definitely not fuck them with feelings.”
Nils had half a brain to argue that Wilhelm had tried to fuck his best friend once. There was that brief thing with Felice all the way back in February. But it was long forgotten by most, and Wilhelm hadn’t really been into it even when it was happening. Felice hadn’t been into it, either. Nils knew they both regretted that kiss. Everyone knew. And as much as he disliked Simon, he wasn’t going to bring that up as ammunition while he was sitting right there. That just seemed cruel. Nils was an asshole, but he wasn’t evil, and he knew better than to try to start fights between Wilhelm and Simon. People had tried and failed before. A certain stable boy came to mind.
Simon fixed his posture and turned his attention back to Nils. For all his faults, Simon knew exactly what Nils was going through. He and Nils had never agreed on a single thing, other than the fact that Wille should grow his hair back out. He’d never taken Nils’ side in anything, never cared to see his point of view. To Simon, Nils was like a mouth sore that kept coming back at the most inopportune times — not really dangerous, but super fucking annoying. But even for all of that, Simon knew what it was like to be in Nils’ position. And although his patience was wearing thin, his compassion was certainly not. “How do you know he doesn’t feel the same?”
Nils shrugged his shoulders like a little kid. Wilhelm had the fleeting and terrifying question about if this was what it would be like for him and Simon to have a toddler.
“Because it’s Vincent. He’s not subtle,” Nils said. As if that was the simplest thing in the world. As if that was more than enough. Nils knew Vincent — every little one of his tells, every habit, and every little hobby. If Vincent felt something, Nils would know. Nils knew things about Vincent before Vincent did most of the time. “If he feels something, he says it. If he’s scared of something, he says it. If he hates something, he says it.” Or, at the very least, he said it to Nils. He told Nils everything. And Nils told him almost just as much.
“Maybe he just doesn’t want to ruin your friendship,” Simon suggested as he began to run his fingers through Wille’s hair. It was an idle habit he’d picked up over the last few months. He’d always known he liked running his fingers through Wille’s hair, but the more time Wille spent lounging on him, the more time Wille’s head found its way into Simon’s lap, the more Simon found himself with his fingers running through the strands.
Nils shook his head with a loud hmph. “He’s not even gay.” Nils sounded so defeated. Losing wasn’t a good look on him, nor did it sound good.
“You don’t know that,” Wille pointed out. Because, really, they didn’t. They didn’t know that. The general consensus was that sexuality simply didn’t matter, and labels mattered even less. Most people here didn’t label their sexuality for one reason or another.
But that wasn’t good enough for Nils. “I do! I do know that.” His voice strained pathetically. In any other company, he might have been embarrassed by it. But this was Wilhelm, and Wilhelm knew worse than this. Privately, he’d think about how the hell the future King had become his most trusted confidant, but there was no time for it now in the middle of his exceedingly important gay crisis. “You’d think he would have told me by now. We’ve been friends for, like, five years.”
“Have you told him that you’re gay?” Simon asked. It was a perfectly logical question that was met with a perfectly illogical glare. It was eerily similar to the one Nils had received when he walked into this room. Simon shrunk back against the wall and held Wilhelm tightly in front of him as if for protection. Nils’ glares packed a punch, much unlike the man himself.
“No, I haven’t. But it’s not like I’ve hidden it, either. He knows.” He thought Vincent knew. Vincent refrained from asking him about girls unless Nils brought it up, and he usually looked surprised when he did. Vincent didn’t say anything when Nils brought up the fact that he’d spent the night in another boy’s room. Vincent didn’t bat an eye the first time Nils had accidentally opened Grindr in front of him. Vincent knew. He had to know. If he didn’t know, he wasn’t paying attention.
So, if he knew about Nils’ sexuality, he definitely knew how Nils felt about him. And if he had felt the same, he certainly would have said so before now.
Wilhelm stared blankly at his dear, stupid ass friend. “Nisse, how do you know he hasn’t been doing the same thing to you that you’ve been doing to him?”
“I just do.”
Wilhelm had never wanted to punch Nils in the face more than he did in this moment. He was impatient, and he was annoyed, and he’d had several conversations about a crisis of sexuality with this man before this moment, and he was painfully — painfully — horny for the boy he was sitting with.
And Nils was going to sit there and argue the logistics of a situation he had made up in his head.
Wilhelm wanted to lose his shit.
He never got the chance to actually get up and punch him, though, because Simon spoke up again. In between the two of them, Simon had always been the voice of reason. “Vincent isn’t straight,” he said. A statement, a simple fact.
Nils scoffed at him. “How could you possibly know that?” he asked. If Simon and Nils didn’t get along, there was no way in hell Simon and Vincent got along. Nils and Vincent barely got along most of the time and they were best friends. They bickered about almost everything, but it was just a built in part of the deal. Nils knew damn well that Vincent wasn’t spilling some inner dark secrets to Simon ‘the socialist’ Eriksson. “And don’t say gaydar or some other stupid shit, because even gay people are wrong sometimes.”
“Well, it could be gaydar,” Simon started with a shrug. To be completely honest, it was mostly gaydar. He’d picked up on the fact that Vincent and Nils were not straight on his first day at Hillerska, which was unfortunately what had led to the misguided attempt to befriend them. They were the Bitchy kind of gay and not the Friendly kind of gay, as he had quickly realized. He only grew more confident in his initial assessment the more he got to know them. Sometimes ‘locker room talk’ didn’t seem like just teasing anymore. “It could also be the fact that he constantly says he loves you.”
Nils couldn’t really argue with that point, as much as he wanted to. Vincent did say that a lot. And he’d say it in front of everyone. He would say he loved Nils for practically no reason. Loaned him a math book? He loved Nils. Saved him a seat at lunch? He loved Nils. Showed up for rowing practice on time? He loved Nils. Lost in a game of chess? He loved Nils.
He said so constantly. It was almost a joke at this point. People would say it for him sometimes. They’d beat him to the punchline. But it wasn’t like Vincent only said it to Nils. He’d heard Vincent say it to other people, he was sure. Well, 80% sure, at least.
50%.
Okay, 20%, but who was counting?
Nils was. Nils was counting. “That doesn’t mean anything,” he whispered. He turned his eyes towards his lap and fidgeted with his fingers. It didn’t mean anything because he’d convinced himself it didn’t mean anything, and because he’d never said it back. “It’s friendship love. Like Stella and Fredrika.”
Wille looked up at Simon, who was already staring down at him with furrowed brows. Nils couldn’t be serious. He could not have just said that and meant it. “Stella and Fredrika are super in love with each other, dude.” Simon said.
Nils looked back up at the couple, complete wonder in his eyes. “Really?” He actually did not know. He knew Maddie wasn’t straight, but that was more for his benefit than actually wanting to know — they hooked up once in wlw-mlm solidarity and never talked about it again. Nils didn’t really pay attention to the Manor House girls. For a lot of reasons.
Wilhelm scoffed loudly. The noise filled the room. Nils was a lot of things, and Wilhelm knew that, but he honestly didn’t think Nils was that stupid. Nils had never been oblivious. Not really. In fact, most of the time, he was ten steps ahead of everyone. Nils was an observer. He didn’t get involved in things until he knew exactly where he stood. So for Nils to be this far behind…
“Yes, and they have been in love with each other since before they got here!” Wille announced. Because the closer he got to the girls his age, the more they would tell him, and the more he understood. Stella had been in love with Fredrika since she was in middle school, and Fredrika had fallen sometime in the summer between middle school and Hillerska. They wouldn’t tell each other that, of course. They’d both told Wille, though. A lot of people told Wille a lot of things, actually. Vincent included. He hadn’t planned to use any of that information, but if it would get Nils out of his room faster, he’d sign over the damn throne and his soul attached to it. “And if that still isn’t enough evidence for you, Nils, I’ve heard Vincent fully admit to watching gay porn. Straight guys don’t watch gay porn.”
But Nils was pretty sure he had an argument for that, too. Doors, unfortunately, were often left unlocked here. He’d walked in on more things than he cared to admit. “Henry does.”
“Henry’s not straight!” Simon shouted, running both of his hands over his face. He had well and truly never been this frustrated in his life, and he had been there for Wilhelm’s entire queer crisis. Nils was insufferable before he walked into this room and he was even worse now. “Nils, please, for once, get your head out of your ass and realize that this is boarding school. No one is leaving here without at least one slightly homoerotic experience!”
The older boy looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Fully frozen as he watched Simon’s outburst. Wilhelm had even sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees, head hung because he simply could not believe this shit.
“When did Henry come out?” Nils asked.
“Christmas!” Wille snapped. It was actually one of the few things Wilhelm could remember from that two-week hell in the middle of the school year. It had been big news. Literally every group chat was talking about it, including the Forest Ridge group chat — the group chat that Nils moderated. “Henry came out on Christmas, Nisse! He came out before I did.”
He nearly got up and crossed the room to shake sense into his friend, but Simon, as always, chose to be the voice of reason. “Alright, alright! Look, shouting about our friends’ sexualities isn’t going to get us anywhere.” He let out a sharp breath. To think, only twenty minutes ago, he was high on the promise of getting laid. He would have really liked to get back to that. “Nils, you like Vincent, yes?”
Nils took a useless minute to think about it. He liked Vincent. He’d liked Vincent for a long, long time. He’d been able to talk himself around it, create enough hoops to jump through and do enough mental gymnastics that he’d convinced himself it was nothing more than a codependent friendship. But it had always been a lie. He’d had a crush on Vincent since the day he met him, pink hair and all, and he’d liked Vincent since the day they’d become friends. He’d been in love with Vincent for a while now.
He nodded his head in response to Simon. He couldn’t say anything else. Saying it felt too final. Too permanent.
Simon nodded back slowly. Maybe it was how ashamed Nils looked, or maybe it was the uncertainty he clearly felt, but Simon suddenly pitied him. He didn’t think he’d ever pitied a Forest Ridge boy before. “Okay, so you need to go talk to him about it,” he continued. “You graduate tomorrow, anyway. If it all goes sideways, you never have to see him again.”
“But I want to,” Nils argued. He genuinely didn’t think he’d survive that conversation if it didn’t go well, but he was even more worried about Vincent never wanting to see him again after it. And even if that conversation did go well, he didn’t know what the fuck it would mean. “I want to see him again. I cannot imagine my life without Vince in it. We’re literally going to Uni together.”
“Then it’s not going to go wrong,” Wille said. He’d heard about dozens of Nils’ hookups. He knew the dirty details of every encounter Nils had. He even knew about a brief and failed relationship with Johan.
He had never heard Nils worry about something like this. If Vincent cared about Nils even half as much as Nils cared about Vincent, that conversation would go just fine. He knew that. Even if Vincent didn’t feel the same, he wasn’t going to drop Nils. Not over something like that. Sure, it might be awkward for a little while, but they wouldn’t stop being friends because of it. Vincent was an asshole, but he was better than that.
It wasn’t unrequited, though. Wilhelm could have told him that. Simon could have, too. Vincent being in love with Nils was kind of just a thing everyone knew about but didn’t dare to speak on. Usually because Nils had never talked about it, so they all figured he was the one who didn’t feel the same.
Wille stood off the bed and held his hand out. Nils grabbed it and let himself be pulled to his feet. “I’m scared,” he whispered. Because he was. What if it went wrong? What if he misread the whole thing? What if they did get together, but then it didn’t work out?
“You’ll be fine,” Wille assured him, pulling him towards the door. “Now please, please, go talk to your boyfriend so that I can fuck mine.” He shoved Nils out the door before he had time to argue, slammed it behind him, and then clicked the lock so he couldn’t barge back in. He rested his forehead against the cold wood of the door and took a deep breath. “Simme, mitt hjärta, please take your pants off.”
“Wilhelm, I am way ahead of you.”
When he turned around, Simon was thankfully — thankfully — already naked. He could have stared and admired for the rest of his life, and he would have been perfectly happy with that. Simon was a beautiful person inside and out and god how Wille loved to look. He looked at Simon, completely comfortable in his nakedness, and suddenly knew exactly why so many artists had chosen to immortalize their lovers in such a way.
Right now, as much as he wanted to look, he mostly wanted to touch .
So he took a step forward and reached his hand out to grab his boyfriend and muttered a soft “God I love you” against his lips.