Chapter Text
The heavy door of the basement studio somewhere deep down in the entrails of the city of Stockholm opened with a click, and Wille stepped into the room. The studio was small with a low ceiling and emitted a slightly damp smell. A thick carpet on the floor and some acoustic panels that were randomly plastered alongside the walls, muffled the sound of his footsteps.
Oh great – what a miserable pit!
His blond hair fell into his face like it always did. He brushed it away with the smooth move that was good to make girls and boys all over the globe scream in ecstasy. He let his eyes wander through the room, looking for the reason he had jetted all the way over the ocean from LA for. And there he was: Simon Eriksson, his designated co-singer for this upcoming musical cooperation. The twenty-three-year-old Swedish pop singer was comfortably sprawled on a couch at the rear end of the studio, dressed in black t-shirt and torn jeans with gaping holes at the knees, one leg on top of the other, lazily fumbling through his phone when Wille entered. The sound of the closing door made Simon look up from the screen with flashing eyes.
Woah, these eyes!
Wille swallowed hard, his throat dry as sandpaper. He had been prepared for this moment – at least he’d thought he was – for he had stalked his co-star-to-be on his social media. But the sheer sight of him in real life shook him down to his bones. He was pretty.
Oh Lord, how pretty he is!
“Hi”, he croaked, feeling utterly stupid, with a wave of hot sweat flashing up his neck.
What the actual fuck is happening?
It was him, Wilhelm Saunders, who sold out arenas worldwide, creating hysteric chaos wherever he turned up. He was a superstar – everybody knew his name. His social media counted sixty-five million followers. He was used to attract attention anyplace he went. Random people just casually went mad in his presence, wanted to hug and kiss him or even tattoo his name on their skin – which kinda freaked Wilhelm out when he even thought about it. This Stockholm basement hole he had somehow toppled into on this rainy Tuesday in March vibed like the rehearsal room of a garage band. And still he felt like an idiot, standing there and fiddling with his useless hands like a dork.
The raven boy smiled a warm welcome from the other side of the room. There was something about the way he showed a row of pearly white teeth with the tip of his tongue just swiftly flashing between them. It was the most captivating thing Wille had ever seen. When Simon finally peeled out of the sofa and got up to welcome him, Wilhelm couldn’t help but notice the smooth way he moved.
Right, he’s a dancer as well.
The gift of coordinating his limbs in a fleeting motion was something Wilhelm himself entirely lacked. He was convinced that the screams of his audience when he shook his ass on stage in a thoughtless moment must be screams of terror. THOSE hips however swayed on a different level! Simon’s grip on his hand was light as a feather, and Wille wondered whether he expected him to shake his hand or kiss it.
Simon looked up when Wilhelm entered the studio.
Oh well, this is going to be interesting.
He couldn’t exactly pinpoint what he had expected from this guy, who was known to be one of the most successful upcoming pop stars of the decade. By now he had only seen him on screens. And so far the live version of Wilhelm Saunders was much less impressive than his videos. Simon eyed him as he stood there in the middle of the carpet, looking about himself like a little kid that was lost in the shopping center. Obviously confidence didn’t come with the job just like that.
“Hi, welcome to Stockholm. Really nice to meet you”, he smiled, trying his best to be a veritable host to his foreign visitor.
When he reached out to shake hands and turned his gaze upwards, their eyes met up close. They were beautiful, those eyes, placid and kind with no trace of arrogance or ego. So why did his hand actually tingle with the touch? Well, maybe he WAS a little starstruck after all. But he had rigidly decided to play it cool. You didn’t get to work with the prince of showbiz every day. Simon took a deep breath.
Cool, babes.
To record a song with Wilhelm Saunders was a serious chance to push his career one step further.
Be professional! This could be the beginning of something.
But the uneasy spirit his visitor radiated didn’t mirror his excitement at all and made Simon instantly feel somewhat frustrated.
Looks like Wilhelm doesn’t even want to be here. Probably his management has just shoved this coop up his ass as one of many PR-gigs he has to accomplish this year.
“Ahhm, hi! My name is Wilhelm.”
The blond boy returned Simon’s welcome with a thin smile.
Bro, is he even real? Like I don’t know his name, Simon thought annoyed, as he withdrew his hand from Wilhelm’s grip.
Their uptight hellos kept hanging in the air for a moment, neatly wrapped in the anticipating silence of everybody else in the room. Awkwardly, Simon set about to introduce his sound engineers. He opened his mouth and caught the expectant gaze of his visitor, who looked at him with those eyes.
Damn, wait? What?
They were brown, just like his own, only much lighter.
Like amber almost.
He tried to blink, but the other one just kept staring at him in an unsettling manner. Simon’s brain functions screeched to a halt and suddenly all his English was gone in a blur.
“These guys are, you know, the sound-, ahem – what is it called? The music guys, like …, you know who do the …, well this is Stefan and this is Corbin. They should work with us – I mean, will … ahem, are going to, well, ahm, … is it ‘engineer’? Well you know, the ones who do the sounds.”
Wilhelm raised a confused eyebrow at him while Simon’s guts cramped with embarrassment.
Perfect. What a start! All professional, just as planned.
He let his hands fall to his sides with a random sigh.
What now? How are we going to start this?
Simon was at a loss. The two of them were expected to write a new song from scratch, which was a big task, given they had never met before and didn’t know shit about each other. Fortunately, Stefan had set up a range of sound bits for inspiration and offered to play some song samples right away, so they could choose where to start from. Simon cast him a thankful glance.
Good thing, SOMEONE is being prepared here.
Once they had listened to the samples one after the other, the singers quickly agreed on that one specific energetic guitar riff, that immediately brought goosebumps to Simon’s arms. It went right to his core. The small crew decided to use this and see what they could work out from there. Getting right to their common grounds – the heartbeat of music – helped to dispel the anxiousness, that was floating about, and Simon eventually felt his pulse tone down to a healthy level again. Bit by bit he started to relax, even with the VIP in the room, who had an incredibly charming habit of looking through the strands of his blond hair.
Like wow! He HAS some presence after all!
“This guy wont even be able to write a song”, his friend Rosh had blurted after she had been done making vomiting sounds when Simon had told her about his upcoming coop and railed on about how Wille was just another artificial pop-up star. Simon couldn’t help but think that she was probably right. So many names in the business were put together by a record company, handed some ready-made music and marketed with tons of money until they hit the charts. But when Wilhelm after some time of adjustment gradually started to open up, Simon was caught by surprise how profoundly educated the musician was. He had words for all the little tricks and sound changes, Simon usually only got across to his co-workers with hands and feet and a lot of humming. The way Wilhelm worked the guitar, found nuances and effects and studiously composed the song step by step … it was pretty impressive.
Rosh and her big mouth, Simon scolded in his mind, judging her hard for giving him prejudice.
Wille was content with their first-day progress. He wouldn’t let it show, but he had been worried sick about this whole undertaking. Songwriting could take from hours to weeks, depending on the quality of the writers. The more relieving it was now to find that they got ahead on a good pace, because they were on a fucking tight schedule. Only five days had been set for them to create their summer-hit-to-be – an impossible task to be real. But the business was tough, and Wilhelm’s management had lowkey implied that his time would be spent much more valuable by performing a stadium concert in the USA rather than hanging out with this Swedish guy, who was scarcely known outside of Scandinavia. So they had assigned him barely a week for this coop to succeed, funny them.
“I can’t believe we’re halfway through already on day one”, he smiled when they recapped after a short afternoon coffee break, and Simon gave him a happy wink.
Well, he tried. But he couldn’t really wink that boy, so it turned more into a blink. Wille had to avert his face, so Simon wouldn’t see his chuckle. Only a few hours had passed and he was thoroughly intrigued by his co-star. The way Wille’s clear and structured manner of working through a new song was demolished by the impulsive and emotional style of the Swede was highly irritating for him. Then again he marveled at how playfully Simon filled in the gaps which his own chronic overthinking had left open. It seemed they were kind of a fit. Quietly he smiled to himself.
This boy is the king of chaos.
But what a charming king he was!
Given his initial skepticism, Wilhelm was surprised to find himself more and more comfortable with the small crew already after a short while. Once he had adjusted to the unnatural beauty of his opposite, he found that Simon was the nicest, sweetest and funniest person he had ever met. The setup of the studio might have looked self-made and semi-professional. But it also provided Wille with a coziness and comfort that he had missed for so long, rushing here and there and getting torn apart between unfulfillable expectations and calculated money making. He had started out as a singer-songwriter before the music industry had swallowed him up and thoroughly chewed him through. His record company had made him a superstar and hit-machine by peeling off his personality layer by layer, until his mere purpose was to function. Sometimes his days didn’t seem to ever end, starting off with press conferences in the morning, business lunch with producers or photo shoots during the day and concerts in the evening. He had come to ignore the fatigue which was his daily escort, dragging his feet wherever Farima, his personal assistant, directed him, power-napping on planes and car rides, throwing in some colorful pills when things got tough or his body was about to forsake him. But he had learned to accept the adversities that came with his job. They were the price of fame. And he loved the fame. After all, it was all he had.
All this in mind, Wille didn’t really feel like saying goodbye in the evening when the other guys collected their stuff and shuffled out the door. His good humor crumbled and left a hard little lump in his stomach when they called it a wrap for the day. He would have preferred to stay another hour – maybe two – or take a nightly stroll through the city. But jet-lag kicked in and he had to acknowledge that he was dead tired. So, whether he liked it or not, he needed to take back to the hotel. It wasn’t long after a quick lonely dinner in his room until his eyes fell shut back in his pretentious hotel suite bed, with a last thought of the newly created melody and a trace of that Swedish boy Simon’s mahogany eyes trailing through his already clouded mind.
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Song: Panic! at the Disco, High Hopes
Had to have high, high hopes for a living
Shooting for the stars when I couldn’t make a killing
Didn’t have a dime, but I always had a vision
Always had high, high hopes
Had to have high, high hopes for a living
Didn’t know how, but I always had a feeling
I was gonna be that one in a million
Always had high, high hopes
Mama said, Fulfill the prophecy
Be something greater, go make a legacy
Manifest destiny back in the days
We wanted everything, wanted everything
Mama said, Burn your biographies
Rewrite your history, light up your wildest dreams
Museum victories everyday
We wanted everything, wanted everything
Mama said, Don’t give up, it's a little complicated
All tied up, no more love, and I’d hate to see you waiting
Had to have high, high hopes for a living
Shooting for the stars when I couldn’t make a killing
Didn’t have a dime, but I always had a vision
Always had high, high hopes
Had to have high, high hopes for a living
Didn’t know how, but I always had a feeling
I was gonna be that one in a million
Always had high, high hopes
Mama said, It’s uphill for oddities
Stranger crusaders ain’t ever wannabes
The weird and the novelties don’t ever change
We wanted everything, wanted everything
Stay up on that rise, stay up on that rise
And never come down,
Stay up on that rise, stay up on that rise
And never come down
Mama said, Don’t give up, it’s a little complicated
All tied up, no more love, and I’d hate to see you waiting
They say it’s all been done, but they haven’t seen the best of me
So I got one more run, and it’s gonna be a sight to see
Had to have high, high hopes for a living
Shooting for the stars when I couldn’t make a killing
Didn’t have a dime, but I always had a vision
Always had high, high hopes
Had to have high, high hopes for a living
Didn’t know how, but I always had a feeling
I was gonna be that one in a million
Always had high, high hopes