A wisp of a post-canon, aged-up fic for @youngroyals-events' Wilmon Day 2026. 💜 This randomly came to me and is not related to the prompt artworks (but what a lovely idea), but it does have an extra dose of earnest if that’s your thing.
With a start Wille realizes how quiet the room is now. The moment dilates around him back into minutes and seconds rather than the consuming urgency that had spurred them on for so many hours.
Suddenly aware of the ache in his low back, the pinch between his shoulder blades, how he feels a little sick to his stomach. He lets out a shaky breath and flicks his gaze to the window. The sky is blushing deep pink and mottled purple. Did they really stay up all night?
Then Simon makes a small noise, one Wille isn’t sure he’s ever heard before, something between a joyful laugh and a swallowed sob. Instinctively, Wille reaches for him.
“Holy shit,” Simon sighs, eyes wet. He ducks his head under Wille’s chin for a moment. “Sorry,” he whispers ruefully, tilting his head to meet Felice’s gaze.
But she just beams back, looking between them, her face flushed and drawn with exhaustion. “Simon?” She nods encouragingly.
Simon is already peeling off his shirt, moving to the side of the bed. He rubs Felice’s forearm soothingly, then glances back over his shoulder at Wille, who stands frozen a few steps behind him.
“Come here.” Now it’s Simon’s turn to reach out for Wille.
Wille is so close he can smell the sour sweat along Simon’s hairline, can feel the warmth radiating off Simon’s bare back. It hits him that the future they planned for is now.
He and Simon had avoided talking about this for a decade. They were young, there was no rush. It was complicated for both of them. Then they’d gone back and forth for several years, even argued about it. Each yearning and hesitant and uncertain in turns.
Then, once the decision had been made, there had been so many conversations. New decisions, negotiated not only between him and Simon, but also with Felice, about how this would work among the three of them. What they wanted it to look like.
Sara had been the most pragmatic. In response to the fears Felice divulged about having a child alone: “But you won't be alone. They’ll also have Simon and Wille.” And to the concerns Simon separately voiced, she’d shrugged: “Lots of kids grow up between two separate homes. The baby will just have three parents to love them. I don’t see why it has to be difficult.”
It couldn’t have been more than forty minutes ago that they’d heard her voice for the first time – a startled little warble that had made Wille’s eyes burn and he’d heard Simon's intake of breath.
The baby had let out a louder wail as the midwife expertly scooped her up. “Wilhelm? Do you want to tell Felice?”
But Wille had been immobilized, hunched over the raised head of the bed, fingers crushed in Felice’s iron grip. So after a beat, Sara, at Felice’s other side, holding a cup of ice, had announced, “It’s a girl!”
Felice had choked and laughed as the baby was passed up through her legs. Sara and the nurse had helped her turn and settle back on the bed.
Suddenly Simon was back beside him, looping an arm around Wille’s waist. He rested his head on Wille’s shoulder as he watched the scene unfold, the back of his hand pressed against his mouth.
Curled against Felice’s belly, the baby had continued to chortle as the nurse suctioned her nose.
“Wilhelm?” The midwife’s voice had stirred him from his daze. “You’re cutting the cord, right?”
Wille had still felt he was running at a slower speed that everything else in the room, but Simon had nudged him forward, and he had managed to smile at Felice, and was vaguely aware of Simon’s hand on his back, as he focused on the midwife’s instructions and maneuvering the medical scissors and the writhing baby – the baby!
After, Felice had gritted through delivering the placenta, squeezing Sara’s fingers white. Her other arm remained scooped protectively around the baby curled on her chest, quieted now.
And then it was done. Wille and Simon had hovered beside the bed while the staff checked them over. Wille stared at the baby’s mouth, searching and pink, dark pupils darting unfixed around the room. Then the drops squeezed into her eyes made them filmy like oil and she blinked over and over, mewling in discomfort.
Wille had long ago realized that if they were going to do this, it had to be Simon. The weight of his family still felt too oppressive. He didn’t want to risk anyone else he loved being somehow pulled down by that undertow.
His therapist had helped him recognize how far he had come. That this tangle of desire and fear and ambivalence was entirely reasonable. When he’d met Simon, everything about his life had been determined by his family and what that meant for him and his future.
Now, more than two decades later, it’s the opposite. He gets to choose how to make the kind of family he wants, as part of the life he has willfully carved out for himself, the simple contours of which are so different from what was once expected of him, but all the more precious for it.
Satisfied that Felice and the baby are healthy and stable, the staff leave them to their quiet hour. Even Sara, who had remained steadily by Felice’s side since the early contractions, calmly excuses herself for the bathroom, a walk around the corridor, a coffee.
Now, for this little window of time, it’s just the three – no, the four of them.
Wille takes a deep breath in, counting to four, holding for four, and then exhaling for eight, dropping back into the practices he rarely relies on anymore.
For a moment Simon leans back into him, his shoulder blades pressing against Wille’s chest in a movement so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, but Wille knows. Simon is telling him It’s okay, you’re okay, I’m here, I’ve got you, we’re in this together.
Then Simon leans forward over the bed. “Just support her head,” Felice reminds him as he awkwardly peels the baby from her arms.
Simon straightens and places her on his bare chest. Her legs automatically fold up beneath her.
“Like a little frog,” Wille breathes out.
“Yeah,” Simon chuckles softly. He nuzzles against the crown of her head, “Hej, you,” he murmurs, swaying side to side, humming low.
Wille thinks about how she must feel the vibration of Simon’s voice, his heartbeat, resounding through her body. A sensation so familiar to Wille, from so many lazy mornings and dreary afternoons, and sprawled out on lakeside docks, or collapsed spent on top of the covers late at night, when he has laid over Simon, ear pressed to his chest.
Wille can’t tear his eyes away from them. The baby’s skin glows a deep chestnut, still streaked with the remnants of birth, and her cap of tight dark curls is damp and matted. Where his hand rests on Simon's low back, he feels how clammy Simon’s skin is, prickled with gooseflesh. His own short curls corkscrew wildly and his eyelashes are clotted with unshed tears. Wille has never seen anything more beautiful.
“Wille,” is all Simon has to say, and Wille is already shifting closer, wrapping an arm around Simon, who leans into his touch instinctively.
Still embracing Simon, he lifts a hand to hover over the baby’s back, trailing down the knobs of her spine, gentling over the back of Simon's hand which is splayed to hold her securely, over the round of her bottom, ghosting over the backs of her knees, and then she sneezes suddenly against Simon’s chest, making them all laugh, and finally he brushes over her slender curled toes, the second one longer than her big toe, just like Simon’s.
Wille is certain he has never been more in love with Simon.
“Okay, shirt off–” Simon looks up at Wille with a brilliant smile. “Your turn.”
Happy Wilmon Day and may Wille and Simon go on living their many different lives in all of our imaginations!
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