Having lived almost my whole life only two and a bit hours away from LA, you’d think that I would have been to the city of angels a lot. But as I had told Viktor, the only time I remember was for a wedding, some relative on my dad’s side. I remember seeing Venice Beach and being enamored by the sand and the seagulls and that bright blue Pacific but that was about it.

What I really wanted was to go to Disneyland. There were multiple kids in my grade with annual passes, I remember thinking they were the richest kids in the world, practically royalty.

Now I’m with actual royalty. Funny how life works.

Standing outside the gates to the Magic Kingdom, with an actual god damn prince by my side, a prince who outshines any of the ones in the park, a prince who would have his own kingdom, his own country, one day. A prince who…

Is smoking a joint?

I thought Viktor was right behind me as we were walking toward the ticket booths but now I’ve turned around to see him off to the side and smoking a joint, a puff of smoke falling from his mouth and wafting around him.

“Really?” I ask him, coming over. “Pot?”

He nods and squints at me, taking the joint away from his lips. “I smoke quite often at home. When no one is looking, of course. Usually if I happen to visit Magnus. He’s the prince of Norway,” he explains.

Pot smoking princes, huh?

He tries to hand it off to me but I shake my head. I’m no angel but I’m about to step into Disneyland. I don’t need that shit. I’m about to get high on churros.

“Where did you get it anyway?” I ask him.

He nods over at the busy intersection. “Bought it from the homeless fellow on the corner.”

My mouth drops open. “You did not!”

He smirks at me and has another drag. Blows out the smoke. God he looks sexy with his eyes all squinty like that. “I picked it up in Colorado on the way here.”

“You’re lucky it’s legal in California. The last thing you need is for your ass to be thrown in jail. What kind of a headline would that be?”

“Not a good one,” he says and then stubs out the joint, flicks it in the nearest wastebasket and holds out his arm for me. “Let’s go.”

Because this was a last minute addition to our agenda, we’re only at the park for one day which sadly means that we have to choose one park instead of both. As much as I want to go to California Adventure and ride the Grizzly River Rapids or California Screaming, we’ve decided on just visiting the OG (original gangster), Disneyland.

Honestly though, it was a hard decision. With only so many days left with each other, part of me didn’t even want come. I wanted to stay in the hotel room with Viktor and continue to have him fuck my brains out.

Though we fell asleep right after last night, both of us exhausted, especially me for having come three times, this morning we woke up and blindly groped for each other in the dark and got back at it. Sex in the shower followed right after.

But Viktor was looking forward to Disneyland too and I know we can’t do all of our getting to know each other in the bedroom. As much as my body wants to get to know him better, my mind still wants to know his on the same level.

Either way, this trip would be a memory neither of us would ever forget. If someone ever brings up Disneyland in the future, I can think back and go, “Oh yeah, I went there once with the prince of Sweden.”

But who am I kidding? I won’t forget a single second of our time together, even just the boring stuff like standing in line forever at In & Out and talking smack about everyone else in front of us.

We didn’t get a chance to order our Disney tickets online, so we end up in yet another line to get our tickets (thankfully it wasn’t as long as the one for burgers) and then we’re into the park. In seconds I am just smitten. The sounds, the sights, the smells…god, all of Main Street smells like heaven.

“Oh my god, it’s Pluto,” I cry out, pointing at the character with a line of kids waiting patiently for their pictures to be taken with him. Then I spot Goofy. “Oh my god, it’s Goofy!”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” he says.

I blink at Viktor, ready to go on the defensive if he says any shit about either character. “What?”

“How fucking adorable you look right now or how much this is turning me on.”

I smack him across the chest playfully, my hand bouncing back like I’ve slapped a bunch of bricks. “You can’t get turned on at Disneyland. It’s gotta be a rule.”

He shrugs. “You obviously don’t know me. I can get turned on anywhere.” He flashes me a wicked grin. “I bet I can turn you on anywhere too.”

“Oh hush,” I tell him, grabbing his hand and leading him further into the park.

It’s almost summer and even though kids are still at school, the park is crowded. Maybe it’s always this crowded. Everywhere I look there are people, large families, couples with babies, couples without kids, people that look like they’re about to run a marathon through the park, old people on scooters, Donald Duck. Normally crowds of this size would give me some anxiety but here it doesn’t affect me, not when I’m hanging onto Viktor. His size and presence seems to command attention and make people part in from of him.

“Where to?” he asks as we pause at the end of Main Street.

I don’t even have to consult the map. I nod at Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

“The castle.”

He looks at it and squints. “You call that a castle?”

“Hey, when am I ever going to have an actual prince in this situation after this?”

He shrugs. “I’d hope never.”

He takes my hand and we walk over the bridge, the castle getting a lot smaller the closer we get.

“My mother would like it,” he muses, looking around as we go through the entrance and into a courtyard full of shops and children running everywhere, most of them in little princess costumes.

“Oh,” I gasp. “I want one. Do you think they have adult sizes?”

He gives me a funny look. “You want to be a princess?”

“What girl doesn’t want to be a princess?” I ask and then I realize the question probably holds some real meaning to him. “I mean, growing up, of course you do. It’s a fantasy.”

“Am I a fantasy?”

I look him up and down, looking impossibly handsome as he always is. “You’re my fantasy, yes. Definitely.”

He seems to think that over as we head into one of the shops. “You know, if you came back with me to Sweden, and married me, then you could be a real princess.”

Oh my god.

I stop dead in my tracks.

My heart lurching to a stop.

“You do not joke about that,” I manage to say, my blood thrumming hot through my veins.

Oh my god.

What if he isn’t joking?

But I see the sly glint in his eyes, the hint of a smile and he is joking.

Thank god I didn’t take him up on it.

“Hey, I’m not desperate to be a princess, thank you very much,” I tell him, picking up a crown from a display. “Why should I be when I have all that I need to be one right here.”

I can feel his eyes on me, watching me intently. “I think we should buy you a crown,” he says after a moment.

I smile at him sweetly. “You’re really hell bent on making me a princess.”

“Actually I have a better idea.” He ducks around the corner and comes back holding a stuffed version of the reindeer from Frozen.

“Sven the reindeer?” I ask as he puts the plush toy in my hands.

“No,” he says, almost annoyed. “It’s a moose. Viktor the moose.”

“But it’s a reindeer,” I tell him and show him his name tag. “And his name is Sven.”

Viktor takes the animal from me and rips the fabric nametag off his collar, hiding it between a pile of Olaf slippers. “Now it’s Viktor. The moose.” He shoves it back in my hands. “Now when I’m gone, you’ll still have a Viktor of your own.”

Well, fuck. If this isn’t one of the cutest things ever.

Even though he just vandalized a Disney toy at Disneyland.

I look down into the reindeer’s big eyes and will myself to think of it as Viktor the moose.

After we buy the reindeer–moose–and the clerk wanted to double check with us that we were okay with buying a defective toy, we head over to Splash Mountain, because the wait times seemed somewhat reasonable.

That was a lie, of course. There are no reasonable wait times in the park, so Viktor and I are yet again stuck in a long line.

But I guess stuck is too strong of a word. The thing is, I’m positively delighted with just standing beside Viktor and doing nothing but waiting. We talk, about everything we can without getting too personal, because who wants to get personal surrounded by a bunch of strangers.

I lean back against his chest and he wraps his big arms around me and we shuffle forward, not wanting to be apart. He tells me about his pet rabbits he had while growing up, how he was so obsessed with Watership Down at the time that he named them after the characters and was convinced they were going to have an uprising when he wasn’t looking.

I tell him about my family’s tradition of giving weird names. Rosemary and Thyme, and Pike have always gotten the brunt of it, but Callum’s middle name is actually Danger, April has two, May and June, and my full name is Margaret Mayhem.

“Margaret Mayhem?” Viktor laughs loudly, the sound soaring over the crowd and making a few people in line turn their heads. “I’m sorry but mayhem means…”

“Mayhem means a little chaotic and crazy,” I say with a sigh. “Apparently both me and Callum were handfuls when we were born.”

“Or perhaps you both grew into your names like, what is it called again? A self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“That might be true for Callum but I am not chaotic or crazy.”

He raises his brow at me. “Well…”

I punch his chest. “Hey.”

He grabs my fist and kisses my knuckles. “You were a little chaotic and crazy last night,” he says in a low, silken voice.

I immediately blush and my body knows all too well. I’ve felt the ache of him between my legs all day and I know I’m walking a little differently.

Even though we end up boarding the log flume ten minutes later, my body is still feeling a bit hot and needy, especially as we end up sitting squished at the very back of the log and my ass is pressed into his crotch.

I glance at him over my shoulder, my eyes turning sly. “You comfortable?” I ask, wiggling my ass into him.

He just shakes his head, his jaw growing tense in playful warning.

As it turns out though, a lot of the ride is in the dark.

Now, I know that the dark in Disneyland is only dark to you. The place is famous for the amount of cameras they have set up, eyes on you at all times. They can always see you clearly, no matter what.

But from the way we’re sitting at the back, so squished together with his long legs bracketing mine, it’s almost natural for Viktor’s hand to be in my lap.

Unbuttoning the top of my jean shorts.

Slipping his fingers into my underwear.

“We could get caught,” I turn my head and hiss at him, hoping all the singing from the animatronic animals drowns out my voice from the other people in the log. Thankfully they are all adults.

“So?” he says lazily, sliding his fingers around and around.

My eyes close briefly.

This is so wrong.

But, god, it feels so good.

“So we could get banned for life.”

“That’s okay,” he says. “I live in Sweden.”

I’m about to tell him to stop, that it’s wrong, that we’re in public and we’re violating laws and probably Disneyland’s innocence but then the log starts to climb up the final hill and the gravity thrusts me further back into him.

And Viktor has skills.

He keeps his fingers going, rubbing me expertly and with the tick tick tick vibrations of the log as it’s cranked up the hill, I’m coming just as the log flume hits the crescendo. The world is open and bright in front of my eyes, all of the park in front of me, and my mouth is open, crying out his name.

And then we’re dropping straight down, down, down into the water.

Nothing like a cold splash hitting you in the face to bring you back on track.

After the ride we’re both soaked, me in more ways than one, and we pick up the large photo of us they took during the final fall.

Viktor is grinning like an idiot in it.

It looks like I’m screaming from fear.

Only the two of us know the truth about that photo.

That thing is going up on my wall.

---

***

---

When we finally get back to the hotel from Disneyland, we’re both exhausted. The traffic from Anaheim to Hollywood ensnared us for hours, so bad that even the Waze app on his phone couldn’t shortcut us out of there.

Our hotel room is freshly cleaned and passes my inspection (a housekeeper always knows what to look for) though I’m sad that the last signs of the lavender flowers have been swept away. I still detect a hint of it in the air, or maybe I’m forever smelling it like a memory that won’t go away.

“Get naked,” Viktor says, taking his shirt off over his head, displaying that hard, bare torso of his.

“You aren’t tired?” I ask him, my fingers already obeying his commands before my mind has a chance to argue. I take off my tank top, one that says Hakuna Matata that he bought for me in the park and I couldn’t wait to change into, then start unbuttoning my jean shorts. He strides over to the curtains that have been left open and pulls them shut just as the shorts fall to my feet.

“I don’t care if people see,” I tell him. After what happened on the ride, I feel like I’ve dipped my toe into the life of someone else, someone footloose and fancy free. I want to live like I don’t give any fucks. I want to get into a fuck bankruptcy.

I want to do that with Viktor, live this whole other life in this hotel room.

But when I lie down on the bed, naked, and he joins me, the exhaustion takes over the both of us. Viktor wraps me in his arms and pulls me toward him, his leg hooking over mine, so that we are a tangle of limbs and warm skin.

“Just a nap,” he whispers into my ear, even though it’s nearly midnight already. I didn’t think I would feel as comfortable just lying here naked with him as I am when I’m fucking him, but in seconds my mind and body start to drift away.

I’m awakened by the scrape of a lighter, a puff of smoke filling the air.

I open my eyes to see Viktor sitting up in bed, smoking.

It’s cinematic, with the light coming in through the crack in the curtains like a spear, lighting the edges of him up. There’s another light coming from the bathroom but the main one is off and we’re mostly in darkness. I don’t remember turning it off before I fell asleep.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Sorry,” he says to me, glancing over his shoulder with a warm smile. “I didn’t want to wake you. But I knew if I went on the balcony, someone would see me. There’s been a party out by the pool all night.”

It’s only then that I notice the dull thump of music and the occasional laughter.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he explains, lying back down on the bed, facing me. “I thought this would help.”

He holds it out to me in offering and this time I take it, looking up at the ceiling as I do so. “Won’t this set off the smoke detector?”

He bites back a grin. “No.”

“But we could get in trouble, I don’t think they allow smoking of any kind.”

He studies me for a moment, his expression soft, amused, content. “We’ll be okay.”

I shrug at that, trusting him. After we gave new meaning to the word Splash Mountain this afternoon, smoking in a hotel room shouldn’t have me so worried.

I have a puff. Hold the smoke in my mouth, probably for a bit too long, probably because I’m trying to show off in front of him, and he has to take the joint back from my fingers.

“And for a moment there I didn’t think you smoked,” he muses.

“I don’t,” I tell him and then start coughing violently. Point proven. “Honestly. Very rarely. Sometimes Pike has some but that’s about it.”

He nods, puffing back. “I understand,” he says, smoke falling from his mouth. “You have a lot to worry about, a lot to be ready for.”

I pull the edge of the blanket over my chest, tucking it under me. I like the whole lying around naked thing but a girl has her hang ups. “To be honest, I rarely drink. I can’t afford the hangover for one, not when I have to work so early, and I feel like I have to always been on. Like, with my parents, they were always drinking. I mean, not in a bad way, but it was a common sight. I think back now and I’m like how did you do that? How did you let yourself be loose and relaxed and just know that everything was going to be fine?”

I catch myself and then reach out and grab the joint from him as a way to start blurring memories. “Of course, it wasn’t fine in the end, was it?”

“It will get easier, Maggie,” he tells me as I inhale. “I promise.”

I take a moment before I exhale. “How would you know?” I cough.

“I don’t know. That’s what people tell me. I suppose becoming a king and becoming a parent are similar in a lot of ways.”

“I guess,” I say. “But with you, you have a system in place. You have, like presidents or prime ministers or something to actually pass rules and do all the dirty business. If you’re a parent, all that dirty business is on you.”

“You’re right,” he says, taking the joint back. “I can’t pretend to know. I can only say I understand.”

I know he does. We’re in such similar situations. Very different situations, mind you, but similar all the same. Saddled with responsibilities that are bigger than we are, overwhelmed by the change in our lives, grappling with loss.

I sigh and fall back on the bed. The pot is starting to affect me already and I hope things don’t get weird. “Tell me about your brother, Alex.”

Viktor exhales sharply through his nose and I can feel him tense up.

“I don’t mean anything bad,” I say. “Let’s just forget, just for tonight, that we’ve lost them. Pretend they’re still here. Pretend we’re at a party and people want anecdotes about them. What would you tell them? What are some of your best memories?”

The room has grown silent except for the sound of my beating heart and the dull thud of the music outside. Viktor then lies back on the bed beside me and we both stare up at the ceiling.

“Alex was always a bit of a weirdo,” he begins. “But I never had a problem with it. He was totally fascinated by the strangest things. Things like trains, for example. He loved trains. He was obsessed for years. I know it sounds silly, but being my parents and all, we had a massive playroom for all of our toys and at the end of it was his train collection.”

He takes another hit of the joint and lets the smoke float above us like fog.

“He’d spend hours in there, even when I got to an age where toys no longer interested me, he was still fascinated. But it wasn’t the locomotives or the tracks or the romantic quality of trains that kept him going. It was just the wheels. Of all things, there was something he found comforting about the wheels turning. Give him a train without a track and he didn’t care for it. Give him a track and he would spend hours and hours watching it make the rounds around the room. Even now the sound of a toy train brings me back.”

“Sounds like a nice memory.”

He looks at me in surprise, as if it hadn’t crossed his mind. Then a small smile tilts the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. It is a nice memory. It was something about him that I found peculiar but so essentially Alex.”

“What else is a nice memory?” I ask, wanting to know more.

“Christmas,” he says. “Christmas is a big deal in Sweden. As you know, Santa comes from Lapland. We also celebrate Christmas Eve instead of morning.”

“So when do you open your presents? I mean, how does Santa get them to you without you seeing him?”

He smiles. “Well that’s the thing. You have to have a pretty sneaky Santa. And we did. You’d never see him. Until one day I rigged a trap.”

“A trap? You set a trap for Santa?”

He shrugs and then puts the joint out on the notepad beside the bed. “I was curious. Anyway, I made it so that he would trip over a wire which would then send all these metal things, like the fireplace poker and an ashtray and a tin box, stuff that was hard and noisy, onto the floor. We had hardwood floors in the living area where the tree was, so you would hear it. And I knew that we were always sequestered for some convenient reason in another room the same time the presents would appear.”

“I see where this is going.” I can’t help but smile at the thought of a super curious and devious Viktor rigging a trap for Santa. It reminds me of Callum for some reason.

He nods, still staring up at the ceiling with a dreamy look on his face. “Oh, yes. So we were all in the study because my mother had to show us something, who knows what, and then CRASH. There was a huge bang and commotion from the other room. So I raced out of there first and my mother managed to hold back Alex, or maybe Alex already figured it out by then and he didn’t care. Either way, I ran into the room to see my father dressed as Santa, a sack of presents at his feet, along with all the other crap I had set up scattered on the floor. Do you know what I did?”

“What?”

“I looked into my father’s eyes and for once I saw a father. I know that sounds silly, of course he’s my father. But he’s also the king and he often has that mentality first, father second. The fact that he dressed as Santa himself and didn’t have a palace worker or butler do it, that meant the world to me. Meant that he actually cared. So I looked at my father and I said, ‘So sorry to disturb you Santa, thank you for the presents.’ And then I ran out of the room. To this day my father still thinks he had me fooled but the thing is, I wanted to be fooled. I never wanted him to know that I knew, it would take all the magic away.”

“That’s actually really sweet,” I tell him, running my fingers over his chest.

“What about you?” he asks. “What do you remember from your childhood that was good?”

“Honestly? Everything.” I don’t have to think too hard. “Even though we grew up fairly poor, you know, and yeah I was upset that I didn’t get to go to Disneyland like other kids did, or I didn’t have the toys everyone else had or I didn’t have new clothes, my childhood was pretty happy. I don’t know, it wasn’t until I was much older that I realized we lacked. Even so, I loved my parents and they loved me, I know they loved me, you could feel it, they showed it, you knew, we all knew their love and…”

The tears hit me like a slap in the face. I thought I was going to be fine talking about this. I should be fine by now.

Viktor reaches out and pulls me to him, holding me tight.

“I’m fine,” I say, but I’m not fine. I can’t even find the words to go on, the tears just keep flowing and flowing. “I…I’m…”

“It’s okay,” Viktor says. “I’m here.”

I know you’re here. You’re here for me. And then you’ll be gone. They were here for me and they’re gone. Everyone I love leaves me.

Everyone I love leaves me.

“I miss them so much,” I cry out, sobbing so loudly that it hurts my chest. My mouth is open, gaping as the choked, silent wails try and escape me. “Oh god, oh god. I miss them so much. It hurts, Viktor, it hurts me.”

“My Maggie,” he whispers, kissing the top of my head over and over again. “I hate to see you hurt. I wish I could take this pain from you, I would give anything to do so.”

I dig my fingers into his shoulders, hanging on tight, afraid to let go. If I hold on tight enough, maybe I won’t have to be alone.

“I just want to see them again,” I whimper, my words garbled. My heart is so heavy I’m afraid it might pull me down so low that I’ll never get back up. “I just want to tell them how much I love them. How much they meant to me. How much I need them. I don’t think I’ll ever stop needing them.”

I try and hold my breath, try to supress the sobs but it doesn’t work.

I cry and I cry, feeling like I’ll never be free of this.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to stop needing our parents,” he says softly, smoothing my hair with his palm. “I think that’s what love is, always needing someone. Needing doesn’t have to be a bad thing or a weak thing. It’s just part of living. We need air to breathe and food to eat. We need certain people in the same way. In the end it’s what keeps us alive.”

I nod, sniffling in to him.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he tells me softly. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you are,” I manage to say. “You’re leaving me too. And I need you, Viktor, I need you.”

He exhales, long and shaking.

“I know, Maggie, I know.”

Silence passes between us and the dark of the room seems to press in on us. The crying has dragged the life out of me and suddenly I’m so tired I feel I could sleep forever. Every part of me feels poured in concrete.

I’ve almost completely drifted off when I hear Viktor whisper into the dark.

“I need you too.”