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Boris asks Wille when he first started picking at his skin. No matter how hard he tries, Wille can’t remember.
There were times when he would mindlessly pull at his fingers in middle school, but that wasn’t so bad. He always just assumed it was a regular bad habit, of course, his mother made it clear that wasn’t very becoming of Sweden’s little prince.
One day, before some elitist gala event Wille had no interest in, he really started to notice. Wilhelm was perched on the edge of his bed, and couldn’t stop picking. It was like he wasn’t in his own body, simply watching what was unfolding before him. He’s not sure how much time passed before Kristina screamed his name from downstairs, blabbering on about being late and insulting the monarchy. The prince stayed glued to his bed in a sort of trance, and it took 10 minutes for the episode to end.
Sometimes he’d chew, other times he’d pull.
***
“Simon,” he whispers with a quietly alarming sense of urgency. “Help, I can’t stop it.” He can feel his breath becoming short and sporadic, desperately pulling in for air that doesn’t seem to exist. Why is my shirt so fucking sticky. It’s boiling hot in here. He can’t stop picking.
He needs someone to tear his arms away from him, stretch them until he can’t feel them anymore. Wille knows that sounds unhealthy, but he can’t explain what he’s feeling.
“You have a lot of stress that you need to release.”
“What?” Wille snaps back into reality, remembering he is, in fact, in the middle of a session. Wille feels the wooden chair poke awkwardly into his back.
“You have anxiety,” says Boris. “Anxiety you’re craving to cast out of your body… picking… picking is the way you’ve learned to release it.”
The prince twiddles his fingers gingerly and ponders for a moment.
“Well that fucking sucks,” Wille says bluntly.
Boris clears his throat softly. “Sometimes, Wilhelm, our nails or our hair… they can feel like imperfections that hang off or poke into our body. We have the urge to remove them by any means necessary.”
Wille’s eyes are locked in place staring at the ground, but he listens.
“When there are stressors in our life, or ‘imperfections’ that feel immovable in our brain, it is very normal to want to fix those imperfections right away. In your case, picking is controlling what you can when everything else feels out of control.”
Wille sniffs and continues to look down. His fingers are itching now.
“It hurts. It fucking hurts, Boris.” Wille feels the tears welling behind his eyes now. “Why can’t I stop it?”
“You know, Wilhelm.” Boris leans forward and gently closes his journal. “I’d want nothing more than to fix this for you, to take all this pain away. Sometimes, when these things are so ingrained, they never go away. Not to say it isn’t possible. It definitely is. What I can promise you is that I will help you learn to cope with it. We can put things in place to make sure you aren’t hurting yourself anymore.”
A tear falls down Wilhelm’s cheek and he clenches his fists. He draws in a sharp breath and then tries to calm the tension building in his chest.
“My mamma… my mamma, she… she makes me feel like this needs to be fixed. That I need to be fixed. I don’t… that answer won’t be good enough for her.”
“Wilhelm..”
“And I don’t GET it.. like,” he’s rambling now, his voice increasingly growing louder and more strained. “The outbursts, the picking, the… the ‘unconventional’ dating… it’s just.. I’m 16. What can she expect? I’m trying… SO hard. To pick up from where my brother left off.. and it’s, it’s too fucking much.”
Wilhelm takes in another harsh breath and then tries a deep one out.
“Nothing I do is good enough for her.”
They continue back and forth for another 26 minutes, and then Wilhelm’s out the door.
***
It’s 10:11pm when Wille musters the faintest two knocks on a quiet door in the middle of Bjärstad. He knows he should have texted or called, but he’s consumed by that post-therapy droop. He couldn’t bring himself to look at his phone when his head and his eyes both felt so heavy .
A small mop of dark curly hair slowly creaks open the door and Wille watches his face drop slightly with concern.
“Wille?”
“Hey.”
Wille walks, deflated and tired into Simon and wraps his arms around his waist in a defeated hug. Simon meets him with love, pulling the boy in closer and caressing his back and shoulder blades.
Wille sighs into Simon’s turquoise sweater and breathes him in, grounding his breath and milking the contact for as long as he can. The boys slowly pull apart and Wille drops his forehead to Simon’s. They stand in the doorway for a minute or two: eyes closed, hands on each other’s waist, just breathing each other in.
“Come in.”
Simon laces his fingers through the other boys and drags him into the Eriksson house. The house feels still aside from the faint noises of Linda and Sara shuffling about in their rooms.
Simon grabs both of his hands and squeezes. “Want anything to drink?”
Wille hums and sighs once more. “No, I’m alright.”
Simon smiles warmly: “Okay.”
“Sorry for dropping by without notice.”
Simon hums.
“It’s fine. More time with you.”
Wille manages a soft smile.
“Mama! Wille is here.”
“What?” Linda replies in Spanish. The boys make their way to Simon’s room and see her putting in a load of laundry.
“Hey Linda. I’m so sorry” Wilhelm mutters nervously, toying with his fingers.
“Hey Wilhelm, you don’t need to apologize. I want this to be a safe space for you.”
Wille breathes out in relief and rubs his arm awkwardly. He puts a pin in the big feelings those words stir in him.
“Thank you,” he manages as Simon pulls him farther into his room and lets the curtain by the entrance off its hook.
***
The boys lie face-to-face, smiling softly and giggling to each other while buried in sheets of deep blue. The window blinds in Simon’s room cast streaks of pale moonlight across the walls and onto the bed where the two cuddle and recharge.
Wille pulls Simon impossibly closer, nuzzling his nose into the other boy’s neck and curls, breathing in deeply and smiling to himself. Thank god for this boy.
Simon slowly spreads the pads of his fingers across Wille’s palm, tracing up to his fingertips until their hands are fully interlaced. The boy sighs and looks profoundly into Wille’s eyes: dark chocolate meeting glazed honey. Simon drags his thumb mindlessly across Wille’s hand, and they stare at each other like they’re the only two left in the universe.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Wilhelm has always been embarrassed about the state of his hands: feels his cuticles are too ragged, skin always peeled. When he’s with Simon, though, it’s easy to forget. Wille closes his eyes, feeling those familiar butterflies erupt in his stomach and can’t help but smile some more. He lets out a deep exhale before returning his gaze to Simon.
“I’m so in love with you.”
Simon takes his face between his hands and delicately draws along the outline of his cheekbones, while Wille’s hands naturally find the dip of his waist. They stare some more, eyes full of love and warmth dripping out of their chests. He hopes Simon can feel it: the love that pours out of him, more than he could ever really put into words. He hopes Simon can feel it when he grabs at his sweater, brushes their noses together, whispers his name. They can talk about therapy another day, Wille thinks. For now, he focuses on this.
***
“So, I’ve printed out a new brochure for you.”
Boris gently passes a pamphlet from his cardigan to the boy sunken in the chair. Wille toys with the paper between his fingers, the words “ANXIETY & SKIN PICKING DISORDERS” covering the title page.
“I want to go back to what we talked about last week, the skin picking. Can you tell me more about that?”
Wilhelm squirms uncomfortably in his seat. His mind had been reeling since their last appointment together. He had always felt so ashamed of this part of his life, and so he made sure it stayed hidden. Wille had spent the better half of his life convincing himself that this is a standard habit. Telling himself that this, this… thing , isn’t debilitating.
Ever since he and Boris last met, it’s like a swollen knot in Wille’s mind has finally started to unravel, and with it, so many crushing feelings threatening to spill over. It slaps him all at once, how far he has pushed down the truth, desperately attempting to dodge an intervention.
“I guess I pull at my hair alot, fingernails or scabs on my hands… acne too. I feel like I always have hangnails. But…” The boy instinctually brings a hand to his mouth before he realizes what he’s doing and violently clenches his fist again.
“What else?” Boris asks calmly.
“Fuck, it’s so embarrassing.”
The man waits for Wilhelm, watches him as he sips coffee out of a styrofoam cup.
“Well… sometimes, I pick at my feet. Like my toenails?” Wille digs his palms further into the arm rest until his limbs are turning white: “Easier to hide than my hands, so no one needs to know.”
He can feel himself choking up, the words becoming more and more impossible to get out, clamping the inside of his throat. Boris doesn’t say anything.
“Uhmm…” Wilhelm hates the way his voice breaks. “It’s really bad. It’s like, at night I can’t tell that I’m doing it, but sometimes when I wake up I can barely walk.” The boy flinches at his own words. “I just tell Malin I’m too sick for school and I miss the morning.”
“You missed a rowing tournament last month,” Boris states, matter of factly.
“Yeah, uhmm…” Wille starts. “I guess that lined up with a picking– episode?-- that happened right before.”
“Do you think, maybe, these episodes… are your body’s way of telling you that you don’t want to go? Almost… sabotaging yourself so that you can’t attend something – whether it’s a tournament, lunch with August, a meeting with the Crown…”
Wille ponders for a moment and takes in a deep breath, his eyebrows furrowing. Like he’s realizing it for the first time.
“Yeah, uhh… that could definitely be what it is.”
“You know, Wilhelm, there are things you can do to fight these urges. Ice packs to your wrists, nail polish… it’s all there in the brochure.”
Wille brings his attention back down to the pamphlet he’s holding between his hands. This feels like a monster of a problem that three pages won’t solve. Still, he tucks the pamphlet neatly into the pocket of his Hillerska hoodie.
“Tack, Boris.”
“I’d love for us to talk more about this at our next session.”
“Will do, see you.”
***
Simon
Hey, how was your meeting?
Wille
Actually pretty good. A lot though.
Simon
🙂
Proud of you.
(But you knew that already)
Still coming to maths?
Wille
Wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Save me a seat, would you? ;)
Simon
...
What’s in it for me?
Wille
Bringing satsumas.
Simon
Just kicked Sara out.
Hurry.
Wille
♥️
***
Wille sits in class working away at a satsuma, his mind off in faraway places. Simon knocks his shoulder and raises his eyebrows as if to ask what’s up. While Mr. Englund talks away, Wille quickly puts pen to paper and scribbles before sliding the scrap to the curly-haired boy next to him.
Have you ever tried nail polish?
Simon skims the words and grins before snatching the pen out of Wille’s hands to respond.
Yeah, Sara and I would paint each other's nails before at Marieberg
Would you do it again? With me?
Of course
I’ll go buy us some tonight from the drugstore
Do you even remember how to use the bus app?
Hahah. Very funny.
Wille rolls his eyes and crumples up the paper they’re talking on, unable to help the tender smile that creeps up his cheeks.
When the period is up, the pair gently brush shoulders as they make their way to their lockers.
“I’ll come with you tonight,” Simon says. “I want to drop off my resume at the drugstore anyways.”
“Oh,” Wilhelm is pulled from his overwhelming thoughts for a moment: a stark reminder of the privilege he possesses. He’s never fathomed the idea of getting a job while still in school; Wille has never had to make a resume, he will never have to. It reminds him of just how different he is to Simon, and worse, how blind he can be to problems outside of his own.
They reach Simon’s locker and Wille leans against the wall as the other boy fiddles with his keys.
“Well, once I finish picking out our colours I could be your in-person reference,” Wille chimes with a smirk.
“Wille, I would rather have a one-bedroom sleepover with Jan-Olof than abuse your position to get a leg-up.”
“Why would you put that image in my hea-”
“So you will stay in the car.”
“We won’t even have a ca-”
“Then you hide in a bush.”
Wille sighs and looks down at his feet giggling.
“So, uhmm.. I’ll meet you after choir then?”
“Yep, see you soon.”
Wille is about to start towards his own locker when Simon tugs at his wrist, pulling him back briefly to face him. He speaks in an intimate hush.
“Hey, what’s this about? I mean, with the nail polish.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really. I thought it’d be fun to do. I’ll tell you more later.”
Simon takes Wille’s hands into his and looks up at the freckled boy, his irises enveloped in a curious twinkle.
Wille’s eyes are cast downwards, staring at their intertwined hands. He smiles softly: “I like trying new things with you.”
The grin on Simon’s face mirrors Wille’s own.
“Me too.”
After holding each other for a few seconds longer than what is probably socially acceptable, Simon gives Wille one final smirk before he skips towards the music room. Wille’s eyes follow him until he’s out of sight, then turns to reach his locker.
The brochure weighs heavy in his pocket, but really, Wille feels lighter than he has in days.