Chapter Text
It’s always the dumbest shit that sets him off. A classmate wearing checkered Vans. Handwriting that’s oddly familiar. The faintest whiff of citrus. And today, Felice’s kind gesture. She’d seen him leave the lunchroom only minutes into the meal to take a call from the palace; she recognizes Farima’s ringtone as well as he does by now. She’d known that whatever it was, the call would probably consume the entire hour. So, she’d made sure he’d have something to eat later, and she’d grabbed the most portable option available, a ham sandwich. He’s grateful to her for watching out for him, and grateful to fate it wasn’t anyone else, because Felice is the only person in this school he doesn’t mind tearing up in front of, the only one he can tell why.
Not that it’s easy to explain why the napkin-wrapped sandwich makes him cry. It sounds so, so stupid, said out loud. Those few times he’d secretly packed a breakfast for Simon, and Simon’s birthday present. He does his best not to let that memory lead him further astray, to Simon’s other, belated birthday present. The one he definitely can’t afford to think about in the middle of a school day. But maybe Felice doesn’t think it’s stupid, because she just hugs him tighter and makes the same wordless, sympathetic sounds she always does. And maybe that’s the worst part, that he and Felice have done this so many times in the past few months, that she’s had to comfort him through so many bursts of Simon-related tears, that words are no longer necessary. She gets why he’s sad, she gets there’s nothing helpful to be said, she gets that he just needs to be held for a minute while he gathers his wits back around him.
In a few minutes, Wilhelm will unwrap himself from his best and possibly only remaining friend. He’ll eat his ham sandwich while they walk to their afternoon classes, and he’ll be glad, for the millionth time, that at least he’d ended up here, in Stockholm with Felice, and not at the Ecole Chantecler. It had taken weeks of negotiation, but in the end his mother and her court had conceded that staying home would allow him to keep up his Crown Prince studies. Home – he hates calling it that. His assigned rooms in the fucking depressing palace he’s doomed to inherit. But somehow that still beats starting over in Switzerland with a new collection of phonies and sycophants and not a single friendly face.
It’s just a stupid sandwich. It’s just another memory not to dwell on. Next time, he won’t cry. He tells himself that, and maybe it’s true the next sandwich he sees won’t set him off. But something will. Something else just as unexpected, just as silly, just as hard to explain to anyone but Felice. He’s been wandering this minefield long enough to accept the tripwires are as invisible as they are legion. He tells himself the only way out is through; he does not let himself ponder the dimensions of the minefield.
The next time Wilhelm misses lunch, Felice grabs him a granola bar. It doesn’t stop him thinking of sandwiches, but it does remind him he’s not alone in this. And that is progress.