(no subject)
And here's chapter 1.
Title: Through the looking glass (1/?)
Genre: Twins gen
Rating: PG13
Summary: Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he never thought he'd see again. Five years ago, Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he couldn't wait to see. Will they get back where they belong?
Tom woke with a start. He’d dreamed some weird shit about the past, about Loitsche and school and practicing in the damp basement that had served as their rehearsal room. Probably an aftereffect of the old videos they’d watched. The moldy smell from that room was still in his nose, and he still heard fifteen-year-old Bill’s high-pitched, excited voice ringing in his ears.
Groaning, he sat up in bed - how had he even gotten there? - and hit his head on a wooden beam.
“Ow!”
His eyes snapped open. He didn’t know why there would be a beam above his bed - that’d been in his old room right under the roof, at home - but there was and no matter how much he rubbed his eyes, the stubborn thing wouldn’t fade away.
Startled, Tom glanced around. His alarm clock on the bedside table said five-thirty, but it was light outside, not at all like winter. The curtains at the window were his, the threadbare blanket that was spread over the foot of his bed, the drawing supplies that lay scattered all over the floor, but the room wasn’t. It had been, but not anymore.
It was his old room at home in Loitsche.
There was his desk, his wobbly closet with the creaky door, his school bag by the door - Tom shuddered - and his old guitar on its stand in a corner. Tom blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Blinked again. The room remained the same. He jumped out of bed and looked down at himself. He was wearing the sweatpants and designer hoodie he’d fallen asleep in. When he reached up, his hair was in braids, not dreadlocks. He was himself - twenty years old, star guitarist of a popular rock band - but he’d woken up in his bed of the past when he was supposed to be on the couch at home in Hamburg, next to Bill--
Bill.
Tom whirled around, spinning in a circle as he searched the room wildly. His twin wasn’t there, but his singing still rang in Tom’s ears, grew louder and, with a pang, Tom realized that he wasn’t just imagining things. Bill was here, he was singing outside his door, but the voice he was hearing didn’t belong to the twenty-year-old Bill who was his twin. This voice--
“Good morning!” The bedroom door was flung open, and Tom came face to face with his brother’s teen self, who bounced into the room like a kangaroo on amphetamines. “Did you sleep at all? I didn’t. I still can’t believe it, we’re going to have a single--”
Bill came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room as he looked at Tom, really looked, and saw, like Tom saw, that something wasn’t right. Then, with a long, angry scream like a banshee, he launched himself at his twin’s older self. “Who are you? Who are you? Where’s Tom? What have you done with Tom?”
“Ow, ow!” Tom yelped, stumbling back with the impact. A head shorter though he might be and a lightweight as he’d always been, this Bill was used to schoolyard brawls and wasn’t afraid to use all the dirty tricks. “Stop it, it’s me!”
Bill ground his heel into Tom’s foot. “Where’s Tom? Toooooooom!”
Annoyed, Tom grabbed the tiny stick figure who was pummeling his chest and held him off with his hands on Bill’s shoulders. “Will you listen?” he barked, and his voice, deeper than fifteen-year-old Tom’s but the same in tone and inflection, finally registered with Bill.
Bill stopped trying to wriggle free and stared up into Tom’s face with wide eyes. “Who are you?” he squeaked, voice breaking with his indignation.
“I’m me, idiot!” Tom snapped. “I’m Tom.”
Bill looked him up and down once. “No you aren’t.”
“Yes, I am!” Tom retorted. “I have no idea how I got here, because I’m supposed to be in Hamburg and it’s supposed to be Christmas and my Bill isn’t supposed to hit me, not without reason anyway, but I’m still me.”
“Hamburg? Christmas?” Bill echoed. His dark eyes looked huge in his face that was suddenly very white. “Your Bill?”
“Yeah. My Bill who isn’t a dwarf with stupid hair.” Tom tilted his head, amending. “Well, his hair is still stupid.”
That last, derisive remark seemed to be what convinced Bill it really was his brother standing before him. He frowned, jerking his shoulders sharply. “Let me go. Let me go.”
“Only if you stop punching.” Bill nodded so Tom let him go, and his little brother actually stepped back, as far away from him as the tiny room would allow.
Bill stared at him in open-mouthed shock. “What happened to your hair?”
“Long story,” Tom snorted. “Your Tom isn’t here?”
“No.” Bill looked around quickly as if he expected young Tom to jump out of the closet, cackling madly and declaring it all a sick joke. “He’s supposed to be here,” he said, panic lacing his voice. “I thought he was in here but now you’re here and where’s Tom?”
“I am Tom,” Tom reminded him.
“Well you’re the wrong Tom,” Bill burst out, looking so wretchedly upset that Tom started forward and reached out instinctively to touch his shoulder. Young Bill flinched but didn’t shake him off, and the light touch did seem to console him a little. He sniffled loudly. “What if something happened to him?”
“If I’m here, he’s probably there,” Tom mused. That would seem to make sense. Or would it?
“Where’s ‘there’?” Bill asked.
“2009. Hamburg. At our house. Where I’m supposed to be.”
Bill’s eyes went even wider. “We have a house? In Hamburg?”
At that, Tom quirked a small smile. “That’s what we always wanted, isn’t it.”
“Yeah, but…” Amazement seemed to overcome upset then as the words sunk in. Bill smiled tentatively, looking small and vulnerable and so, so afraid that some evil trick was being played on him. He rubbed his glossy eyes with tight fists before blinking up at Tom again in wonder. “So it’s all going to come true?” he whispered. “Everything we imagined?”
Tom took a deep breath. “Well, actually--”
“What’s going on? You’re going to be late, again! Breakfast now, boys, or--” Their mom came whirling into the room like a tornado, an armful of laundry balanced precariously on her hip, and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw them. The laundry fell to the floor as she clasped her hands before her mouth. “Oh my god!”
“It’s okay, mom, it’s Tom,” Bill hurried to assure her. He went to stand behind her, an arm around her shoulders, and together they looked at Tom in wonder and confusion.
Simone stared at him, shock and awe chasing each other across her face. “What… How…?”
“He’s from the future!” Bill explained. “Look how tall he is!” He turned to Tom as a thought occurred to him. “Am I going to be that tall?”
Tom debated whether he should lie, but Bill’s earnest, hopeful face was impossible to resist. “Taller,” he admitted and watched his baby brother’s young face light up with glee. “But only by that much.” He held out two fingers. “And I’m still growing.”
Bill whooped. “I knew it! Hahaha, you lose!”
Tom made a face. This Bill might not be his Bill, but he knew how to piss Tom off just as well as his older counterpart. “For now you lose, midget!”
Bill gasped in outrage. “That’s not fair, you’re older…ow!” Tom had pulled his gelled bangs; Bill kicked his shin in retaliation and their mother finally seemed to recover at this display of normalcy.
“Boys! Stop it!” She put a hand on each of their shoulders, separating them effectively before the fight got serious. Simone looked up at Tom, who towered over her at twenty. “What do you mean, from the future?” she asked softly. “Really now?”
Tom nodded. “I have no idea how or why, but yeah, that’s how it looks.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
Tom puffed out his chest. He shot young Bill a smug glance. “Twenty.”
“Twenty! How, what, why…” Simone searched his face for a few moments, as if she was trying to reconcile her picture of Tom as she knew him with the image of the young man standing before her, then, with a wild shudder, she started forward and hugged Tom close. “My baby boy! Twenty! And so handsome!”
She hadn’t changed at all. Tom closed his eyes gratefully, hugged back hard and inhaled the scent of her perfume, so familiar.
“I’m handsome!” Bill said loudly, behind them.
Tom grinned at him over their mom’s shoulder. “You have a zit on your chin.”
Bill looked very tempted to kick him again, but didn’t dare to with Simone there. Tom snickered at his sour look. At least things weren’t too far from normal even with Tom being displaced.
“Goodness, I can’t believe this,” Simone said. Her expression became alarmed. “Where’s ‘our’ Tom?” She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers.
“With ‘my’ Bill, I’d think. I hope,” Tom replied. He could think of no other logical explanation, but then again, this whole thing wasn’t very logical. On days like this, when life was just fucking crazy, he appreciated that his family wasn’t quite normal to begin with.
“Oh dear, he has to go to school!” Simone said. “Mrs Schmidt said she’d flunk him if he missed even one more lesson.” She gave Tom a very stern look that Tom knew all too well. “Get ready, young man, the bus is leaving in half an hour.”
“What?” Tom exclaimed. He’d just made an impossible, inexplicable journey through time and his mother was utterly caught up in silly everyday details. “I am not going to school!”
“Yes you are,” Simone told him. “You have to. Get ready. Breakfast is waiting. We’ll figure out what to do about all this,” she waved her hand, “when you get home. Bill, your eyeliner is running, honey. Fix it before you leave for school, will you.” She gathered her laundry off the floor. “Gordon won’t believe this.” And with that, she disappeared, presumably to tell Gordon what new madness was happening in their house today.
Tom stood in the middle of his room, his head almost touching the ceiling, and gaped like a fish out of water. “She can’t send me to school! I’m twenty, I’m finished with school!”
Young Bill was grinning evilly like the Cheshire Cat. “Why should you have it better than I?”
“Because I already have a school diploma!” Tom told him sullenly.
“You do?” Bill looked vaguely impressed, as if he hadn’t actually believed school could ever end. “Huh. Well, that’s good, because Tom…my Tom…has a math exam today.” He glanced at the door. “We didn’t tell mom. You know how she worries, even if she’ll say she doesn’t need stupid papers with stupid marks to tell her we’re smart.”
“Math exam?” Tom was beginning to wish he’d knocked himself out when he hit his head on the beam above his bed. Maybe this was all a bad dream. “No. No. You can’t make me.”
“You have to,” Bill insisted in much the same tone as their mom. “Mrs Schmidt will flunk him…you if you don’t show up for German and you need to ace that exam unless you want to fail math.”
As much as they hated school, failing a class was out of the question. Tom wouldn’t give their asshole teachers the satisfaction, damn it. He scratched the back of his head, contemplating his fate. “Fuck.”
Bill snickered. “Put on some shoes. And hide your hair! We’re late, we need to catch the bus, remember?”
“Fuck,” Tom repeated, with feeling. “How will we explain that I’ve grown overnight?”
“Slouch,” was Bill’s advice. “You do that so well.”
***
On to chapter 2
Title: Through the looking glass (1/?)
Genre: Twins gen
Rating: PG13
Summary: Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he never thought he'd see again. Five years ago, Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he couldn't wait to see. Will they get back where they belong?
Tom woke with a start. He’d dreamed some weird shit about the past, about Loitsche and school and practicing in the damp basement that had served as their rehearsal room. Probably an aftereffect of the old videos they’d watched. The moldy smell from that room was still in his nose, and he still heard fifteen-year-old Bill’s high-pitched, excited voice ringing in his ears.
Groaning, he sat up in bed - how had he even gotten there? - and hit his head on a wooden beam.
“Ow!”
His eyes snapped open. He didn’t know why there would be a beam above his bed - that’d been in his old room right under the roof, at home - but there was and no matter how much he rubbed his eyes, the stubborn thing wouldn’t fade away.
Startled, Tom glanced around. His alarm clock on the bedside table said five-thirty, but it was light outside, not at all like winter. The curtains at the window were his, the threadbare blanket that was spread over the foot of his bed, the drawing supplies that lay scattered all over the floor, but the room wasn’t. It had been, but not anymore.
It was his old room at home in Loitsche.
There was his desk, his wobbly closet with the creaky door, his school bag by the door - Tom shuddered - and his old guitar on its stand in a corner. Tom blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Blinked again. The room remained the same. He jumped out of bed and looked down at himself. He was wearing the sweatpants and designer hoodie he’d fallen asleep in. When he reached up, his hair was in braids, not dreadlocks. He was himself - twenty years old, star guitarist of a popular rock band - but he’d woken up in his bed of the past when he was supposed to be on the couch at home in Hamburg, next to Bill--
Bill.
Tom whirled around, spinning in a circle as he searched the room wildly. His twin wasn’t there, but his singing still rang in Tom’s ears, grew louder and, with a pang, Tom realized that he wasn’t just imagining things. Bill was here, he was singing outside his door, but the voice he was hearing didn’t belong to the twenty-year-old Bill who was his twin. This voice--
“Good morning!” The bedroom door was flung open, and Tom came face to face with his brother’s teen self, who bounced into the room like a kangaroo on amphetamines. “Did you sleep at all? I didn’t. I still can’t believe it, we’re going to have a single--”
Bill came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room as he looked at Tom, really looked, and saw, like Tom saw, that something wasn’t right. Then, with a long, angry scream like a banshee, he launched himself at his twin’s older self. “Who are you? Who are you? Where’s Tom? What have you done with Tom?”
“Ow, ow!” Tom yelped, stumbling back with the impact. A head shorter though he might be and a lightweight as he’d always been, this Bill was used to schoolyard brawls and wasn’t afraid to use all the dirty tricks. “Stop it, it’s me!”
Bill ground his heel into Tom’s foot. “Where’s Tom? Toooooooom!”
Annoyed, Tom grabbed the tiny stick figure who was pummeling his chest and held him off with his hands on Bill’s shoulders. “Will you listen?” he barked, and his voice, deeper than fifteen-year-old Tom’s but the same in tone and inflection, finally registered with Bill.
Bill stopped trying to wriggle free and stared up into Tom’s face with wide eyes. “Who are you?” he squeaked, voice breaking with his indignation.
“I’m me, idiot!” Tom snapped. “I’m Tom.”
Bill looked him up and down once. “No you aren’t.”
“Yes, I am!” Tom retorted. “I have no idea how I got here, because I’m supposed to be in Hamburg and it’s supposed to be Christmas and my Bill isn’t supposed to hit me, not without reason anyway, but I’m still me.”
“Hamburg? Christmas?” Bill echoed. His dark eyes looked huge in his face that was suddenly very white. “Your Bill?”
“Yeah. My Bill who isn’t a dwarf with stupid hair.” Tom tilted his head, amending. “Well, his hair is still stupid.”
That last, derisive remark seemed to be what convinced Bill it really was his brother standing before him. He frowned, jerking his shoulders sharply. “Let me go. Let me go.”
“Only if you stop punching.” Bill nodded so Tom let him go, and his little brother actually stepped back, as far away from him as the tiny room would allow.
Bill stared at him in open-mouthed shock. “What happened to your hair?”
“Long story,” Tom snorted. “Your Tom isn’t here?”
“No.” Bill looked around quickly as if he expected young Tom to jump out of the closet, cackling madly and declaring it all a sick joke. “He’s supposed to be here,” he said, panic lacing his voice. “I thought he was in here but now you’re here and where’s Tom?”
“I am Tom,” Tom reminded him.
“Well you’re the wrong Tom,” Bill burst out, looking so wretchedly upset that Tom started forward and reached out instinctively to touch his shoulder. Young Bill flinched but didn’t shake him off, and the light touch did seem to console him a little. He sniffled loudly. “What if something happened to him?”
“If I’m here, he’s probably there,” Tom mused. That would seem to make sense. Or would it?
“Where’s ‘there’?” Bill asked.
“2009. Hamburg. At our house. Where I’m supposed to be.”
Bill’s eyes went even wider. “We have a house? In Hamburg?”
At that, Tom quirked a small smile. “That’s what we always wanted, isn’t it.”
“Yeah, but…” Amazement seemed to overcome upset then as the words sunk in. Bill smiled tentatively, looking small and vulnerable and so, so afraid that some evil trick was being played on him. He rubbed his glossy eyes with tight fists before blinking up at Tom again in wonder. “So it’s all going to come true?” he whispered. “Everything we imagined?”
Tom took a deep breath. “Well, actually--”
“What’s going on? You’re going to be late, again! Breakfast now, boys, or--” Their mom came whirling into the room like a tornado, an armful of laundry balanced precariously on her hip, and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw them. The laundry fell to the floor as she clasped her hands before her mouth. “Oh my god!”
“It’s okay, mom, it’s Tom,” Bill hurried to assure her. He went to stand behind her, an arm around her shoulders, and together they looked at Tom in wonder and confusion.
Simone stared at him, shock and awe chasing each other across her face. “What… How…?”
“He’s from the future!” Bill explained. “Look how tall he is!” He turned to Tom as a thought occurred to him. “Am I going to be that tall?”
Tom debated whether he should lie, but Bill’s earnest, hopeful face was impossible to resist. “Taller,” he admitted and watched his baby brother’s young face light up with glee. “But only by that much.” He held out two fingers. “And I’m still growing.”
Bill whooped. “I knew it! Hahaha, you lose!”
Tom made a face. This Bill might not be his Bill, but he knew how to piss Tom off just as well as his older counterpart. “For now you lose, midget!”
Bill gasped in outrage. “That’s not fair, you’re older…ow!” Tom had pulled his gelled bangs; Bill kicked his shin in retaliation and their mother finally seemed to recover at this display of normalcy.
“Boys! Stop it!” She put a hand on each of their shoulders, separating them effectively before the fight got serious. Simone looked up at Tom, who towered over her at twenty. “What do you mean, from the future?” she asked softly. “Really now?”
Tom nodded. “I have no idea how or why, but yeah, that’s how it looks.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
Tom puffed out his chest. He shot young Bill a smug glance. “Twenty.”
“Twenty! How, what, why…” Simone searched his face for a few moments, as if she was trying to reconcile her picture of Tom as she knew him with the image of the young man standing before her, then, with a wild shudder, she started forward and hugged Tom close. “My baby boy! Twenty! And so handsome!”
She hadn’t changed at all. Tom closed his eyes gratefully, hugged back hard and inhaled the scent of her perfume, so familiar.
“I’m handsome!” Bill said loudly, behind them.
Tom grinned at him over their mom’s shoulder. “You have a zit on your chin.”
Bill looked very tempted to kick him again, but didn’t dare to with Simone there. Tom snickered at his sour look. At least things weren’t too far from normal even with Tom being displaced.
“Goodness, I can’t believe this,” Simone said. Her expression became alarmed. “Where’s ‘our’ Tom?” She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers.
“With ‘my’ Bill, I’d think. I hope,” Tom replied. He could think of no other logical explanation, but then again, this whole thing wasn’t very logical. On days like this, when life was just fucking crazy, he appreciated that his family wasn’t quite normal to begin with.
“Oh dear, he has to go to school!” Simone said. “Mrs Schmidt said she’d flunk him if he missed even one more lesson.” She gave Tom a very stern look that Tom knew all too well. “Get ready, young man, the bus is leaving in half an hour.”
“What?” Tom exclaimed. He’d just made an impossible, inexplicable journey through time and his mother was utterly caught up in silly everyday details. “I am not going to school!”
“Yes you are,” Simone told him. “You have to. Get ready. Breakfast is waiting. We’ll figure out what to do about all this,” she waved her hand, “when you get home. Bill, your eyeliner is running, honey. Fix it before you leave for school, will you.” She gathered her laundry off the floor. “Gordon won’t believe this.” And with that, she disappeared, presumably to tell Gordon what new madness was happening in their house today.
Tom stood in the middle of his room, his head almost touching the ceiling, and gaped like a fish out of water. “She can’t send me to school! I’m twenty, I’m finished with school!”
Young Bill was grinning evilly like the Cheshire Cat. “Why should you have it better than I?”
“Because I already have a school diploma!” Tom told him sullenly.
“You do?” Bill looked vaguely impressed, as if he hadn’t actually believed school could ever end. “Huh. Well, that’s good, because Tom…my Tom…has a math exam today.” He glanced at the door. “We didn’t tell mom. You know how she worries, even if she’ll say she doesn’t need stupid papers with stupid marks to tell her we’re smart.”
“Math exam?” Tom was beginning to wish he’d knocked himself out when he hit his head on the beam above his bed. Maybe this was all a bad dream. “No. No. You can’t make me.”
“You have to,” Bill insisted in much the same tone as their mom. “Mrs Schmidt will flunk him…you if you don’t show up for German and you need to ace that exam unless you want to fail math.”
As much as they hated school, failing a class was out of the question. Tom wouldn’t give their asshole teachers the satisfaction, damn it. He scratched the back of his head, contemplating his fate. “Fuck.”
Bill snickered. “Put on some shoes. And hide your hair! We’re late, we need to catch the bus, remember?”
“Fuck,” Tom repeated, with feeling. “How will we explain that I’ve grown overnight?”
“Slouch,” was Bill’s advice. “You do that so well.”
***
On to chapter 2