Another way (Young Royals)

Crisis

"Wille and Simon on the table" the boys cheered around us. Simon and I looked at each other. We had not had sex the night before. Simon had been too tired and had fallen asleep before we even left the party. Simon's cheeks were a slight shade of red. He had never been called out to stand on the table before. I had, but only when the other people thought that I had done something I had not done.

"Guys, I am sorry to disappoint you, but we have nothing to tell you about last night," I said loudly.

"Well you were all over each other at the party, so I find that very hard to believe," Henry said.

"I was asleep before we left the palace," Simon defended himself. The boys laughed.

"Well, if you don't want to stand on the table for last night, you can always stand on the table for that night. You never did," Walter said. "And here we don't discriminate against gay couples."

"Then why don't you and Henry stand together on the table then, Walter?" Nils teased. Everyone around the table laughed, including Henry and Walter.

"What we have is called a bromance. Not a romance," Henry said. "But I can kiss him if you want me to." Henry jokingly leaned in and kissed Walter on the cheek. That made everyone laugh even harder.

"Is that what you call a kiss?" Nils asked.

"Do you want one too?" Henry asked him.

"If it is not on the lips you don't have to bother," Nils said teasingly. "But now we have derailed from those two." Nils pointed towards me and Simon.

"Get on the table, boys," Vincent said. "You might want to show Henry and Walter here how to kiss for real."

"Let's just get it over with," I whispered to Simon. He nodded slightly.

"Okay," he replied in my ear. I stood up and then helped Simon get up on the chair. First we held hands and then I pulled him closer to me. Wrapped my arms around him. Let his scent invade my lungs. Then we kissed. The other boys cheered and then Simon and I sat down again.

"And that is what you call a kiss," Nils said. Simon and I giggled.

******

"Have you had a nice day at school?" Linda asked us when we got home that day. Simon and I both nodded.

"Yeah," Simon replied to his mother. "It was a good day."

"Do you have homework?" she asked.

"Yes. We are giving an oral presentation on the book Crisis by Karin Boye," Simon said. "So we are going to read that I guess."

"Well it must be very hard to give a presentation on a book if you have not read it," Linda replied.

"Well our classmate Henry does that all the time, and it somehow works out for him," I said. Linda laughed. Simon led me into his bedroom and put his bag on the chair by his desk. He got the book out and pulled me towards his bed. We both laid down, closely together.

"Do you want to read it out loud?" Simon asked me. I nodded. "I can begin." I rested my head on his chest and listened to his beautiful voice tell me about the student Malin Forst who fell in love with her female classmate Siv. It was in the 1920's by then and her love for her classmate was so stigmatised. Forbidden and even criminal. I thought of how it would have been to live in that time. If Simon and I had been born just a hundred years earlier, our love would not just have been complicated because I was the prince of Sweden and he was a middle class citizen. That we were a same sex couple would have been unthinkable. My parents were not delighted by my relationship, but they did not forbid me from seeing Simon. I looked up at Simon's face as he read to me. He was concentrating very hard. When he had read the first chapter, he shut the book and wrapped his arms around me.

"It is your turn to read later," he told me. I nodded.

"Thank God I fell in love with you in the 2020's and not the 1920's baby," I told him. "If we were lovers back then we would not have a choice other than to be a secret." If we had lived back then, we would not have been able to kiss each other openly in front of our school friends, like ever. That they teased us, just like they teased other boys for their relationships with girls, was a privilege. Even in the time we lived in now. We did not have to go back in time to find a place on this earth where our love would have been criminal. It was sad. That so many people had to hide their true identities in order to survive.

"Historians would have said that we were roommates or something," Simon said. We both giggled.

"Even if our love letters to each other would have told a different story," I joked. Simon laughed.

"Yeah. Think. In a hundred years someone may find our old chat logs. Hopefully they will recognize that we are in love and not that we were just classmates that liked to kiss," he said.

"Well we are classmates that like to kiss though," I said. "At least I like to kiss you a lot."

"I like to kiss you too," Simon said and kissed me. He was so sweet. "Read me the second chapter now, darling."