• •

⁠♡|| how can we go back to being friends? (wilmon)

inspired by the song by Sombr.

The sheets were still warm where Simon had been lying. Wilhelm sat at the edge of the bed, hands tangled in his own blond hair, staring at the floor as if it held answers. The ceiling above was bare, but he couldn’t forget how it had looked with Simon underneath him—eyes dark, mouth open with something like trust and something deeper that Wilhelm didn’t know how to hold.

Now the silence roared.

Simon pulled his purple hoodie on slowly, tugging it over the bruises Wilhelm had left with his mouth. The ones that wouldn’t be visible in class, but still felt too loud to hide.

“You okay?” Simon asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Wilhelm didn’t answer.

“Wille,” he said again. This time softer. Kinder.

Wilhelm turned, brown eyes glassy. “How can we go back to being friends?”

Simon froze. The weight of the question landed like a stone between them.

“I mean..” Wilhelm swallowed hard. “We just—”

“I know,” Simon interrupted. “I was there.”

The silence stretched again.

“It’s just..” Wilhelm pressed his fingers into his temple. “I want to be close to you. Always. But I don’t know what that means anymore. For you. For me. For.. all of it.”

Simon sat down beside him. The bed dipped, familiar and cruel.

“We said it wouldn’t mean anything,” Simon said, even though his voice cracked. “We said it was just..”

But the words crumbled halfway out of his mouth.

“You laid on my chest,” Wilhelm whispered, like a confession. “Last December. I didn’t even breathe because I didn’t want you to move. That wasn’t nothing.”

Simon blinked hard. His fingers twitched at his side. He didn’t take Wilhelm’s hand.

“Then what do you want?”

The question landed with such brutal honesty that Wilhelm flinched.

He didn’t know.

He wanted Simon in the dark, in the quiet, in the in-between. But he also wanted to be the prince his older brother never got to be. He wanted a world where they didn’t have to choose between duty and each other.

“I want..” He looked up at Simon, and his voice cracked like glass. “I want this not to hurt.”

Simon stood. “Then you shouldn’t have kissed me like you meant it.”

And just like that, he was gone.

Wilhelm sat in the aftermath—white shirt wrinkled, heart breaking quietly under the weight of a bed that would always feel too empty or too full.

Because once you've had someone's breath against your skin, how do you pretend you never met?