(no subject)
Title: Through the looking glass (3/?)
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?
“Well look who we have here.”
Tom sighed. The day had been going so well - as well as a day at school could go, anyway. He’d made it to class just in time for the bell and shuffled to his seat at the back of the class attracting minimum attention. The German teacher had mostly left him alone. The math exam had been surprisingly easy, probably because he’d written it before, or maybe it just seemed that way to him after all the studying they’d done to get their stupid diplomas from that correspondence school. In all, it could’ve been an okay day, if not for the voice he now heard, the voice that had been hammered into his memory with hard punches.
He pushed off the wall and turned to see Bill walking towards him as fast as he could without looking like he was running away. Following after him were three guys from the class above them, the three bullies who’d been the ringleaders of the 10th grade and made their life a living hell.
They weren’t as big as Tom remembered them to be.
“Running away, Kaulitz?” one of the guys hollered after Bill, who sped up. It wasn’t that Bill was a coward - Tom knew he wasn’t - but their mom always got so horribly upset when they came home with bloody noses and yet another letter from the headmaster, and Bill hated to see Simone upset. “Running off to your stinky brother?”
“Faggot!” one of the others yelled, loud enough that the few students who were still hanging around the schoolyard waiting to be picked up turned their heads and looked. Some of them giggled. Tom gritted his teeth.
“Look at him with his make-up! Are you sure you’re not a girl, Billa?”
“No, he’s just a faggot!”
“Gay panda!”
“Aww, he’s running off to cry to mophead!”
The audience of teenagers moved in closer to see what was happening, forming a loose half-circle around Bill, the bullies, and Tom, who was still standing by the brick wall of the gym. This was where he’d always waited for Bill, at the back of the school building where no one usually hung around, but Bill was running a little late and the older guys must’ve been waiting for him outside his classroom.
Bill had almost made it. There was no running now - they were trapped between the wall and the other students - but together they could at least give back some of what they got. Their eyes met, and Tom could see how helplessly furious this younger Bill was, how hurt and angry.
One of the thugs kicked at a small piece of gravel on the ground. It sailed past Bill’s ear, missing him by half an inch. Bill jumped, and Tom was starting forward without any other conscious thought.
The three guys were laughing, but they stopped short when they saw Tom advance on them and, belatedly, Tom remembered how much taller he was now than he had been back then, how much bigger and stronger. This was what he pictured still when he lifted weights - never be that helpless again! - and all the hated exercise was finally paying off now.
Bill had reached his side, flushed and out of breath. Tom glanced at him from the corner of his eye and saw that Bill was smiling faintly.
“Looking for trouble?” he asked, fixing the full force of his glare on the 10th graders.
The trio seemed unsure how to proceed; they couldn’t very well retreat, but they didn’t seem all too excited to face off against Tom and Bill now.
“Your brother came looking for trouble,” one of the bullies shouted.
“Oh, really?” Tom sneered, crossing the distance between them slowly with the confident swagger that he’d never been able to pull off when he was actually fifteen. “What’d he do to you?”
The crowd tittered. The older boy flushed angrily. “He’s an ugly faggot and he can go to--”
Tom’s fist hit him squarely in the jaw; the boy went down, howling, and the other two jumped back. Tom stood over his adversary, gasping. It wasn’t fair to hit someone younger and smaller, but those guys had had it coming for a long time. Behind him, Bill let out a high, startled laugh.
“Laugh all you want, your brother’s not always going to be there,” the leader of the trio shouted, face burning with embarrassment for his fallen friend.
Bill laughed harder. “Yeah he is,” he yelled back, triumphant.
Tom cocked his head. “Leave us alone,” he told the boys who were still standing as well as the audience in general. “Bill, come on.”
He resisted the urge to grab Bill’s hand as they made their way across the schoolyard, the crowd parting for them in newfound respect. They’d keep even more of a distance from the twins, talk even more behind their backs, but it wasn’t long now; in just a few weeks, school would be over for Bill - and younger Tom - forever, Tom thought, bristling. As they rounded the corner, he seized Bill’s sleeve; together, they broke into a run.
They only stopped when they’d left the town behind them. Panting, they collapsed in the high grass at the side of the road. Bill was giggling through his heavy breaths, spirits high with their rare victory. Tom lay back in the grass beside him, grinning. “They’ll get us some other time,” he told Bill. “And then there’ll be hell to pay.”
“That’s okay,” Bill gasped. “To see that look on their faces just once…totally worth it.” He stared at Tom with shining eyes full of admiration. “Where you live, in the future,” he said, “no one would dare insult you, would they.”
Tom felt a little flustered. When he’d been a boy, young, angry and helpless in the face of adversity, he’d often wished they’d had an older brother to look out for them; they’d had Gordon, but that wasn’t quite the same. With Bill looking up to him now like the real, actual big brother Tom always claimed to be only made Tom remember how small and scared they’d felt back then, behind their brazen veneer.
They’d always been a good team; brothers and confidantes and best friends. But their unshakeable trust, their faith in each other had developed later, with triumphs and failures, long times of hardship behind them that had tested and tried their abilities and the strength of their relationship. Life, life together, had brought them closer; that was the future. Young, stupid, naïve Bill was looking at it right now, and in his wondrous look, Tom could see that he was beginning to understand what it meant, being them, then.
Tom shrugged. “You said that if some assholes didn’t hate us we had to be doing something wrong.”
“I suppose.” Bill bit his lip. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Bill smiled at that, pleased. “Am I that strong too? In the future?”
“No, you’re still a wimp with arms like sticks,” Tom grinned. “Always will be.”
“Aw.” Bill sighed softly, delightedly. “I wish I could see us. In the future.” His looked up at the odd shaped clouds chasing each other across the blue sky with faraway eyes. “It’s still us, right? You and me, together?”
“Always,” Tom said gruffly.
Bill nodded. He turned his head and squinted at Tom with narrowed eyes, his brow scrunching up as if he was staring into a crystal ball. “What do I look like at twenty?”
Tom reached out and slapped him over the head, coming away with a hand full of sticky hair product. “Ugh, your hair is so gross. We’re still identical five years from now, stupid.”
“So I still look like you? Oooh, can I put eyeliner on you so I can see--”
“No!” Tom cut in before he could get carried away with crazy ideas.
Young Bill clapped his hands excitedly. “What’s my hair like then?”
Tom laughed. “If I tell you now, you won’t be able to decide for yourself what you want to look like then and you hate that.”
Young Bill seemed to ponder this. “You’re right, that sounds like me. But I still wish I could see.”
He sounded hopeful, and Tom hesitated only for a moment. It might not be the smartest idea to let younger Bill know too much about the future, but a few small things couldn’t hurt; they’d reassure Bill, give him the strength to continue on when the going got rough. Tom reached inside his pockets and emptied out the contents. There was a pack of cigarettes which Bill snatched greedily, a guitar pick, his wallet and his camera, which he always carried on him. Something hard and metallic scraped his fingers and Tom pulled it out to find one of Bill’s huge, diamond encrusted skull rings, lost and forgotten there when Tom had picked up after Bill once again, probably.
“Ah!” Bill made, a high sound of rapturous excitement that wouldn’t have changed five years later when Bill came across some designer bauble. His fingers twitched as Tom held out the ring in his palm.
Tom grinned. “It’s yours.”
“No it isn’t,” Bill protested half-heartedly.
“It sure isn’t mine,” Tom said. “Take it. Just don’t lose it again, you paid a shitload of money for it.” He shoved the ring at Bill along with the camera. “And there’s some pictures on there.” He switched it on and handed it to Bill to flip through.
Bill gasped happily, and Tom scooted over so he could look at the tiny display with him. There were pictures of Bill walking the dogs, all bundled up in a scarf and hat and hood, his eyes hidden behind his huge sunglasses. A picture of Bill sitting on the swing set in the backyard by the studio, flipping off the camera. One of Bill getting ready backstage, one leg in, one out of his pants, looking at the viewer with a sour face. One of him all gussied up for a concert, playing ping-pong with Georg. One of Bill and Tom together, their faces too close to the camera because Tom had taken the shot himself, angled at their faces from above. Their heads were tilted back and their cheeks pressed together to fit into the picture, and they were laughing so hard there were tears in their eyes. Tom didn’t even remember what had been so funny; suddenly, with a wild rush of longing, he just knew that he wanted back there, back with his Bill, where he belonged.
“I want this right now,” Bill burst out into the stunned silence. “I don’t want to wait anymore. I want out of school, away from this town, I want to make music and see lots of strange places and be happy like that.”
“It’s not all happy, not always,” Tom told him, voice rough with emotion. “It’s not always that fun. There are days when you feel so small…” He realized he was quoting one of their songs, cheesily, and broke off. He cleared his throat. “Just, take it easy. One step at a time.”
If Bill had been standing up, he’d be stomping his foot, Tom was sure. “I don’t want to take it easy anymore! Nothing is happening in this shithole except regular beatings and teachers shitting all over us and I want out.”
“Enjoy the quiet while it lasts,” was a piece of advice Tom never thought he’d give. An idea occurred to him. “Hey. It’s summer, right.”
Bill glanced around at the flora as if he suspected Tom was a little slow. “Um, obviously?”
Tom grinned. “Perfect time for ice cream. Let’s go get some.”
“I spent the last of my allowance yesterday,” Bill said regretfully.
“On glitter eyeshadow, no doubt,” Tom muttered and got a hard nudge with Bill’s bony elbow in return. He plucked his wallet from the grass and looked inside to find a fat wad of cash that he’d taken off Georg on account of a lost bet. He took it out and thumbed through it.
Bill’s eyes went wide. “Wow. Wow.”
It was a few hundred Euros - hardly a lot for them where he came from - but for this Bill, this much money meant months of saving up, of having to make do without anything more luxurious than drug store brand eyeliner or cheap hairspray that gave him an asthma attack, no visits to the thrift store for odd clothes or to the movies with Andi, or anything fun at all. It was a fortune that Tom held in his hand; Tom hadn’t appreciated that properly in a long time. He felt vaguely ashamed of himself.
“Tell you what,” he said to Bill, “we’ll have ice cream and then I’ll buy you something. Whatever you want.”
Bill turned wide, shocked eyes on him. “But it’s your money.”
“It’s our money,” Tom corrected.
Bill shrugged. “Won’t your Bill be mad if you spend it all, then? You already gave me the ring.” He held out his hand. His nail polish was chipped and his hands were a bit smaller than his adult counterpart’s, but somehow he looked much more like Bill to Tom with the huge ring on his thin finger.
Tom gave him a look. “Well, will he be?”
Bill looked startled, then, slowly, an impish look came over his face. “Right.”
“Knowing you, you’ll probably still have whatever I buy you now in five years, so it’s not like it’s his loss,” Tom snorted. “C’mon, I haven’t had ice cream in ages.”
They climbed to their feet, Bill trying to nudge Tom’s shoulder as he always did but, with the unusual height difference, only succeeding in rubbing up against Tom’s arm like an affectionate kitten. “Do you still like lemon sorbet?”
“What do you think?” Tom grinned.
“Right, grandpa,” Bill smiled. “By the way, what happened to your hair? You swore you were never going to give up your dreads.”
Amused, Tom ran his hands through the tight cornrows as he fell into step beside Bill. “Long story.”
Younger Bill poked his side. “It’s an hour’s walk to the ice cream place. Tell me.”
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?
“Well look who we have here.”
Tom sighed. The day had been going so well - as well as a day at school could go, anyway. He’d made it to class just in time for the bell and shuffled to his seat at the back of the class attracting minimum attention. The German teacher had mostly left him alone. The math exam had been surprisingly easy, probably because he’d written it before, or maybe it just seemed that way to him after all the studying they’d done to get their stupid diplomas from that correspondence school. In all, it could’ve been an okay day, if not for the voice he now heard, the voice that had been hammered into his memory with hard punches.
He pushed off the wall and turned to see Bill walking towards him as fast as he could without looking like he was running away. Following after him were three guys from the class above them, the three bullies who’d been the ringleaders of the 10th grade and made their life a living hell.
They weren’t as big as Tom remembered them to be.
“Running away, Kaulitz?” one of the guys hollered after Bill, who sped up. It wasn’t that Bill was a coward - Tom knew he wasn’t - but their mom always got so horribly upset when they came home with bloody noses and yet another letter from the headmaster, and Bill hated to see Simone upset. “Running off to your stinky brother?”
“Faggot!” one of the others yelled, loud enough that the few students who were still hanging around the schoolyard waiting to be picked up turned their heads and looked. Some of them giggled. Tom gritted his teeth.
“Look at him with his make-up! Are you sure you’re not a girl, Billa?”
“No, he’s just a faggot!”
“Gay panda!”
“Aww, he’s running off to cry to mophead!”
The audience of teenagers moved in closer to see what was happening, forming a loose half-circle around Bill, the bullies, and Tom, who was still standing by the brick wall of the gym. This was where he’d always waited for Bill, at the back of the school building where no one usually hung around, but Bill was running a little late and the older guys must’ve been waiting for him outside his classroom.
Bill had almost made it. There was no running now - they were trapped between the wall and the other students - but together they could at least give back some of what they got. Their eyes met, and Tom could see how helplessly furious this younger Bill was, how hurt and angry.
One of the thugs kicked at a small piece of gravel on the ground. It sailed past Bill’s ear, missing him by half an inch. Bill jumped, and Tom was starting forward without any other conscious thought.
The three guys were laughing, but they stopped short when they saw Tom advance on them and, belatedly, Tom remembered how much taller he was now than he had been back then, how much bigger and stronger. This was what he pictured still when he lifted weights - never be that helpless again! - and all the hated exercise was finally paying off now.
Bill had reached his side, flushed and out of breath. Tom glanced at him from the corner of his eye and saw that Bill was smiling faintly.
“Looking for trouble?” he asked, fixing the full force of his glare on the 10th graders.
The trio seemed unsure how to proceed; they couldn’t very well retreat, but they didn’t seem all too excited to face off against Tom and Bill now.
“Your brother came looking for trouble,” one of the bullies shouted.
“Oh, really?” Tom sneered, crossing the distance between them slowly with the confident swagger that he’d never been able to pull off when he was actually fifteen. “What’d he do to you?”
The crowd tittered. The older boy flushed angrily. “He’s an ugly faggot and he can go to--”
Tom’s fist hit him squarely in the jaw; the boy went down, howling, and the other two jumped back. Tom stood over his adversary, gasping. It wasn’t fair to hit someone younger and smaller, but those guys had had it coming for a long time. Behind him, Bill let out a high, startled laugh.
“Laugh all you want, your brother’s not always going to be there,” the leader of the trio shouted, face burning with embarrassment for his fallen friend.
Bill laughed harder. “Yeah he is,” he yelled back, triumphant.
Tom cocked his head. “Leave us alone,” he told the boys who were still standing as well as the audience in general. “Bill, come on.”
He resisted the urge to grab Bill’s hand as they made their way across the schoolyard, the crowd parting for them in newfound respect. They’d keep even more of a distance from the twins, talk even more behind their backs, but it wasn’t long now; in just a few weeks, school would be over for Bill - and younger Tom - forever, Tom thought, bristling. As they rounded the corner, he seized Bill’s sleeve; together, they broke into a run.
They only stopped when they’d left the town behind them. Panting, they collapsed in the high grass at the side of the road. Bill was giggling through his heavy breaths, spirits high with their rare victory. Tom lay back in the grass beside him, grinning. “They’ll get us some other time,” he told Bill. “And then there’ll be hell to pay.”
“That’s okay,” Bill gasped. “To see that look on their faces just once…totally worth it.” He stared at Tom with shining eyes full of admiration. “Where you live, in the future,” he said, “no one would dare insult you, would they.”
Tom felt a little flustered. When he’d been a boy, young, angry and helpless in the face of adversity, he’d often wished they’d had an older brother to look out for them; they’d had Gordon, but that wasn’t quite the same. With Bill looking up to him now like the real, actual big brother Tom always claimed to be only made Tom remember how small and scared they’d felt back then, behind their brazen veneer.
They’d always been a good team; brothers and confidantes and best friends. But their unshakeable trust, their faith in each other had developed later, with triumphs and failures, long times of hardship behind them that had tested and tried their abilities and the strength of their relationship. Life, life together, had brought them closer; that was the future. Young, stupid, naïve Bill was looking at it right now, and in his wondrous look, Tom could see that he was beginning to understand what it meant, being them, then.
Tom shrugged. “You said that if some assholes didn’t hate us we had to be doing something wrong.”
“I suppose.” Bill bit his lip. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Bill smiled at that, pleased. “Am I that strong too? In the future?”
“No, you’re still a wimp with arms like sticks,” Tom grinned. “Always will be.”
“Aw.” Bill sighed softly, delightedly. “I wish I could see us. In the future.” His looked up at the odd shaped clouds chasing each other across the blue sky with faraway eyes. “It’s still us, right? You and me, together?”
“Always,” Tom said gruffly.
Bill nodded. He turned his head and squinted at Tom with narrowed eyes, his brow scrunching up as if he was staring into a crystal ball. “What do I look like at twenty?”
Tom reached out and slapped him over the head, coming away with a hand full of sticky hair product. “Ugh, your hair is so gross. We’re still identical five years from now, stupid.”
“So I still look like you? Oooh, can I put eyeliner on you so I can see--”
“No!” Tom cut in before he could get carried away with crazy ideas.
Young Bill clapped his hands excitedly. “What’s my hair like then?”
Tom laughed. “If I tell you now, you won’t be able to decide for yourself what you want to look like then and you hate that.”
Young Bill seemed to ponder this. “You’re right, that sounds like me. But I still wish I could see.”
He sounded hopeful, and Tom hesitated only for a moment. It might not be the smartest idea to let younger Bill know too much about the future, but a few small things couldn’t hurt; they’d reassure Bill, give him the strength to continue on when the going got rough. Tom reached inside his pockets and emptied out the contents. There was a pack of cigarettes which Bill snatched greedily, a guitar pick, his wallet and his camera, which he always carried on him. Something hard and metallic scraped his fingers and Tom pulled it out to find one of Bill’s huge, diamond encrusted skull rings, lost and forgotten there when Tom had picked up after Bill once again, probably.
“Ah!” Bill made, a high sound of rapturous excitement that wouldn’t have changed five years later when Bill came across some designer bauble. His fingers twitched as Tom held out the ring in his palm.
Tom grinned. “It’s yours.”
“No it isn’t,” Bill protested half-heartedly.
“It sure isn’t mine,” Tom said. “Take it. Just don’t lose it again, you paid a shitload of money for it.” He shoved the ring at Bill along with the camera. “And there’s some pictures on there.” He switched it on and handed it to Bill to flip through.
Bill gasped happily, and Tom scooted over so he could look at the tiny display with him. There were pictures of Bill walking the dogs, all bundled up in a scarf and hat and hood, his eyes hidden behind his huge sunglasses. A picture of Bill sitting on the swing set in the backyard by the studio, flipping off the camera. One of Bill getting ready backstage, one leg in, one out of his pants, looking at the viewer with a sour face. One of him all gussied up for a concert, playing ping-pong with Georg. One of Bill and Tom together, their faces too close to the camera because Tom had taken the shot himself, angled at their faces from above. Their heads were tilted back and their cheeks pressed together to fit into the picture, and they were laughing so hard there were tears in their eyes. Tom didn’t even remember what had been so funny; suddenly, with a wild rush of longing, he just knew that he wanted back there, back with his Bill, where he belonged.
“I want this right now,” Bill burst out into the stunned silence. “I don’t want to wait anymore. I want out of school, away from this town, I want to make music and see lots of strange places and be happy like that.”
“It’s not all happy, not always,” Tom told him, voice rough with emotion. “It’s not always that fun. There are days when you feel so small…” He realized he was quoting one of their songs, cheesily, and broke off. He cleared his throat. “Just, take it easy. One step at a time.”
If Bill had been standing up, he’d be stomping his foot, Tom was sure. “I don’t want to take it easy anymore! Nothing is happening in this shithole except regular beatings and teachers shitting all over us and I want out.”
“Enjoy the quiet while it lasts,” was a piece of advice Tom never thought he’d give. An idea occurred to him. “Hey. It’s summer, right.”
Bill glanced around at the flora as if he suspected Tom was a little slow. “Um, obviously?”
Tom grinned. “Perfect time for ice cream. Let’s go get some.”
“I spent the last of my allowance yesterday,” Bill said regretfully.
“On glitter eyeshadow, no doubt,” Tom muttered and got a hard nudge with Bill’s bony elbow in return. He plucked his wallet from the grass and looked inside to find a fat wad of cash that he’d taken off Georg on account of a lost bet. He took it out and thumbed through it.
Bill’s eyes went wide. “Wow. Wow.”
It was a few hundred Euros - hardly a lot for them where he came from - but for this Bill, this much money meant months of saving up, of having to make do without anything more luxurious than drug store brand eyeliner or cheap hairspray that gave him an asthma attack, no visits to the thrift store for odd clothes or to the movies with Andi, or anything fun at all. It was a fortune that Tom held in his hand; Tom hadn’t appreciated that properly in a long time. He felt vaguely ashamed of himself.
“Tell you what,” he said to Bill, “we’ll have ice cream and then I’ll buy you something. Whatever you want.”
Bill turned wide, shocked eyes on him. “But it’s your money.”
“It’s our money,” Tom corrected.
Bill shrugged. “Won’t your Bill be mad if you spend it all, then? You already gave me the ring.” He held out his hand. His nail polish was chipped and his hands were a bit smaller than his adult counterpart’s, but somehow he looked much more like Bill to Tom with the huge ring on his thin finger.
Tom gave him a look. “Well, will he be?”
Bill looked startled, then, slowly, an impish look came over his face. “Right.”
“Knowing you, you’ll probably still have whatever I buy you now in five years, so it’s not like it’s his loss,” Tom snorted. “C’mon, I haven’t had ice cream in ages.”
They climbed to their feet, Bill trying to nudge Tom’s shoulder as he always did but, with the unusual height difference, only succeeding in rubbing up against Tom’s arm like an affectionate kitten. “Do you still like lemon sorbet?”
“What do you think?” Tom grinned.
“Right, grandpa,” Bill smiled. “By the way, what happened to your hair? You swore you were never going to give up your dreads.”
Amused, Tom ran his hands through the tight cornrows as he fell into step beside Bill. “Long story.”
Younger Bill poked his side. “It’s an hour’s walk to the ice cream place. Tell me.”