Chapter Text
Wille still doesn’t know why he decided to come back to boarding school for his second year. He had been given the option to return to public life after the scandal had been effectively buried, and he hadn’t made enough friends at Hillerska for the idea of going back to seem appealing. Yet, here he is, rushing down the busy hallway and avoiding any attempts at socializing as he desperately doesn’t want to talk to anyone this early in the morning. And he’s already late. And Mr. Englund is going to kill him. And Malin is hounding his ear off about missing breakfast. And the door is locked. Wille hesitantly reaches up to knock three times, so quiet one could almost miss it. Mr. Englund’s eyes travel over to meet Wille’s through the small window separating him and perfect attendance. With a slight scoff, the practically decaying old man moves to open it.
“If the Crown Prince wasn’t aware, class started fifteen minutes ago.” Wille resists the urge to roll his eyes, instead opting for a tight lipped-trained Crown Prince smile and stepping awkwardly into the classroom.
“I apologize sir, I had..” Wille presses his thumb against the corner of his lips, unconsciously chewing at the skin surrounding his nail bed. “I had princely duties to attend to…” With a smile and a nod of his head, he straightens his shoulders to appear more confident than he felt. “...You know how it is!” Mr. Englund obviously isn’t buying it and by now, concealed snickers could be heard throughout the class. Wille wishes he’d just overslept and missed the first day all together, or he could have everyone in this class charged for treason. The second option was feeling more appealing at that moment.
“The Crown Prince must understand the importance of arriving on time in the future. Please, take a syllabus from the front desk and find a seat.” Mr. Englund signals to his desk where papers are stacked. He nods, grabbing one and turning towards the front of the classroom, only to notice the last empty seat is in the far left corner, isolated from the other desks. Wille sighs, walking through the middle aisle to get to his new seat, stopping when Henry sticks his foot out.
In a mocking British accent, Henry raises his foot and sticks his nose up in the air, “The Crown Prince has graced us with his presence! All jump for joy!” He grabs his pencil and raises it into the air with Walter copying Henry’s actions from beside him.
“I am going to post a tweet from your phone saying you want me dead and frame you for treason.” Wille flicks Henry’s forehead before grabbing the pencil out of his hand and continuing towards the back of the class.
Once he gets settled down and Mr. Englund begins going over the syllabus once again, writing down notes on the board, Wille becomes increasingly more frustrated. He can’t see the front of the board. He can barely see Mr. Englund when he moves to write on it. Even then, Wille is too far from his classmates so he can’t even copy their notes if he wanted to. He has just sentenced himself to a semester of failure all because he wanted to stay up late playing Mario Kart with Felice and sleep through his alarms. It also doesn’t help that Wille probably needs glasses anyways, making his efforts to lean across his desk to get a better look even more useless.
When he finally leaves the class on the first day, he has gained nothing new and will have to refer to the syllabus more than his classmates.
Wille understands he will just have to cope with his poor seat choices, until three weeks later when he receives his grade back on the first quiz of the semester and he’s failed.
“The Crown Prince would benefit from paying attention in class, not just referring to notes.” Mr. Englund has the audacity to say when he, no doubt, is the one who put this stupid seat in the stupid corner anyways with a stupid pole blocking the stupid board.
Wille makes an effort to arrive respectively early the next day and while most of the seats are already full, he is able to snag one. It’s still in the back, but no longer in the corner. Someone who he doesn’t recognize walks in, makes eye contact with him and sighs before moving to his old seat. Wille feels bad, but he really needs to see the board as just listening to the lectures is not cutting it. The seat isn’t very helpful anyways as another student walks in, sitting in front of Wille and effectively blocking a majority of his view of the board and Mr. Englund. He moves his chair over, but is met with the student also moving over, almost as if to mock Wille. As pencil meets paper, Wille is stuck with only listening to lectures once more, as if nothing has changed except now he’s stuck with looking at dark brown curly hair rather than a boring white pole. Wille considers that an upgrade.
They say the third time's the charm. Until Wille walks in, early once again, and the only empty seat is next to Henry and Walter. Seriously, since when did people get to class on time? It’s been a month and a half and people are still not skipping or showing up late, and considering he is early he can only imagine how long the other students have been sitting here. Henry smirks up at Wille as he sits at the desk across the aisle from them. “Why did you take Alexander’s seat? You’re just desperate to sit next to us, aren’t you?” Henry reaches across the aisle to grab Wille’s hand who mockingly rolls his eyes. He brings it up to leave a chapped kiss on the back of the ginger’s hand.
“You caught me. I’m just enamored with the way you two constantly get yelled at and your ability to take notes yet still fail tests and I thought I had to join!” Wille pushes Henry’s hand away and kicks him from across the aisle.
“You’re mean when you become friends with people.” Walter says. Wille flips him off, but lets a slight smile creep to his face. Yes, they are friends. They regularly have movie nights, often resulting in unintentional sleepovers. They have snuck out to smoke weed in the back of Forest Ridge more times than Wille can count. Whenever he’s late for breakfast, they grab him a pastry to scarf down later in the day; Walter once tried to feed it to Wille like he was a mother bird and Wille the baby. They are friends. Wille sometimes can’t stand their inability to be serious, but he cherishes them nonetheless.
Henry looks over at Walter before turning back towards Wille, spreading his arm across the back of the other boy’s chair. “Hope you actually pay attention in class, we have to cheat off you now since you’ve banished Alexander.” Wille can work with that.
Wille can’t work with that.
Two weeks into Henry and Walter bothering him to no end, it finally reaches its peak when Henry shoots a spit ball across the aisle and hits Wille on the side of his head as he is trying to take notes. It drips down to the top of his ear before he can pick it out. Wille quickly turns to throw it back at Henry, ignoring the fact that Mr. Englund is walking through the aisle until it hits the side of his jacket instead. Wille pales, attempting to grab it off of Mr. Englund, yet only spreads the wadded paper ball around more, creating a visible wet mark with hints of white in it. Mr. Englund sighs and walks over to the back of the room to grab a tissue. Wille sinks into his chair and looks over at Henry and Walter, who are both wearing goofy smiles and giving him simultaneous thumbs up’s.
Wille is determined to get a final and better seat. He gets to class fifteen minutes earlier than he has initially been doing and sees Stella already sitting in the otherwise empty space. Wille sits closest to the wall, in the first row. He slouches down in the chair, finally content with his life. Wille turns back towards Stella and watches as she is tediously writing something in her notebook, “Why has everyone been getting to class early literally all semester?”
Stella finally looks up and laughs. “Mr. Englund offers tutoring before class that most of us attend. He just isn’t doing it today because he’s sick or something so he’s coming in later.” Wille nods and turns back to the front of his desk. “People also are afraid you’re gonna take their seat and they know they can’t do anything because why would anyone tell the future king of Sweden to move?” Wille turns back around.
“Do people seriously think I’m doing it to be mean?” Stella shrugs. “I just have such shitty luck with finding a right seat, it stresses me out.” Wille rests his head on his arms across the back of his chair.
“That’s such a weird thing to be stressed over considering you are literally going to run the country. Whatever, but I don’t think your chair struggle is stopping today.” Before Wille can reply, he hears a cough next to him and he looks up to see a curly haired olive-skinned figure standing over him with his arms crossed. He’s wearing a bright orange “Looney Toons” shirt and a purple flannel. Wille doesn’t think they go very well together, but he wears the same white, heart, sweater pretty much everyday so he shouldn’t be one to judge. Wille jolts up, straightening his sweater and desperately trying to commit this boy’s features to memory.
“I know we don’t have assigned seats or anything, and you think you can just take everyone’s because you’re the Crown Prince or whatever, but this is my seat.” The boy points down at the chair and motions for Wille to get out of it. Wille is taken aback and flushed cherry red, he recognizes him from the choir yet never realized he was in this class. Wille had been silently obsessed with him since the Opening Day Ceremony. Why would Wille not know his not-yet-named crush was in his least favorite class? Why had Wille been so focused on stupid academics when he could’ve been flirting? Already too embarrassed with the whole situation, he doesn’t even say anything before standing up and moving his things to sit next to the boy, remaining at the same table.
From the back of the room, Stella falls over laughing and more students pile in also laugh. “You could’ve been nicer about it, Simon.” Simon turns to look back at Stella. Wille notices Simon has a faint scar across the back of his eyebrow and his curls reach just the end of his neck, some disappearing into his flannel collar. Simon. Simon. Simon.
“My taxes are what’s paying for him to go here and I don’t catch the earlier bus just for him to take my seat anyways.” Simon talks about Wille like he isn’t sitting right next to him. Wille desperately wants to run his thumb between the middle of Simon’s well-defined eyebrows and unfurrow them. Simon. Simon’s slightly stubbled jawline. Simon’s defined cheekbones. Simon’s full lips that just insulted Wille twice with only two sentences.
“You’re seventeen and unemployed, you don’t pay taxes.” Stella rolls her eyes and turns back to her notebook, effectively ending the conversation. Simon turns back towards the front, still ignoring Wille. The only time he even looked at him was to tell him to move. Wille craves that attention again. He wants to be the one to light the flame behind Simon’s deep-set dark brown eyes. He wants to intertwine their feet under the table after Simon reluctantly lets him sit close. He wants to argue about the damn chair every day if it means Simon will acknowledge him.
The next day, Wille arrives before Simon and sits down with a new bounce in his step. He hums while taking out his pencil and notebook. Simon walks in only a couple minutes later, sighing as he sees Wille in his seat. “What did we talk about yesterday?” Simon stands above Wille once again, glaring down at him. Wille looks up and smiles politely, refusing the urge to giggle because oh my god Simon is looking at him and he looks so pretty when he’s angry and his yellow sweater doesn’t quite match his checkered pants but who cares because it’s Simon.
Wille looks up and in a moment wants to back down, give Simon the seat and move to the back out of embarrassment but he powers through, patting the chair next to him. “I don’t see your name on it, so I’d say it’s free reign.” Wille leans back, pretending like he doesn’t want to give Simon everything he ever wants ever. Simon rolls his eyes in response before pushing Wille’s arm off the chair and taking his seat. Wille is on fire. His body is a burning ember and Simon is the lighter. “I thought you’d give more of a fight…”
Simon looks towards Wille, who’s fighting to ignore how close their faces are now. “Guess you can’t always get what you want, Crown Prince.” With that, he pulls out his notebook and Wille takes the hint to stop talking.
Wille feels Simon’s touch on his hand for the rest of the day.