Please please please Let Me Get What I Want, Deftones
16: Wilhelm
"You're washing this off when you're done."
Felice dipped the nail polish brush in the recipient. "No."
"Felice," I warned, only half serious, "you know I can't be strolling about with painted nails. My mother would have a stroke."
She smiled and touched on my pinky nail with the applicator. "Wow, so much for fighting the established gender stereotypes and perpetual standards for toxic masculinity in our society."
"You're unbearable."
"And you're an ungrateful shit."
I rolled my eyes. "Bite me."
Felice twisted the nail polish bottle shut. "Come on," she pleaded on, looking at me with an impish pout, "don't you just want to make heads turn at the fair this weekend?"
I glanced down at my nails. Royal blue. "I really don't," I answered, shaking my head. "I'm the Crown prince, not princess. Besides, no offence, but the fair is really the last thing on my mind these days."
She grabbed my hands in hers and blew on the fresh nail polish. "I think it'll be good for you," stated Felice. "There's a party after. Take Simon; have some fun."
"Easier said than done." I exhaled and wriggled my fingers to dry them. "Have you talked to Sara?"
Felice sucked on her teeth. "No. I still can't believe she'd do that."
"You two were so close," I said.
She shrugged and replied, "Yeah, well, life's fucked."
"Tell me about it," I muttered with a sigh. "Okay, now clean it off."
Felice groaned. "But blue really brings out your under eyes!"
"Piss off," I grumbled. "Get it off, or I'll tell your mom you have a fake ID."
She rolled her eyes. "Ugh, fine. But you're buying me coffee later."
Felice twisted her upper body around to grab the nail polish remover, shook the bottle, and poured a few drops on a cotton ball.
As I watched her scrub the color off my nails, I drifted off in my musings. After the past couple of months, I think I could very well think of Felice as my sister.
She was my best friend, and I had grown unmeasurably attached to her presence in my life. I guess she had that motherly spirit that made me feel like I could seek her advice in every decision I made.
Felice understood my struggles, partly. She had a status to uphold, too, not one like mine, but her parents put just as much pressure on her. Her mom, especially.
Misery loves company, uh?
But there was also the guilt, the puncturing sensation that I was trying to replace my brother, even knowing that no one could ever hold the place he had in my life.
I think a part of me still felt angry at him for forsaking me in this sick world—however despicably and unfairly. I wished I could have stripped off that corrupt and tainted sense of betrayal the way I would peel off a layer of clothes.
It was once Erik who I ran to whenever I felt lost or confused, who steered me through my teenagehood. It was once him who watched me fuck everything up and still forgave me for the mess. And I guess I still needed that support, that lifeline, a pair of bracing arms to catch me when I fell. I was only sixteen, after all, and maybe my parents weren't the ones to run and hold out their hands when I fell flat on my face.
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𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧, young royals
FanfictionA continuation of the series after season 2. "But I was the fool, the hopeless, the insouciant, the reckless, and he was my hanged man, my undoing, my sacrifice, my learned lesson."
