Chapter Text
“I can’t keep skipping,” Simon says as he climbs the bleachers to where Wille is already sitting. It’s the third day in a row he’s come out here instead of going to his bio class and at this point he isn’t sure if he’s ever going to go back. The school hasn’t called home yet about it, or if they have Kristina hasn’t yet brought it up. Besides, he’s always hated science.
“Ok.”
“I’m free at lunch though,” Simon continues, and Wille blinks at him, surprised, “so we can meet then if you like. I just can’t afford to skip anymore than I already do.”
“Wha-oh,” Wille realizes, “spanish. I forgot you never come.”
“Yeah,” Simon agrees, making a noise somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, “not like I need it. El español es mi primer idioma.”
Wille manages a faint grin. It’s strange the herculean effort it takes to get his lips to turn up at the corners, but he’s come to realize he likes Simon enough to try and pretend he can be normal.
“So, what d’you say? You down to meet at lunch tomorrow?”
Wille is used to spending his lunch idly people watching in the cafeteria or sitting alone in the library, watching the custodian flirt with the library assistant. Both are boring but safe ways to spend his lunch break.
If these past two days have taught him anything, it’s that nothing about Simon is safe.
“Sure, that works.”
**********
He finds Simon the next day, sitting on the bleachers, tongue caught between his front teeth as he scribbles on a page of textbook problems. Wille doesn’t know the class but the amount of letters mixed in with the numbers makes his head hurt just looking at it. Simon puts it away though, as soon as he notices Wille making his way over to him, and offers him a blinding grin.
It's the start of something much bigger.
Lunch with Simon becomes a thing before Wille realizes it's a thing. It sneaks up on him, until one day he realizes how much he’s looking forward to seeing Simon and quickly crushes the feeling away, throwing it down into the gaping cavity where his heart used to be.
Some days they talk. Some days- when Wille is feeling at his least human- they don’t. Simon shows up anyway, everyday without fail, and Wille wonders if this is enough for them to be considered friends. It's a strange dynamic, one that scares him, but a solid one nevertheless.
Wille learns that Simon loves music more than anything else in the world, but he rarely has time to practice. That he likes singing best, but he’s always wanted to learn guitar, just doesn’t have the time. The reason he skips Spanish so often is because he works nearly full time hours at the McDonald’s near his apartment building, and Spanish is a class he can afford to skip on the regular and still pass. He loves math and science, but despises English with a passion. He talks about his mother and older sister with such adoration it makes Wille feel a little sick.
Usually, Wille is content to just let Simon talk. The curly haired boy is a chatterbox, and often Wille can get him to monologue for the whole hour long lunch. Simon is curious though, and he asks questions, and more often than not Wille finds himself answering. He tells Simon about the move to America, about his mother’s company, all the little observations he makes throughout the day. Its surface level, especially compared to everything Simon shares with him, but it's all he can offer. Simon doesn’t seem to mind.
He doesn’t tell him about Erik or dad or his mother’s dead eyed stare. For one thing, they are easiest to forget when he’s looking at Simon’s smile and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. For another, he hasn’t once spoken Erik’s name since he died, and isn’t going to start now, not even for the closest thing he’s had to a friend in years.
*************
“Why do you always sit with me?”
“Hm?” Simon blinks, pulling an earbud out of his ear, “Sorry?”
“Why do you always sit with me?” Wille repeats. They’re on the bleachers as usual, the last of the summer sunshine high in the sky, trying to trick them into believing fall isn’t quickly approaching.
“Do you not want me to?” Simon looks confused and a little hurt, and Wille isn’t really sure why, but rushes to reassure him nevertheless.
“That’s not what I said. Just…it’s not like I’m great company. Don’t you have other friends?”
Simon shrugs, “not here at least.”
His confusion must show on his face because Simon laughs and shoves his shoulder companionably. “You really didn’t notice? You who notices everything, never clocked into the fact I don’t talk to anyone else at this school?”
The truth is, Wille didn’t. He’s memorized every aspect of Simon’s appearance, from his forever messy curls to his scuffed converse to his broken backpack, but he never considered that someone so lively might be as lonely as him.
“Why?”
Simon looks away, twirling a curl around his finger. “I dunno. Never really clicked with anyone I guess. I used to sit with my sister but she has her own friends here and I always felt like I was intruding.”
“Besides,” he meets Wille’s gaze, smiling blindingly, the one that's soft and sweet and all kinds of terrifying, “I like sitting with you.”
And that’s that.
*****************
The thing about noticing everything is that once you start you can never stop. Wille noticed Simon awhile ago, but he knows him now, and with knowing comes feeling.
Wille refuses to feel, so he stops noticing. He stops noticing the many ways Simon fidgets, the way he has more freckles on his right cheek than his left, the endearing way he gestures with his hands when he speaks, and every failed haphazard fix to his backpack. He stops going to the bleachers during lunch, and goes back to noticing people in his classes.
His lab partner in chemistry has lost her gucci sunglasses but her eyes are as tired as ever. The angry boy from detention is only ever kind to one of the freshmen, a boy with huge grey eyes who looks at him with a sort of hero worship. The smart girl from his math class is Simon’s beloved sister, and they share the same curly hair and none of the same life.
There is a girl in his english class whose knee bounces as much as Simon’s always does without half the ease. Four people in his homeroom have yellow backpacks, but none of them have a broken strap like Simon’s does.
He notices he misses Simon. He isn’t supposed to miss Simon. He isn’t supposed to care.
He goes back to the bleachers.
Simon is there, working on homework for that math class that still gives Wille a headache. His leg isn’t bouncing, and he isn’t wearing his earbuds, his frame far stiller than Wille is used to.
For once, the boy full of life doesn’t look so lively.
Simon looks up when he steps onto the bleachers, his expression darkening. Wille fights the urge to recoil- he has never been on the receiving end of Simon’s anger before, and finds he doesn’t like it. Perhaps it is a good thing- if Simon hates him now, he will not be able to make the choice he is trying to make, will not make the mistake he knows can only end badly.
“What the hell, Wille?” Simon’s anger is explosive but breathtaking, the life Wille couldn’t see a minute ago bursting out and surrounding him like a halo, “You could’ve at least told me what I did before just straight up ghosting me for a week!”
“I’m sorry,” Wille says, because he is, because he forgot that Simon still feels things properly, and that for some reason Simon sees him as a friend. He didn’t realize until this moment that his behaviour had hurt him, didn’t think it was possible for someone as half human as him to hurt someone as effervescent as Simon. “I won’t do it again.”
But Simon is still gloriously angry.
“ Why Wille? I've been going crazy all week trying to figure out what I did but whenever I saw you in the hall to try and ask you, you practically ran in the other direction at the sight of me!”
Wille sighs. If he is going to do this, he must do it properly. He feels bad enough about hurting Simon, and he is going to make sure he doesn’t do it again
“You didn’t do anything,” he tells him, but that only seems to make Simon even more upset. “I promise.”
He forgot how complicated feelings make everything.
“Then why? Why ghost me? I mean I thought-” he scrubs a hand through his curls, pacing back and forth on the top bench, “-I thought we were friends , and then you just cut me off with no explanation, and I-”
He cuts himself off, swallowing harshly. “You owe me an explanation. I don’t deserve to be treated like this.”
“You don’t,” Wille agrees, “and I will explain. If you’ll let me.”
Simon sizes him up with those burning gold eyes and Wille knows without a shadow of a doubt that there is no way he can have this conversation and it not be like throwing himself off a cliff.
“Fine.”
Hesitantly, Wille climbs to the top of the bleachers and takes his usual place. Simon huffs, but drops down beside him.
“I-” Wille starts, staring down at the frayed strap of Simon’s bag, the one he’d somehow missed looking at, “I’m not good at this.”
“At what?”
“Being friends.”
Simon snorts. “Well that’s obvious.”
“You don’t understand,” Wille pleads, “I thought- I mean, I was convinced you wouldn’t even care if I didn’t show. I thought you wouldn’t notice, or if you did somehow care you’d get over it pretty quick.”
“Wille,” Simon gives him an unimpressed look, “what have I ever done to give you the impression I don’t want you around.”
“Nothing,” Wille assures him, and it's the truth, “but I’m not good at seeing stuff like that. I’m not good at…feeling.”
“Jesus,” Simon huffs out a soft laugh, “I really wanna be your friend, you know? I’m trying but damn it Wille, you don’t make it easy.”
“I know.” Wille confesses, “and that was by design. I wanted to keep people away, I didn’t want to feel…”
“To feel what?”
“ Anything. I didn’t want to feel anything, so when I realized I actually like you I-I got scared.”
Simon is quiet for a minute, before he shakes his head, a spark of amusement finally back in his eyes. “You only just realized you like me? Wille we’ve been hanging out for two months!”
Wille feels himself flush. “Sorry.”
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. You’re forgiven.”
“I am?” he’s more surprised than he cares to admit. Simon’s forgiveness does not seem like something that should be so easy to earn.
“Yeah dumbass, you are. But,” his voice turns abruptly serious, “if you ever ghost me again we’re done, understand? If we’re gonna be friends you gotta talk to me.”
Wille nods. That seems more than fair, and talking has never been quite so exhausting with Simon as it is with everyone else.
“And we’re gonna work on your self confidence issues,” Simon adds as an afterthought, “I can’t believe you really thought I wouldn’t care if you stopped showing up.”
“What self confidence issues?” He says just to make Simon laugh– and he does, throwing his head back, curls going every which way.
This, Wille knows, is the point of no return.
They lapse into silence- not a charged one, but the warm, familiar one he’s missed every day since he last ate lunch with Simon.
“What did you mean before,” Simon says, breaking their silence as the warning bell rings, “about not wanting to feel anything?”
Wille blinks at him. They are friends again, and if he is going to do this properly he is going to have to be honest sometimes. When he can.
“It’s safer.”
“What’s so dangerous about feelings?”
Wille’s breath catches. “ Everything .”
Someone like Simon, someone made of his feelings, who found comfort in expressing each and every one of his emotions, could never understand.
Feeling was the most dangerous thing on earth.
***********
Things change after their fight. Wille has resolved to try harder and he does, spends more time talking, tries to be engaged rather than simply present. Simon glows under the newfound attention, smiles brighter, laughs louder. It’s fun, something Wille hasn’t allowed himself in so long, but it is also so tiring . It never feels like it in the moment, but if Wille thought life was exhausting before it was nothing compared to now when he unbottles his feelings just enough to care about Simon and then squishes them away as soon as he is no longer held captive by Simon’s mere presence. Even only speaking of happy things, hiding away from the bad memories, it's hard feeling anything after being so numb for so long. When he gets home he goes to sleep immediately, barely manages to drag himself out from beneath the covers each morning.
He finds himself caring less and less about anything but lunch with Simon. Rare are the days now when he gets home and does homework and eating becomes an afterthought. His mother still pulls long hours, but lately her hollow gaze seems to focus on him every so often before becoming fuzzy once again. She is still trying, clawing herself towards functionality, but Wille knows it will be short lived. She has become half human before and become a shell again shortly afterwards.
The world is still grey but now there is a bright spot in it. He wonders how much longer until Simon’s warmth burns him beyond repair.
*******
A heavy smog of dread settles over the house as the anniversary of Erik and dad’s death draws near, creeping through the gaps in the ceiling tiles and drifting through the vents. Kristina pulls even longer hours at work, and Wille spends more time on the bleachers- often with Simon- starts waiting to sleep in favour of doing homework at the library, doing anything and everything to keep himself distracted. Time however, is still cruel, and the day still comes, a crisp fall morning who’s buttery sunshine seems to mock him as darkness crawls up his throat, threatening to choke him. He doesn’t make a move to get out of bed, memories of Erik’s laugh and his dad’s calm smile interspersing with the way mama’s voice broke when she first told him about the accident, the beeping of machines in the hospital that couldn’t save either of them, the stark finality of the caskets being lowered into the ground. He stares at the wall, unable and unwilling to face anything today.
This is the third time he has had to do this, the third time he has had to fight through this day. So far it hasn’t become any easier. He is sure it never will.
When he gets up to use the bathroom he finds his mother on the couch, wrapped in dad’s old housecoat, staring blankly at her lap. He draws closer and realizes it’s not her lap she’s staring at but a card Erik made her for mother’s day when he was ten.
Swallowing heavily, he pads silently across the room and climbs onto the couch beside her. Hesitantly, he lays his head on her shoulder and cuddles into her side, looking at the words Erik wote. He reaches out, brushing the paper Erik once touched with the pad of his thumb.
Mama heaves a shaky breath, wrapping an arm around him and squeezing tight for a moment.
They stay like that for the rest of the day, neither one of them saying a word.
*********
The next day Wille pushes any thoughts of his fractured family and shuffles to school, more zombielike than he’s been in months.
He forgot how much easier it is, fighting through fog but feeling nothing rather than trying in any capacity. Yesterday had torn through him like a knife but now he can go back to apathy, go back to pretending to everyone who doesn’t know him that his family never existed.
The sliver of sun coming from the window travels across the floor of his classrooms, teachers talk, people live, and before he knows it it’s lunchtime.
The walk to the bleachers seems longer than usual. He remembers what happened the last time he hadn’t shown up to the when Simon was expecting him and wonders if this time once Simon is done yelling if he will leave.
He doesn’t want Simon to leave. As much as he refuses to feel today and maybe ever again, he still doesn’t want to lose Simon.
The boy in question blinks at him as he approaches, cocking his head slightly to one side. He does that often, WIlle has noticed, when he is confused or thinking very hard about something.
He doesn’t seem angry.
“Hey,” Simon greets, his demeanor that of someone approaching a wounded animal. Wille isn’t entirely sure as to why, “are you ok?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t here yesterday.” It’s not an accusation, but Wille’s stomach still twists unpleasantly at the reminder, “I even went to spanish to see if you’d be there.”
Wille doesn’t say anything, just climbs to his usual spot next to Simon, presses their sides together, trying to be inconspicuous, but of course Simon notices, pressing close and throwing a careless arm over his shoulders. Simon gives affection as easily as he gives his smiles, freely and recklessly, and WIlle forgot until yesterday how much he craves physical touch, how little of it he typically receives. Luckily, Simon doesn’t question it, offers it as easily as he offered his friendship.
“You’re not yourself,” Simon says after a few minutes have passed. He has yet to open his frayed yellow backpack to get his lunch. Instead, his arm is still a comforting pressure around Wille's shoulders, his hand rubbing soothingly up and down. “Talk to me.”
It’s strange how desperately he wants to, how Simon’s gentle demand is a sort of permission he rarely gets.
“My brother died yesterday,” Wille murmurs eventually. Simon stiffens, “not yesterday this year. Three years ago. But he still…he still died yesterday.”
“Oh shit,” Simon breathes, squeezing his shoulder a little tighter, “Wille I’m sorry.”
“It’s…” he can’t say it’s okay. It will never be anything close to being ok. “It’s…”
He can feel panic threatening to choke him, and no longer wants to talk. How can he explain? How will he ever explain this? There are no words, really, to describe how thoroughly losing Erik has destroyed him.
“Shh,” Simon murmurs, “you’re ok. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…you don’t need to talk. You’ll be ok. I got you.”
Hesitantly, Wille rests his head on Simon’s shoulder, feels a featherlight brush of lips against his temple.
They stay like that for the rest of lunch.
***************
The months after the anniversary of dad and Erik’s death are always fraught, but there is something different about this year, something sharp and dark creeping through him. It’s like there is a tidal wave in his heart barely restrained by a dam that gets weaker with each passing day. Wille doesn’t understand why, and he refuses to acknowledge it.
If he is more robotic than he has ever been, Simon doesn’t mention it, but he does get gentler, his reassuring touches more frequent, his chatter softer, and Wille gets the feeling that somehow Simon knows a lot about grief.
He tries not to think about it too much. The notion of someone as bright as Simon knowing what it's like to lose someone so completely is almost more than he can take. Even worse, is the thought that Simon could have lost how he lost and somehow managed to remain more human than Wille believed possible.
Sleep is still his favourite escape. Rarely does he dream, or if he does he doesn’t remember it. When he’s asleep he does not have to focus on thinking about anything but Erik, doesn’t have to try and figure out how to be friends with Simon, doesn’t have to watch his mother as she tries and he refuses to.
Of course, sometimes participating in his charade of a life is inevitable.
“I’m worried about you,” Kristina says one night over dinner. It’s a new habit she’s gotten into that started two months ago, just a few weeks after the anniversary. She doesn’t work late every night like she had ever since the accident. Now, she gets home early on Mondays and Fridays and they have dinner together, food that’s usually a bit more involved than pasta and sauce or their forever hasty breakfasts, “you’re getting too skinny. Are you eating properly?”
“Yes,” Wille scoops up a bite of rice pilaf as if to demonstrate, “see?”
“You’ve lost a lot of weight. You know your dad–“
Wille freezes, and Kristina closes her mouth with an audible snap, looking for all the world like Wille feels- like she’s just been punched. They don’t talk about dad. They don’t talk about Erik. Ever .
It makes it more horrible somehow. Not more real- the loss is so starkly real it’s impossible to forget- but acknowledging them makes it worse, reminds them what they’ve lost.
“Wille-“ Kristina starts, but he’s already upstairs shutting the door to his room to keep her out. Too keep everything out.
The thing about ghosts though, is that doors don’t really do much to keep them away.
**************
Wille wished that had been the end of it, but it wasn’t. Kristina starts keeping an eye on him, making sure he’s eating breakfast, packing him a lunch when she realizes he has neither the energy nor the will to do it himself, and getting home more and more often to watch him eat dinner. He wonders what has changed to make her suddenly act as if she has woken up from a trance, and eats what he’s handed without complaint, too tired to argue.
He still sleeps every second he can and it’s never enough. He’s so tired .
The wave pressing against his sternum is still there, working hard to break through a dam that’s withering and withering but not yet broken. It feels like walking on a tightrope, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Wille wonders if this is what it means to go insane.
Simon becomes his lifeline, more and more of an escape from reality. The school’s bleachers become a haven, a strange sort of bubble where real life doesn’t exist.
Or at least, that’s what Wille convinced himself they were, until Simon invites him to hang out one day after school, and when Wille follows him to the tiny apartment he shares with his family, the same sort of barrier is there. How stupid of him to have believed the bleachers to be his refuge, when it has only ever been Simon.
“One day,” Simon whispers, once they’re lying side by side on his floor, so full of pabellón criollo Wille isn’t sure he’ll ever move again, “after I’ve learned guitar and how to read sheet music, I’m going to release all my own music, and play at coachella or eurovision, and everything will be perfect.”
He confesses it like a secret, his conviction a wonderful sort of promise, and Wille can’t help but think what a magnificent, magical future it is, a perfect fit for this magnificent, magical boy.
“Will you bring Sara and your mother with you?”
“Obviously,” Simon says, tilting his head so his soft curls tickle Wille’s cheeks, “and you’re coming too of course. You can’t get away from me that easily.”
Wille can feel a rare smile tug at his lips, “Yeah? And what’ll I do? Be your groupie? Sell t-shirts?”
“You can be my groupie,” Simon agrees magnanimously, the mischief Wille can’t help but adore alive and bright in his eyes, “you’d look good in a t-shirt with my face on it.”
Wille can’t help but laugh.
He hasn’t thought about the future in years…but being Simon’s groupie doesn’t seem like such a bad idea at all.
***********
Dinner with Kristina on Mondays and Fridays quickly grows to be the bane of Wille’s paltry existence.
It wouldn’t be such a problem, Wille thinks, if she hadn’t seemed to have shaken off the fog that still clung to him anytime Simon wasn’t in his vicinity. She tries to start conversations with him, but Wille doesn’t want to talk. He is tired enough as it is, has no strength for conversation left after his lunch breaks with Simon.
Right now they’re eating shepherd’s pie and Wille is studiously avoiding eye contact. The clink of silverware is jarring in the otherwise silent room.
“Wille,” Kristina breaks the silence, “listen, we uh, we need to talk.”
Wille bites back a sigh. He hates talking- unless it’s to Simon. To anyone else it’s too much effort. Always too much effort.
“Ok.”
“I know,'' Kristina clears her throat, shifting awkwardly, and Wille’s stomach sinks. He’d hoped that this would be short and relatively painless. Most of her attempts at conversation usually were. Apparently it’s going to be neither. “I know you and I- well, we’re neither of us good at talking about feelings, are we?”
“No,” Wille agrees, “we aren’t.”
The words she doesn’t say hang heavy in the air. Dad and Erik, they were always the feelings people in their family. He and his mother have always preferred to keep quiet, to handle things introspectively instead of talking them through.
“Yeah,” she heaves a shaky breath, steeling herself, “but I think we gotta change that, Wille. I think we need to start talking.”
“Why?” He is happy like this. Well, not happy- he hasn’t been happy in years- but content, safe . He decided a long time ago that it was better to live inside his head than to let himself feel things. He certainly doesn’t want to talk about feelings he’s ignored so completely he sometimes gets the blissful comfort of forgetting they exist.
“Wille, it’s been three years.” She says, and WIlle’s breath catches. “ Three awful years and it still feels like yesterday. You’re skin and bones- Christ, I can’t remember the last time you said more than three words in row without being prompted. And I- I still can’t-” her voice breaks, a tear slipping down her cheek and Wille can’t help but notice the irony of the fact that the fear that goes through him at the sight of it can’t be ignored, “I still can’t sleep without-”
“-Don’t.” He cuts her off, harshly, cruelly . He doesn’t want to hear her talk about dad or Erik or the accident or any of it. This is why he doesn’t want to talk about his feelings- because if he does, the soul crushing misery that choked him after the accident and before the move will destroy him, clawing him apart from the inside out, the same misery that he is watching crush her right now.
“See?” Mama says, and she’s still crying and Wille hates it because she is supposed to be like him, is supposed to carry on with the same numbness he does so the last remaining vestiges of their family and their sanity don’t get wiped away, “You still can’t hear their names and I still see them everywhere. We’ve tried everything else, Wilhelm- we’ve boxed up their stuff, moved across the country. I’ve buried myself in work, you’ve lost yourself in your own head and it’s not working . Nothing is working and we are crumbling apart and I wont lose you too .”
“I’m not-” Wille starts, because despite the lines on his thighs, that sometimes he still wants to sleep forever, and the fact that Simon had once had to drag him out of the path of a moving car, he doesn’t really want to die.
“Wille,” mama gives him a look and it's so deeply knowing that he wonders if he’s been as good at hiding things as he convinced himself he was. He realizes how stupid he’s been- mama might have been as cold as him the past three years, but she is not and has not ever been stupid. He prides himself on being observant but somehow never noticed that she is too, “alskling. You’re always sleeping, you hardly eat, hell you’re failing half your classes, and skipping school at least once a week. And I-I admit I haven’t supported you the way I should have the past three years, and I take responsibility for that, but you’re not ok. You and me- we’re both not ok. But we need to work on that.”
“Why?” Wille asks again, he can feel tears pricking at his eyes and feels panic climb up his throat when he realizes he can’t force them back, “I don’t- it's better this way. It’s better not to feel it, I don’t want to feel it mama. I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to miss them. What if-” he swallows a sob so harshly he ends up hiccuping instead, “what if I can’t do it?”
“Do what baby?” mama asks, running a hand through his hair, and Wille leans into the touch with the same desperation as a drowning man clinging to a buoy.
“Live without them,” Wille whispers, and the dam breaks.
He cries and cries and cries, his mother’s arms tight around him and not nearly enough to hold him together.
He sobs until he falls asleep.
*************
The therapist's office is warm and cozy, for all it’s impersonal. A soft blue rug covers the floor, and plants line the windowsill. A small box of fidget toys sit on the small coffee table between two plush armchairs.
It does not make Wilhelm any more comfortable.
The therapist is an older man with greying hair and kind eyes. When he introduces himself, his accent is as Swedish as Wille’s own and he internally curses his mother. He forgot how cunningly smart she is- it seems, now that she is seeing a therapist of her own she is starting to return to herself, the person she used to be.
He should have figured she’d choose someone like Boris to be his therapist, someone she must have known he’d like immediately.
“I’m not going to talk about my brother.” Wille tells him before Boris can say much of anything, because he isn’t , “I don’t care what you say. I won’t.”
Boris smiles at him kindly, “that’s fine Wilhelm. You don’t have to talk about anything you’re not comfortable with.”
Wille regards him for a moment, noticing the elbow patches on his sweater and the half empty mug of tea beside him.
“You can call me Wille.”
“Ok Wille. Is there anything you do want to talk about?”
Wille thinks about it. He doesn’t like talking, doesn’t want to talk- but mama made him promise he’d try, and when he told Simon about it at lunch even he’d seemed to think it this whole therapy thing was a good idea.
“I…I have a friend.”
If he must talk about something, Simon is probably the easiest thing to talk about.
Boris’ kind smile deepens, settling into a welcoming, grandfatherly sort of look.
“Tell me about him.”
Wille does.
**********
It’s two full months worth of weekly sessions before Wille brings up Erik. When he does, Boris’ proud smile and mama’s warm hug when he’s finished make it almost seem worth it.
He tells Simon about it at lunch. The brown eyed boy hugs him tightly and for the first time in forever Wille allows himself to believe that one day things might be alright.
*************
He comes back to himself slowly. Therapy helps, and so does mama, but mostly it’s because of Simon. Simon, who never pushes him on the days when he is blank and emotionless, unable to face the world. Who holds him when he rages and screams and cries, and never judges him, not even for a second. Simon, who listens to him talk about dad, about Erik, and who remembers everything, every single detail. Simon, who reminds him every day that he is real and solid and human . Simon, who helps him remember what it’s like to really live.
One day he’s laughing with mama at the dinner table, the two of them reminiscing about what they miss about Sweden- his mama has been careful to talk only about the culture not the people - and Wille realizes he’s been thinking about dad all dinner and it hasn’t punched the breath out of him once.
A week later, he and mama are in the mall when she makes an offhand comment about how much Erik would like a jacket hanging in one of the shop windows. She freezes, giving him a slightly alarmed glance, no doubt remembering the last time she mentioned one of them at that dinner so many months ago. She’s doing better than him, headstrong as she’s always been, is able to face things he still struggles with- mainly talking about Erik.
Today is a good day though.
“I think you’re right,” he smiles at her, and she visibly relaxes. Her proud, slightly sad smile is too much for him to take at the moment so he looks back at the jacket. Blue corduroy, lined with fleece, cool and comfortable looking. It’s exactly the type of thing Erik would have worn.
He buys the jacket.
**************************
Wilhelm has always been observant. Lately, he’s noticed three things.
The first is that his therapist is right- he can only do things one day at a time. Recently, that thought does not seem as daunting as it once did.
The second is that his mother loves him, and he loves her. He had forgotten for a while, but it is clear to him now that the only reason she bothered to stay even half alive after losing dad was for him.
The third- and most important thing- is that he is happy, and while it feels like a miracle, the truth is that it was hard work, that he clawed his way back to humanity and to life even if he might have broken a piece of himself in doing so. That he is here because he chose to be. He still misses Erik and dad- always will- but at least now he lets himself miss them, and it doesn’t feel like his heart is being torn out of his chest.
He stands in the front row of the school auditorium, cheering Simon on as he sings- a necessary first step to superstardom, Simon had told him earlier- and glows.
The future never looked so bright.