Start a Riot, Chapter 3. PG-13, Wille/Simon, romance/drama, directly post-S1.
On his first day back to school after the Christmas break, Simon is informed that he's been suspended for two weeks because of his involvement in the video making the rounds on the internet. Now it's up to Wille and his few allies to recruit as many out of the entire population of entitled rich kids at Hillerska as they can to go full Greta to try and pressure the school to reverse this decision before it ruins Simon's future.
Note: Inspired, most recently, by Netflix's Moxie and Sex Education, and a bajillion other teen movies and TV shows out there where high schoolers stage a school strike/walkout/protest against their school.
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By the time Wilhelm made it back to Hillerska, he was nursing the granddaddy of all headaches. Probably residual from the panic attack he'd found himself hit with the moment he walked out the door at Drottningholm and into the car. The combination of the anxiety of standing up to his mother and the inevitable crash from the adrenaline high that got him through it was enough to have him gasping for breath and with his head between his knees for the first fifteen minutes of the drive, much to his bodyguards' consternation.
Thankfully he was able to pull out of it after a while, and even caught a little bit of sleep on the way, so now all that remained was the headache. In any other circumstance, he probably would've headed straight to bed. However, they'd arrived at the school a little over half an hour before lights out, which meant that he still had a chance to make some moves, and it was better not to waste any time.
He only went to his room to change clothes, then walked out of Forest Ridge with Malin in tow. Normally at that hour it would be Sören or whomever else came up in the rotation taking point, but given where Wilhelm was headed, Malin thought it made more sense for it to be her. "Your Royal Highness, do you think this is wise?" she asked him as they made their way across the school grounds. "Walking into the girls' dormitories at this hour after... well, after what happened the last term?"
"I'm only stopping by for a few minutes," Wilhelm replied, strides not faltering in the slightest, "and you'll be right there to vouch for my good behavior, should it come down to that." She had no comment for that, but her lips were pressed tight as they made it to Manor House. She suggested they inform the housemistress of their presence there, regardless, which Wilhelm thought was reasonable.
He only had the vaguest idea of which side of the building Felice's room was in, from offhand comments she'd made here and there, but once he made it to the right hallway it wasn't hard to find, because their door was still open. As Malin took a position a few meters' distance down the hallway, he knocked on the doorframe to make his presence known. "Hey."
Madison, who was lying on her belly on her bed, looked up at the sound and gave Wilhelm a quick smile before going back to whatever it was she was drawing on a notebook. Felice was standing with her back to the door, looking for something in her dresser drawers, but she caught sight of him in the mirror and waved at him. Lounging on Felice's bed was Sara. Wilhelm immediately tensed. He'd forgotten Sara had been awarded a grant to board at Hillerska in the new term. She was rooming with someone else— some first year Wilhelm had never talked to— but it made sense that she would spend most of her time hanging out with Felice and Maddie.
She scowled at him. "What does he want?" she muttered, seemingly to herself, but everybody heard it loud and clear.
Felice tsk-ed at her. "Sara, that doesn't help," she lightly chastised her friend, and Wilhelm for some reason got the feeling they'd already had a conversation about this before, while he wasn't there to listen in.
He didn't want them to get in an argument on his account, though. "No, it's okay," he assured Felice. "She has a right to be angry at me, I think." He cleared his throat and shuffled a little on his feet. Normally he would be twisting himself into a pretzel trying to do this on his own, but he didn't have time for that now. And he trusted Felice. She'd proven herself at the end of the last term, and she'd also been the only person who bothered to check in on him over the break. She was a good friend. "Listen, I was wondering if you knew of any good law firms that you trust? All I've ever dealt with are those associated with the Crown and I'm... not going to go to them with this, that's for sure."
Felice frowned. "Well... not off the top of my head, no. But I can ask my dad, if you want?" Wilhelm nodded at her, grateful. "Do they need to have a particular specialty? What do you need a lawyer for?" she further prompted.
Wilhelm hesitated. Admittedly, he hadn't quite thought that far— this was just the first idea that had crossed his mind on the way back from Stockholm. "Uh, I don't know. Education law, maybe? Is that a thing?" he asked, unsure.
Madison's head popped up like someone had announced she'd be getting chocolate cake with every meal for a year. "Are you going to sue the school?" she asked, speaking in English as usual. Her mouth started shaping into a big grin. "Is this about Simon?"
Two more pairs of eyes snapped right to him and Wilhelm couldn't help but feel flustered at being put on the spot so suddenly. "I didn't— It's not—" he stuttered momentarily before gathering his wits with a shake of his head. "It's just, Simon told me something earlier and it kind of stuck with me," he explained. "He said the school's getting bad press about... you know..." He left it vague since they all knew about the video anyway and he didn't want to think about it any more than necessary.
"He's not wrong," Felice confirmed. When the girls looked at her, she elaborated. "I overheard my mom talking on the phone over the break. Apparently, some parents are scandalized that the school staff is 'allowing' students to have sex on school premises," she said, rolling her eyes as she did air quotes with her fingers. "The rest of them are wondering how safe the school even is if anyone can just walk up to someone's window and invade their privacy like that. Neither side is happy."
"Exactly," Wilhelm continued, "so the school has to find a fall guy to make it seem like they're doing something about it." It was a quick summary of the larger issue, but it would have to do for now. "And so I thought"— he crossed his arms and shrugged— "that maybe if we generate even worse press for them because of Simon's suspension, then they'd have to backpedal, right?" He sighed. "A lawsuit was just the first thing that popped into my head, I guess."
"You want Simon to sue the school?" Sara asked, somewhat brusquely. While Felice and Madison seemed somewhat excited at the prospect, Sara did not look happy at all at his suggestion. "We can't afford that."
"Right— No, I know— I was—" Wilhelm once again stumbled with his words, because clearly, all the confidence he'd mustered up to confront the Queen of Sweden earlier had fizzled out the second a tiny seventeen-year-old girl fixed a withering glare on him.
"—going to pay for it yourself?" Sara finished the sentence for him, eyebrows raised high on her forehead. "Simon would hate that."
Wilhelm was very aware of that. That wasn't what he'd been about to suggest, anyway; honestly, he wasn't sure what he'd been about to suggest. Once again, he hadn't thought of the details yet— but even if his family did have the means (obviously), it's not like he could just charge thousands of kronor in legal fees on a credit card; any large expenses had to go through the palace's accounting department and would most definitely make their way back to his mother.
Luckily, Madison stopped him from having to explain all of that. "There are lawyers that take on cases pro-bono, though," she intervened, waving her pencil in front of her face as she spoke. Then she turned to look at Wilhelm. "I think the real problem here, though, is that lawsuits take way too long to go through the system. We could be graduating by the time this gets settled. And what good would that be?" she pointed out smartly.
"Yeah." Wilhelm sighed and leaned his head sideways against the door. He knew it wasn't the most efficient idea he'd ever had, but it was the only idea he'd had so far, and the time crunch was weighing on him like a ticking bomb.
Suddenly, Felice started like something had just occurred to her. "But wait," she said, snapping her fingers. Wilhelm briefly wondered how she was able to do that with her nails. "If the point is to create bad press for the school, then we can do that ourselves." She turned around, grabbing her phone from where it had been resting facedown on top of the dresser. She showed it to all three of them like it was some kind of visual aid on a school project. "I have ten thousand followers on my Insta alone. We don't need anyone from the outside to help us if we have that."
"What are you going to do, make a Notes App post on how unfair it was for them to suspend Simon?" Madison asked.
"I couldn't ask you to do that," Wilhelm hurried to intervene, suddenly worried. He'd already done so much damage in Simon's life; he couldn't drag Felice into his trail of debris, too. "The school would turn against you, too. That's not an option."
"No, that's not what I'm saying," Felice quickly clarified. "Of course, if only one or a few of us raises a stink, it puts a target on our backs. So we have to get more people involved. Everyone, if we can." She looked at them like the answer was obvious. "We go full Greta. We strike!"
There was silence for a few seconds as she let the idea settle with them. Wilhelm felt a thin tendril of hope tugging at his heart inside his chest. It was definitely more immediate than anything he'd been able to come up with up to now. And it really wasn't a bad idea... in theory. In practice, however...
"Uh, I don't think you're going to get many people around here to do that for Simon," Madison quipped in a dry tone, rolling her eyes and drawing her pencil from her lips and back down to the paper in front of her. If there was one thing Wilhelm appreciated about Maddie, it was that she didn't sugarcoat things. She gave it to you straight, whatever her opinion on a matter was. He found it refreshing.
"Yeah, most people here don't hold me and Simon in very high regard," Sara added, and that was an understatement if he'd ever heard one. Sara was treated a bit better since she started hanging out with Felice, thankfully, and he wouldn't exactly say that people bullied Simon or anything— he was way too self-assured for that— but they definitely looked down their noses at them, and snide remarks were a daily occurrence.
"Which is ridiculous because you guys are like the nicest people ever," Madison added, smiling at Sara as she said it. Wilhelm knew she wasn't just saying it because Sara was there, too. She was one of the few people in the school who regularly interacted with Simon like a peer; Wilhelm often heard them animatedly talking before and between classes, chatting about their favorite music or which concerts they'd love to go to.
"Okay, then we don't make it about Simon," Felice countered, not giving up so easily. She turned to Wilhelm wide-eyed, as if afraid she'd said something terrible. "I mean, it will be about Simon, of course," she assured him, though Wilhelm hadn't even commented on her earlier assertion, "but we sell it to the rest of the students as if it's all about them. Say whatever we have to say to get them to be there."
Wilhelm must've made a face because Felice looked at him as if expecting him to say something. "Isn't that kind of... shady, though? Having a bunch of people there who don't really give a fuck what happens to Simon?" He couldn't help but be concerned about that. He'd spent his whole life surrounded by people who put on airs and pretended to be nice to him solely because of his title, and he hated it.
Felice nodded, a little sheepish. "Well, yeah. But you gotta keep in mind that the point of this isn't really to support Simon. I mean"— she signaled to herself and the two other girls, then at Wilhelm— "we definitely support Simon. But the actual point of this is to pressure the school to rescind his suspension. What we need is numbers."
"She's right," Madison quipped from the side. "When the real goal is to get eyes on your cause, even performative activism will do the trick." She pointed at Wilhelm with her pencil. "Believe me, I would know. I'm from NYC. Performative activism is basically our official sport."
Sara and Felice laughed, and even Wilhelm had to smile. Madison pushed herself to her knees, grinning excitedly. "Okay, I'm in. How do we do this?"
Felice grinned back. "Like so." She unlocked her phone with a flourish and proceeded to tap on it a few times. "What's Simon's favorite color?" she asked, without looking up from the screen, thumbs flying over the virtual keys.
"Purple," Wilhelm and Sara said at the exact same time. When they realized this, Sara gave him a deadpan stare. Wilhelm cleared his throat, awkwardly running a hand through his hair. Felice snorted but kept typing. Madison laughed so hard, she actually rolled over on her bed.
"And... here we go," Felice said, tapping her screen one last time before turning the phone over for Wilhelm to see. On her Instagram feed, her latest post showed a purple square with the words "DO BETTER" in large, thick black print letters. On the lower-right corner of the square, in smaller letters, tilted at near 45 degrees, read, "Fri 15/Jan. Noon." The caption for the post was "#HSJ #BeThere."
Wilhelm frowned as Felice turned to show Sara the post. "HSJ?" he asked, confused.
"Hillerska Strike for Justice," Felice clarified as she turned to show her phone to Madison. "We're going to need a few days to get people on board, which is why I thought Friday would be best. But if we get enough people to share it, we can get that trending in Sweden. Then we get as many people as we can to live stream the actual strike. It'll be huge."
She was getting more and more excited with each word that came out of her mouth, and honestly, it was hard not to feel the same. Wilhelm didn't post on his own Instagram account very often, and he definitely wouldn't be able to post or stream anything related to this because everything he posted was vetted by the palace's social media team and would be taken down within the minute if it was deemed unsuitable for his image as Crown Prince.
But considering the school was populated with rich, entitled kids with sizable social media followings who all fancied themselves influencers, his input might not even be necessary. He could usually get away with a little more when it came to liking and commenting on other people's posts, though, so that's what he could do for now to boost the hashtag's reach. If the vibrations on Felice's phone were any indication, the post was already getting engagement.
"Ooh, I know what I can use for my post!" Madison declared, practically bouncing off her bed and opening her closet.
Sara pulled her knees up to her chest. "Is it okay if I don't tell Simon about this?" she asked Felice. As in, very pointedly not Wilhelm. But, again, he could hardly blame her for her frosty demeanor; he deserved it. "He wouldn't be allowed to come, anyway, and I don't want to get his hopes up if this doesn't work."
"Yeah, sure. Whatever you think is best," Felice agreed, though she did throw Wilhelm a somewhat chagrined look.
"Okay, check this out," Madison said, pulling a garment out of the closet. She showed it to them: it was a plain white t-shirt, the bottom of it ripped so that it was closer to a longish crop top, with the words "NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE" stamped on the front. According to Maddie, she and her New York friends had printed the t-shirts themselves to wear at the local Black Lives Matter protests last summer.
She thought it would be great to use for the HSJ, considering the similar justice theme, so she threw the top on her bed, snapped a picture of it, and within a minute or two, there was a new post on her Instagram account showing the t-shirt with the text taking up most of the background, and then just off toward the top-right corner, slightly tilted just as Felice's note had been, in bright purple letters, the words "Friday! Noon! Be there, it'll be" followed by a fire emoji. She used the full #HillerskaStrikeForJustice hashtag in the caption because Madison McCoy had no fucks to give to anyone who messed with her friends, even if it was the school itself. And Simon was her friend. Wilhelm could've hugged her.
The conversation moved to which platforms they should crosspost in— which kind of went over Wilhelm's head a bit, as he only ever used Instagram— but was interrupted when not even five minutes after Felice's post hit the web, Fredrika poked her head in from behind Wilhelm's frame in the doorway.
"Hey, hey," she greeted everyone. Wilhelm turned his head and saw that Stella was also there, moving to stand on the opposite side of her roommate as Fredrika waved her phone at the other girls. "What's this about?" She signaled to Felice's Insta post, now visible on her own phone's screen.
Felice gave them a pure, unfiltered, confident, fake-it-till-you-make-it, pro-saleswoman grin. "We're going on strike to get the school to take back Simon's suspension. You guys in?"
Stella and Fredrika exchanged a glance, clearly reluctant. They moved into the room and sat down on Maddie's bed. "Do you think that's a good idea, though?" Stella asked. "I mean"— her eyes widened— "not that I don't want to help Simon," she added, looking apologetically at Wilhelm, then at Sara, "I'm just thinking... the buzz about the video was already dying down because of the break. Do you really want to remind everyone of it all over again? Wouldn't it be better for Simon just take the two weeks off and then let it all have died down when he comes back?"
Wilhelm frowned. He liked Stella and Fredrika, but they could be so in-their-bubble. He might've gotten angry at them for it now— this was Simon's future they were talking about here— if he hadn't chastised himself about being just the same a few hours earlier. "A suspension on his record could kill his chances of getting a scholarship to a university," he explained, hoping that was obvious enough for them to grasp.
It wasn't. "Why does he need a scholarship?" Fredrika asked, entirely innocuously. "Aren't most universities free?"
"Normal people also have to pay for board, food, and materials," Sara chimed in. Her tone was not accusatory in the least; only matter-of-fact. Still, her choice of the word "normal" there would have sounded heavily sarcastic coming from someone else. Perhaps she and Simon were more alike than Wilhelm had initially thought.
"And anyway, it's the principle of the matter," Felice intervened deftly before the conversation could fully devolve into class warfare. She moved to stand next to Wilhelm so she could talk to the girls face to face. "Simon's being punished for something that was done to him. It's straight-up victim-blaming." She threw Stella a pointed look. "You know if he'd been a girl, you would've been all over this."
Stella worried her lower lip for a moment, pondering her friend's words. "You're right, that's messed up," she conceded with a sigh. "Okay, I'm in," she added, pulling her phone out of the front pocket of her hoodie. Madison cheered, urging her to use the color purple somewhere in her post.
"Thank you!" Felice gave her a bright smile before turning to her other friend. "Fredrika?"
The girl in question flinched. "Look, I'd love to help," she started, throwing a nervous look at Sara, then at Wilhelm. He tried not to squirm. He'd known that coming back to Hillerska after... everything... would mean having nasty looks flung at him and murmurs springing all around him, but it hadn't occurred to him that people would start acting like any comment that had anything at all to do with Simon somehow involved him as well, almost on the same level as Sara— like he and Simon were now a package deal, even though they weren't actually together. It was an unexpected, weird side effect to what happened, but one he wasn't going to complain about. He actually kinda liked it.
(He actually really liked it.)
"But," Fredrika continued, "I'm already on the verge in one too many subjects. I can't be punished for skipping class on top of that." She shook her head, adding in an exaggerated, dramatic tone, "My parents would kill me."
"That's why we need to get as many people to participate as we can," Felice countered. "They can't punish everyone, right? And think about what it will mean for your follower count," she swiftly switched gears— masterfully, Wilhelm thought. "Don't you remember how many new followers you got last year after you posted the black square thingie?"
Wilhelm had to hold back a snort. He might be privileged, but even he knew the "black square thingie" had been a bad look all around. Fredrika, however, seemed to hold it as a resounding success, because her eyes widened. "Oh yeah, it was like a full thousand, wasn't it?" she thought to herself out loud, her voice tinged with wonder.
She pursed her lips as she thought about it. The thinking took about two seconds max. "All right, I'll do it," she said, much to the other girls' elation. "But!" she added as a warning, "only if we get literally everybody to do this with us. I seriously cannot—"
"We will if you two help us!" Madison cut Fredrika off by throwing her arms around her in an effusive hug, before bounding off toward Felice's bed. "Sara, Sara— I know you said you don't want to post about this because Simon will see, but I know he follows me so he'll definitely at least hear about it. It'd be weirder if you don't post anything, I think." She dropped her head on Sara's lap. "Oh, we should come up with a cover story in case he asks..."
Wilhelm tuned out the chatter happening on both sides of the room about the intricacies of Instagram aesthetics and whether they should don their pink "pussyhats" on strike day, and instead turned to Felice. "I knew you were smart," he started in a quiet voice, "but really, you're like an evil genius." And he meant that as a compliment, one hundred percent.
Felice laughed. "Well, what good is being the most popular girl in school if I don't use my powers for good from time to time, right?" She winked at him, and Wilhelm smiled. She nudged him with her shoulder. "Hey," she said, "we're going to do this for Simon. You'll see." He nodded, hoping more than anything that her prediction was right.
She squeezed Wilhelm's arm, offering him one last bit of reassurance, before going to Stella and Fredrika so they could show her what they'd posted. Wilhelm remained by the door and let the girls' enthusiasm wash over him. When he thought about it, he'd hardly done anything— it was all Felice, really— but he couldn't help but feel that, for the first time since his entire life went to shit, maybe, just maybe, something good could actually happen.
He was so, so glad he was not alone in this.
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Author's notes!—
Okay, first of all: *hugs Wille until every bit of loneliness and pain is squeezed out of him.* And second: I love these girls so effin' much. All of them. Even Sara. (We'll get her back to the light side; you'll see. Stay tuned.)
We do see Simon and Maddie chatting between classes at least once, I believe in episode 5. I like to think they're friends, or at least friendly, because I love them both so much. By "full Greta," Felice is, of course, referencing Greta Thunberg, a young Swedish climate activist who went viral in 2018 for skipping school to protest for climate action outside the Swedish Parliament. As Fredrika mentions, most universities in Sweden are public and free at the Bachelor's/Master's level for Swedish nationals, as well as EU/EEA and Switzerland citizens— that's only for tuition, though, as Sara points out.
The "black square thingie" is a reference to "Blackout Tuesday," a social media initiative that took place on June 2nd, 2020 to draw attention to the movement against police brutality; it was criticized by many for being performative and drowning out the voices of actual activists. Pussyhats— the knitted pink hats with cat "ears" that became popular in the lead-up to the 2017 Women's March— have also been accused of being more performance than actual activism, as well as being a symbol of white feminism and a lack of intersectionality. (I don't mind the hats so much, personally.) Speaking of performative activism, I don't mean for Maddie's comment about New York City to offend any New Yorkers! I just think people making fun of their hometown even though they love it to bits is a very common thing to do.
Next up: How To Sell Activism To A Bunch Of Spoiled Rich Kids Who Already Have Everything. And maybe a little bit of prep for the strike, if the chapter doesn't get too long? (I know I said initially that this would be 3-4 chapters long, but it's looking more now like it's going to be around 6-7, most likely with an epilogue on top of that. Fingers crossed.)