The Best Worst Day Ever - Non-JRock, Tokio Hotel, Tom/Bill (gen)
Title: The Best Worst Day Ever
Author: Kagome
Prompt: #23 - Worst Day
Warnings: Angst, protective big brother!Tom, maybe pre-twincest, if you tilt your head and squint
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Tom, Bill, Simone, Jörg
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimer applies.
Summary: “Tomi? This… divorce… thing. Do you think it’ll happen to us, too?” Neither of them understands, but Tom’s trying to hold them together… And maybe today isn’t quite so terrible, after all.
Comments: It’s kind of silly how long it took me to finish this. A couple of weeks? Meh. Wanted to have it posted before now, but sometimes things don’t go according to plan. As you’ve probably guessed, it focuses on the divorce-or, rather, Jörg’s departure. Tom tries to be very grown-up, and is protective, as always. I hope you all enjoy~. ^_^ Written for 100_prompts.
The Best Worst Day Ever
Today was Saturday, and Saturdays were always good days because Saturdays meant that there was no school, and Tom and Bill could sleep as late as they wanted and didn’t have to worry about homework or the other stupid kids that picked on them because they didn’t really know or understand them at all. The weekends were just for them-they could watch cartoons and eat their mother’s cooking and they could color and build pillow forts and play video games and just be lazy. Well, there were chores too, of course, but they weren’t as bad as schoolwork.
Something was wrong today, though-Tom could sense it, even though he was still mostly-asleep. There was too much noise, and words that he couldn’t make out, but they didn’t sound nice. Saturday - which was usually the absolute best day out of the week (followed closely by Sunday) - was starting on the wrong foot, and Tom was being woken up far earlier than he liked to be woken up.
He grumbled something unintelligible into his pillow and tugged the covers up over his head, hoping that that would block out the annoying sounds that had pulled him away from precious sleep in the first place.
There was another sound - a heavy sort of sound - and then for a few blessed seconds, there was silence, and Tom drifted closer and closer to sleep, thinking that maybe today wouldn’t turn out to be a bad day after all.
Then there was the sound of Bill’s voice. He spoke loudly and in a rush, the pitch of his voice higher than usual, panic coloring the edges. It was this sound that made Tom sit straight up in bed, and this time he did not grumble because if Bill sounded like that, there was obviously something wrong.
“What is it?” he asked his twin, and he sounded much groggier than he felt; it was like all of his senses were wide awake and perfectly alert now, all because of the tone of Bill’s voice. It was simply that it took his vocal cords a little while to catch up with the rest of him, was all.
“Dad,” Bill said frightfully, pointing to their window. “I heard Dad and Mom arguing a little, and then the door slammed, and now Dad is getting into his car and he’s got bags and he didn’t even tell us he was going anywhere, and….” He trailed off, shaking his head, eyes wide with disbelief. He pointed again at their window, with more emphasis this time. “Look.”
Mouth slightly open, Tom slid out of his own bed and went to Bill’s, climbing in beside his brother and looking out the window. It wasn’t even fully daylight yet, but it was light enough for him to make out the profile of their father as he tossed more bags into the backseat of the car before slamming the door shut. He then climbed into the driver’s seat and he slammed that door too, and then he was starting the engine and pulling out onto the empty road, without even so much as a glance over his shoulder.
“Where is he going?” Bill asked, and Tom could see that there were tears brimming in his twin’s eyes. “Why didn’t he tell us?”
“I don’t know,” Tom answered truthfully, deciding that in this instance it was better to be honest than to tell a lie. He was glad that his voice did not shake the way his hands were suddenly shaking. He had Bill to think about, after all. He was the big brother here-he was supposed to protect his little brother as best he could. It wouldn’t do to let Bill see just how frightened he himself was right now.
“Will he be back?” Bill sounded desperate and on-edge, like he really wanted to believe that Jörg would be back, but how could he believe it when their father had left without breathing a word to them about it? “Maybe… maybe he had an emergency, with his job….”
And maybe that was true, but a job-related emergency did not warrant so much baggage, did it?
“I don’t know,” Tom repeated dully, pulling Bill close and trying to soothe him, because now Bill had started to cry and Tom hated it when Bill cried. It made him want to cry, too. He wish he had the answers, but he didn’t-he had nothing at all, except an armful of crying Bill, and there were no answers to be found there.
Today was definitely going to be a bad day-Tom could tell.
“We have to ask Mom,” Bill suddenly said through his tears, somehow managing to sound both confident and unsure at the same time. “She’ll know what’s going on.”
If there was anyone that could shine any light at all on this, it was Simone. However, Tom wasn’t at all sure that he was ready to hear whatever it was that their mother was going to tell them. Whatever it was, he was sure that it couldn’t be good, and he was positive that it would make this already-bad day even worse. He just had this feeling, and it wasn’t one of those feelings that was easy to push aside and forget about. This was one of those terrible feelings of dread that sent fear clawing at his heart and made his stomach twist into knots and made his throat feel like it had a huge lump in it. He didn’t like this feeling at all, and somehow, he knew the worst was to come.
Suddenly, all he really wanted to do was to curl up with Bill under the covers and go back to sleep-pretend that nothing else existed for a little while. That way, he could at least protect Bill while protecting himself, too. And pretending that there was nothing wrong for a little while sounded like as good a solution as any to his seven-year-old mind. He could pretend it was just another Saturday, and a good one, at that.
But Bill was already moving, sliding away from the circle of Tom’s arms and squashing Tom’s hopes for an attempt at momentarily forgetting what had just occurred-at dismissing the image of their father driving away from them. It was something he had to face, and he knew it; he’d already faced it, but maybe it just hadn’t sunk in yet, and he didn’t know why.
Maybe because he was trying to push it away from himself, to keep the terrible fear that they’d just been left at bay, because he was a big brother and it was much more important to look after Bill - Bill, who was still crying even as he slid off the bed and left their room, calling out softly to their mother - because sometimes Bill was a lot more fragile than Tom himself.
And sometimes, Bill was a lot stronger.
Tom slowly and somewhat reluctantly trailed after his twin, pausing in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom, watching and listening as Bill stalked over to their mother, who was sitting on the bed, and, little fists clenched, demanded to know where their father - and her husband - had gone, and why and when he was coming back.
Simone looked up, and in that moment, she was not their mother. Or rather, she was not only their mother, but a woman who’d been heartbroken. Tom had never understood that term, but knew now that it had to be an excruciatingly painful thing to experience, judging from the look on Simone’s tear-streaked face. Tom’s heart wrenched within him and then sank at that look. This was bad. Really bad.
She gestured for them to join her on the bed and they did, and Tom listened quietly and patiently as Simone explained everything, and he didn’t even interrupt when she started spouting off such ridiculous things about divorce, and things such as, “Sometimes people just stop loving one another-they fall out of love, just like they fall into it”. He couldn’t yell at her for saying such a thing even though he wanted to, because she’d always taught him otherwise, and he’d been led by other adults to believe that love lasted forever and didn’t just go away like Simone was telling them it had. It didn’t go away, like their father had. It wasn’t that easy, was it?
He wanted to interrupt and yell at her-to tell her that she was acting like the child here instead of the parent (but in that case, what did that make Jörg?), and to tell her that her ideas were just plain stupid, and that she was wrong. However, he couldn’t yell at her. He just couldn’t-she looked too hurt, too broken, and not at all like herself. For once in Tom’s entire life, he believed that Simone looked old. Much older than she truly was.
Besides, Bill was doing enough yelling and protesting and crying for the both of them. He didn’t understand, and neither did Tom; it was simply that Bill was being much more vocal about it. He denied their mother’s words, sputtering that love like that was supposed to last forever, and that there was no way their father had just left them.
But apparently, love didn’t always last forever, and also apparently, their father really had left them. These were very grown-up concepts, and Tom wasn’t a grown-up, but he understood what it meant when someone left with the intention of not coming back. It could be as permanent as death-sleep eternal. He knew that death meant someone wasn’t coming back.
Bill shook his head and tried to pull away from them - from Tom and Simone - but they held fast, refusing to let him go. Simone spoke soothingly, even though her voice sounded somewhat stuffy because she’d been crying. She told them that none of this was their fault-that it was nothing that they had or had not done, and she made them promise to never, ever blame themselves.
Tom nodded numbly, and it took Bill a moment or two longer than him to make his promise. Tom squeezed his brother a little tighter, wishing there was such a thing as magic so that he could make everything okay again. Simone’s chin trembled minutely, and then the tears started again, and that was when Bill’s fresh wave of tears began. Tom held onto both of them while they cried, refusing to let himself do the same, because someone had to be brave, here. Someone had to be the solid rock that everyone else leaned on. Someone had to weather the storm.
Like a good captain, he knew he would go down with the ship, but only after his passengers had been carried to safety. He would make sure Simone and Bill - especially Bill - were okay before he let himself shed even a single tear. It was what he was supposed to do, after all.
He closed his eyes an inhaled deeply, trying to make his stomach stop doing those unpleasant somersaults it was currently doing. It made him feel sick, and he already felt sick enough.
Today wasn’t just a bad day; it was definitely the worst day he’d ever had in his whole seven years of existence.
~*~
Eventually, when the crying had ceased, Simone told them that she was going to freshen up a little, and suggested that they go back to bed to sleep a little while longer. She promised that when they woke up, they could play whatever they wanted-drag out whatever toys they wanted to and make a mess of the house (as long as they cleaned it up later).
Tom was grateful for the opportunity to become reacquainted with the warmth of his bed once again, and he didn’t protest when Bill curled up beside him. He tugged the covers up over both of them, content to pretend that he was in a little cocoon, where everything was made of warmth and Bill and both of them were safe from the outside world.
He was just beginning to drift off again, exhausted from trying to keep Bill and Simone - and himself - afloat, when Bill spoke, voice quiet and sounding very much like he was on the edge of tears again. “Tomi? This… divorce… thing. Do you think it’ll happen to us, too?”
Tom scoffed, not opening his eyes, although he pulled Bill a little closer. “Don’t be silly, Bill. You’re my brother. Of course we can’t get a divorce-only married people get those, I guess.”
Bill poked Tom sharply in the ribs. “I don’t mean it like that,” he said, and there was annoyance mixed in with his sadness this time. “I mean… do you think one of us will stop caring one day and one of us will just leave? I don’t want to think that, but I never thought Dad would leave, and….”
Tom opened his eyes, and found Bill staring at him anxiously, biting on his lower lip. “Stop doing that,” he lightly scolded. “You’re going to make yourself bleed, and you know you squeal like a girl when you see blood.”
“Shut up,” Bill retorted, but he stopped chewing on his lip. “Just answer me, Tomi. Do you think we’ll get in this really huge fight one day and we’ll hate each other and--”
“No, I do not,” Tom interrupted, voice firm. He and Bill got into little spats sometimes, yelling and saying that they hated one another, but they always reconciled quickly, because it was rather difficult for them to ever stay angry at one another for more than five minutes, much less an extended period of time. Why couldn’t grown-ups be like that too? Tom didn’t understand that, either. “I’m never going to just hate you and walk away from you for good, Bill. Ever.”
“I’m sure Dad said that to Mom,” Bill replied, sounding just the tiniest bit skeptical. “I don’t want to be a grown-up if all this lying and leaving and stuff happens. Can we be like Peter Pan?”
Growing up was inevitable, and there was no magic that could change that. This was real life, not a fairy-tale, and today was one of those days in which Tom was forced to realize that things did not always turn out for the absolute best, not like it did in storybooks. “We’ll grow up, but we’ll still be us. Bill and Tom. I can’t be me without you.” Tom frowned, trying to explain better. “We aren’t our parents. We aren’t them. We’re us, and that’s all we can be, and I promise that I won’t go anywhere without you.” He was young and he didn’t understand a lot of things, but he now fully understood what it felt like to be abandoned by someone you loved, and he never wanted to put Bill through that again. Besides, the two of them were inseparable-had been since before birth. Why should that change when they grew up?
They were their parents’ children. They were not their parents. They would not repeat the same mistakes.
“How do you know, though?” Bill asked, still sounding unsure, and Tom supposed he couldn’t really blame him. Their father had just left them, after all, leaving seven years’ worth of lies behind. Or so it felt. But Tom never wanted to be the source of that wounded look in Bill’s eyes. As young as he was, he was still fairly certain that it would kill him, if he ever hurt Bill like that.
“Because I’m the oldest,” Tom replied, sticking his tongue out at his twin. It was a silly thing to do, and did not match the soberness of neither the situation at hand nor Bill’s question. Bill had been utterly serious. Tom was suddenly not being serious at all, because sometimes big brothers needed to be the most childish in order to reassure the little brother of something he should have already known since the moment they were born, if not before then.
The hidden message in his childish (which was appropriate for a seven-year-old) response? I won’t leave you. It was unthinkable, and he knew that Bill already knew this; he was just questioning it because they’d been deceived.
Bill wrinkled his nose for an instant, and then there it was: that ghost of a smile that Tom had always been comforted by. That smile was his, even though it was not all that it should have or could have been, because he - their father - had taken it away from Tom, and from Bill, too. It was unfair, how grown-ups would always tell children to do the right thing. Don’t steal, for example, and yet… Jörg had taken so much from them - from all of them - in just a few minutes. He’d taken away Bill’s smile (the one that was reserved for Tom-their special smile). He’d taken away the light in Simone’s eyes. He’d taken away their perfect Saturday (and probably several Saturdays to come). He’d taken away Bill’s belief that love lasted forever, and that had been a belief that Tom had held, too. He’d taken away Simone’s heart-or perhaps that was inaccurate. It was still there, but not in the state it had been in before. It was broken now, like that old toy car that used to be Tom’s favorite. Bill had broken it on accident and Tom had forgiven him, but there would be no forgiveness for the man that had left them and had taken so much more with him than just his clothes and other such necessities.
“I promise,” Tom repeated, proud of how brave he sounded when in reality, he felt like the entire world had crashed down around him, and was now in pieces. The only thing keeping him from falling into pieces along with it was Bill. He knew he had to stay strong for him right now.
“Promise what?” Bill asked, tilting his head slightly to one side. He could be a bit of a dummy sometimes, forgetting things that he’d already been told a thousand times. Granted, this only made twice, but it should have been enough.
“You know what,” Tom replied, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“Yeah,” Bill agreed after a moment, and he gave that same ghost-smile again. Tom vowed that one day, he’d see the real one again, because Bill’s smiles always made him smile, too.
“Believe me?” Tom shouldn’t have had to ask, but he did anyway, because if Bill could be a dummy sometimes, so could he.
“Yes,” Bill said, and then he relaxed, closing his eyes. “I… think I can go back to sleep now.”
“Good, you big baby.” Tom jumped a little when Bill elbowed him lightly in the ribs, but it made him smile a little-his smile was a ghost of his old smile, though. Like Bill’s.
They would have to do a lot of searching in the next few weeks, or months, or however long it took to find all of the things that he had taken from them.
But as Tom closed his eyes, Bill already drifting to sleep beside him, he thought that maybe this wasn’t a bad start.
~*~
Simone gently woke them around noon. At first, Tom didn’t even wriggle. He wanted to stay in his safe cocoon of covers with his brother, because it felt more like home than anything else. Outside their little bubble of protection and the lingering innocence of childhood lurked the knowledge of things that would hurt them (realization, remembrance), and the moment that their feet touched the floor, Tom knew that that innocence would be shattered once again and scattered to the wind.
He didn’t open his eyes when he heard Bill giggle quietly beside him, and he knew that their mother was tickling his twin. Seconds later, and Tom himself was being given the same treatment. He squirmed around, tried not to laugh, and failed.
“Wake up, boys,” Simone told them, and she sounded better now, like she hadn’t been the blubbering mess she was earlier, but Tom had not forgotten the look in her eyes. He probably never would. “You should eat something.”
As if on cue, Tom’s stomach rumbled, and then Bill’s, and two sets of dark brown eyes flew open, staring at one another as they shared a small, secret smile. Yes, they did need to eat, but that didn’t mean Tom wanted to leave the bed. They were safe here.
“Come downstairs,” Simone continued to coax them, lifting the covers away from their bodies (Tom missed the warmth almost immediately). There was still a sort of… emptiness in her eyes, but Tom almost expected that. Still, she smiled. “I’ll make something special for you. You can play while I cook, and you can even stay in your pajamas all day if you want.”
Surprisingly, it was Bill who decided to brave the outside world first, one hand clutching at Tom’s wrist like it was his lifeline while he sat up and slid to the edge of the bed, feet not yet touching the floor. Tom hurried to join him, sitting beside his brother, letting his legs dangle off the side of the bed, feet just inches from the floor.
They moved in perfect accord, feet touching the floor at the same moment, and Tom made a conscious effort not too look out the window-the same window that he’d looked through as their father had driven away. He noticed that Bill did the same, keeping his eyes carefully trained elsewhere until they were safely facing Simone.
They went downstairs together, all three of them, their smaller hands clutched in her larger, though somehow seemingly more-fragile ones. Delicate. Feminine. Motherly. And yet… strong, too. Her hands had to be, now.
Tom and Bill set to work on gathering as many pillows and blankets as they could get their hands on, wordlessly agreeing that today was a fort-building day, because forts meant protection and secret-sharing and the outside being disallowed to come inside.
They worked quietly, for the most part, the sounds of Simone in the kitchen drowning out what little noise they did make, until Bill - for whatever reason, or no reason at all - decided to smack Tom with one of the pillows, which began a pillow-fight that had them both squealing and laughing, though not quite as loudly or as joyously as was typical for them. Simone intervened anyway, threatening punishment if they wound up getting pillow-feathers all over her living room floor.
The pillow-fight ceased, though not before Bill whacked Tom - albeit softly - on the shoulder. Tom scowled, silently vowing that he would get his twin back for that, even though no harm whatsoever had been done. It was a matter of principle!
Bill admired their work - their too-many pillows and their haphazardly-arranged blankets - and Tom gazed at his brother, lost for a moment in his own thoughts.
Now that Bill was dry-eyed and seemingly in no danger of bursting into tears again in the immediate future, Tom figured that maybe, just for now, he could let himself sink into his own grief over all of this. Maybe now, just for a few minutes, he could stop trying to be the protector. Maybe, for a few minutes, Bill would be okay with being the stronger one.
“Bill?” Tom suddenly asked, voice quiet so that Simone would not hear him.
“Yeah?” Bill whispered back, tossing the pillow that he held aside, apparently deciding that they had enough pillows on their fort already. He sat down beside Tom, grabbing one of the extra blankets and toying with it while he looked at Tom expectantly.
“Dad’s… gone.” It was the first time he’d said it today-the first time he’d really let himself think about it, because he’d pushed it all away from himself in order to protect his little brother. In order to make him smile.
Bill frowned, but his eyes didn’t well with tears. Good. The last thing Tom wanted was to cause his twin more pain, when it hadn’t been his intention. “Yeah,” he agreed after a moment, scooting just a little closer.
Tom tried to process it-tried to understand why the man that had been their father for seven years (their whole lives up to that point) had just walked out on them. All of them. He couldn’t quite fathom how a person could do that to so-called ‘loved ones’. If their father truly loved them, wouldn’t he have stayed? Wouldn’t he have at least explained to them what was going on? Wouldn’t he have told them goodbye?
He knew an adult would have tried to tell him that it was ‘complicated’, but he didn’t see anything complicated about it. He saw cowardice and he saw lies, and those were obvious things-not difficult to explain or to see at all. Tom wanted to ask why, but he knew he’d never get an answer.
Hot tears of anger spilled down his cheeks and Bill caught them with his fingers, brushing them away before they could fall. Bill didn’t tell him that it was okay. He simply pulled the blanket over both of them and curled close, hugging Tom to himself while Tom shook and tried not to sob.
“There’s still Mom,” Bill said softly. “She loves us. And there’s me, too. I won’t go away like he did. You promised me, and I’ll promise too.” He repeated Tom’s earlier words: “We aren’t them.”
“We aren’t,” Tom agreed, sniffling a little.
“And don’t you dare wipe your icky nose on my shirt,” Bill warned then, and it made Tom laugh. Even funnier was the fact that Bill didn’t seem to want to pull away from Tom and his ‘icky nose’, but Tom was grateful for that.
This was, by far, the worst day of Tom’s entire life, but just then, in that moment (cuddled between the warmth of Bill and the warmth of the blanket), it seemed just a little better.
“It’s not so bad, I guess,” Tom suddenly mumbled, briefly contemplating being a little mean and wiping his nose on Bill’s shirt anyway, but he decided against it.
“What isn’t?” Bill asked, clearly not bothering to hide his confusion.
The sounds in the kitchen were getting quieter now-Simone was placing ice in their glasses. Everything was almost ready. Tom lowered his voice a little more when he answered, just to make sure Simone wouldn’t hear, still: “Today.”
“But Dad left.” Bill continued to sound confused.
“You didn’t,” Tom pointed out. “And that… makes it better.”
Bill wrinkled his nose. “I just promised, didn’t I? Why would--?”
But then Simone was interrupting them, calling for them to come eat. They moved slowly, tossing the blanket aside as they stood and made their way into the kitchen. She’d made their favorite: Königsberger Klopse. Another reason to like today.
“Thank you, Mom,” Tom said quietly, moving quickly (and awkwardly, because he thought he was too old for these sorts of things most of the time-earlier he’d had an excuse because she’d been crying) to hug her and kiss her on the cheek. It made her smile, at any rate, and that made today better, too.
Later, after their bellies were full and all they wanted to do was lay on the couch and watch cartoons and faux-argue over everything from the remote to the blanket to the pillows (which were still in a bit of a mess on the floor) to which side of the couch was whose. They compromised in the end, sharing the same blanket and sitting close together on the couch instead of lying down.
While Simone washed dishes and Bill and Tom stared at the television screen, Bill said, “I wouldn’t, you dummy. I promised. Even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t.” To anyone else, it wouldn’t have made sense. But to Tom, it made perfect sense.
Tom smiled. “I know.” And it was all the better, because he did know.
And today? Today was, quite possibly, the best worst day of Tom’s entire life.
~END~
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Sneak attack of fluff there at the end for the win~. You guys, I can’t help it. XD At least this isn’t rot-your-teeth-out cute? Or… well, maybe it is. Maybe that’s just what I do best, when it comes to these two. I tried for a balance here, though-a parent leaving is definitely a traumatic experience, and everything can’t always be happy.
Author: Kagome
Prompt: #23 - Worst Day
Warnings: Angst, protective big brother!Tom, maybe pre-twincest, if you tilt your head and squint
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Tom, Bill, Simone, Jörg
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimer applies.
Summary: “Tomi? This… divorce… thing. Do you think it’ll happen to us, too?” Neither of them understands, but Tom’s trying to hold them together… And maybe today isn’t quite so terrible, after all.
Comments: It’s kind of silly how long it took me to finish this. A couple of weeks? Meh. Wanted to have it posted before now, but sometimes things don’t go according to plan. As you’ve probably guessed, it focuses on the divorce-or, rather, Jörg’s departure. Tom tries to be very grown-up, and is protective, as always. I hope you all enjoy~. ^_^ Written for 100_prompts.
The Best Worst Day Ever
Today was Saturday, and Saturdays were always good days because Saturdays meant that there was no school, and Tom and Bill could sleep as late as they wanted and didn’t have to worry about homework or the other stupid kids that picked on them because they didn’t really know or understand them at all. The weekends were just for them-they could watch cartoons and eat their mother’s cooking and they could color and build pillow forts and play video games and just be lazy. Well, there were chores too, of course, but they weren’t as bad as schoolwork.
Something was wrong today, though-Tom could sense it, even though he was still mostly-asleep. There was too much noise, and words that he couldn’t make out, but they didn’t sound nice. Saturday - which was usually the absolute best day out of the week (followed closely by Sunday) - was starting on the wrong foot, and Tom was being woken up far earlier than he liked to be woken up.
He grumbled something unintelligible into his pillow and tugged the covers up over his head, hoping that that would block out the annoying sounds that had pulled him away from precious sleep in the first place.
There was another sound - a heavy sort of sound - and then for a few blessed seconds, there was silence, and Tom drifted closer and closer to sleep, thinking that maybe today wouldn’t turn out to be a bad day after all.
Then there was the sound of Bill’s voice. He spoke loudly and in a rush, the pitch of his voice higher than usual, panic coloring the edges. It was this sound that made Tom sit straight up in bed, and this time he did not grumble because if Bill sounded like that, there was obviously something wrong.
“What is it?” he asked his twin, and he sounded much groggier than he felt; it was like all of his senses were wide awake and perfectly alert now, all because of the tone of Bill’s voice. It was simply that it took his vocal cords a little while to catch up with the rest of him, was all.
“Dad,” Bill said frightfully, pointing to their window. “I heard Dad and Mom arguing a little, and then the door slammed, and now Dad is getting into his car and he’s got bags and he didn’t even tell us he was going anywhere, and….” He trailed off, shaking his head, eyes wide with disbelief. He pointed again at their window, with more emphasis this time. “Look.”
Mouth slightly open, Tom slid out of his own bed and went to Bill’s, climbing in beside his brother and looking out the window. It wasn’t even fully daylight yet, but it was light enough for him to make out the profile of their father as he tossed more bags into the backseat of the car before slamming the door shut. He then climbed into the driver’s seat and he slammed that door too, and then he was starting the engine and pulling out onto the empty road, without even so much as a glance over his shoulder.
“Where is he going?” Bill asked, and Tom could see that there were tears brimming in his twin’s eyes. “Why didn’t he tell us?”
“I don’t know,” Tom answered truthfully, deciding that in this instance it was better to be honest than to tell a lie. He was glad that his voice did not shake the way his hands were suddenly shaking. He had Bill to think about, after all. He was the big brother here-he was supposed to protect his little brother as best he could. It wouldn’t do to let Bill see just how frightened he himself was right now.
“Will he be back?” Bill sounded desperate and on-edge, like he really wanted to believe that Jörg would be back, but how could he believe it when their father had left without breathing a word to them about it? “Maybe… maybe he had an emergency, with his job….”
And maybe that was true, but a job-related emergency did not warrant so much baggage, did it?
“I don’t know,” Tom repeated dully, pulling Bill close and trying to soothe him, because now Bill had started to cry and Tom hated it when Bill cried. It made him want to cry, too. He wish he had the answers, but he didn’t-he had nothing at all, except an armful of crying Bill, and there were no answers to be found there.
Today was definitely going to be a bad day-Tom could tell.
“We have to ask Mom,” Bill suddenly said through his tears, somehow managing to sound both confident and unsure at the same time. “She’ll know what’s going on.”
If there was anyone that could shine any light at all on this, it was Simone. However, Tom wasn’t at all sure that he was ready to hear whatever it was that their mother was going to tell them. Whatever it was, he was sure that it couldn’t be good, and he was positive that it would make this already-bad day even worse. He just had this feeling, and it wasn’t one of those feelings that was easy to push aside and forget about. This was one of those terrible feelings of dread that sent fear clawing at his heart and made his stomach twist into knots and made his throat feel like it had a huge lump in it. He didn’t like this feeling at all, and somehow, he knew the worst was to come.
Suddenly, all he really wanted to do was to curl up with Bill under the covers and go back to sleep-pretend that nothing else existed for a little while. That way, he could at least protect Bill while protecting himself, too. And pretending that there was nothing wrong for a little while sounded like as good a solution as any to his seven-year-old mind. He could pretend it was just another Saturday, and a good one, at that.
But Bill was already moving, sliding away from the circle of Tom’s arms and squashing Tom’s hopes for an attempt at momentarily forgetting what had just occurred-at dismissing the image of their father driving away from them. It was something he had to face, and he knew it; he’d already faced it, but maybe it just hadn’t sunk in yet, and he didn’t know why.
Maybe because he was trying to push it away from himself, to keep the terrible fear that they’d just been left at bay, because he was a big brother and it was much more important to look after Bill - Bill, who was still crying even as he slid off the bed and left their room, calling out softly to their mother - because sometimes Bill was a lot more fragile than Tom himself.
And sometimes, Bill was a lot stronger.
Tom slowly and somewhat reluctantly trailed after his twin, pausing in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom, watching and listening as Bill stalked over to their mother, who was sitting on the bed, and, little fists clenched, demanded to know where their father - and her husband - had gone, and why and when he was coming back.
Simone looked up, and in that moment, she was not their mother. Or rather, she was not only their mother, but a woman who’d been heartbroken. Tom had never understood that term, but knew now that it had to be an excruciatingly painful thing to experience, judging from the look on Simone’s tear-streaked face. Tom’s heart wrenched within him and then sank at that look. This was bad. Really bad.
She gestured for them to join her on the bed and they did, and Tom listened quietly and patiently as Simone explained everything, and he didn’t even interrupt when she started spouting off such ridiculous things about divorce, and things such as, “Sometimes people just stop loving one another-they fall out of love, just like they fall into it”. He couldn’t yell at her for saying such a thing even though he wanted to, because she’d always taught him otherwise, and he’d been led by other adults to believe that love lasted forever and didn’t just go away like Simone was telling them it had. It didn’t go away, like their father had. It wasn’t that easy, was it?
He wanted to interrupt and yell at her-to tell her that she was acting like the child here instead of the parent (but in that case, what did that make Jörg?), and to tell her that her ideas were just plain stupid, and that she was wrong. However, he couldn’t yell at her. He just couldn’t-she looked too hurt, too broken, and not at all like herself. For once in Tom’s entire life, he believed that Simone looked old. Much older than she truly was.
Besides, Bill was doing enough yelling and protesting and crying for the both of them. He didn’t understand, and neither did Tom; it was simply that Bill was being much more vocal about it. He denied their mother’s words, sputtering that love like that was supposed to last forever, and that there was no way their father had just left them.
But apparently, love didn’t always last forever, and also apparently, their father really had left them. These were very grown-up concepts, and Tom wasn’t a grown-up, but he understood what it meant when someone left with the intention of not coming back. It could be as permanent as death-sleep eternal. He knew that death meant someone wasn’t coming back.
Bill shook his head and tried to pull away from them - from Tom and Simone - but they held fast, refusing to let him go. Simone spoke soothingly, even though her voice sounded somewhat stuffy because she’d been crying. She told them that none of this was their fault-that it was nothing that they had or had not done, and she made them promise to never, ever blame themselves.
Tom nodded numbly, and it took Bill a moment or two longer than him to make his promise. Tom squeezed his brother a little tighter, wishing there was such a thing as magic so that he could make everything okay again. Simone’s chin trembled minutely, and then the tears started again, and that was when Bill’s fresh wave of tears began. Tom held onto both of them while they cried, refusing to let himself do the same, because someone had to be brave, here. Someone had to be the solid rock that everyone else leaned on. Someone had to weather the storm.
Like a good captain, he knew he would go down with the ship, but only after his passengers had been carried to safety. He would make sure Simone and Bill - especially Bill - were okay before he let himself shed even a single tear. It was what he was supposed to do, after all.
He closed his eyes an inhaled deeply, trying to make his stomach stop doing those unpleasant somersaults it was currently doing. It made him feel sick, and he already felt sick enough.
Today wasn’t just a bad day; it was definitely the worst day he’d ever had in his whole seven years of existence.
~*~
Eventually, when the crying had ceased, Simone told them that she was going to freshen up a little, and suggested that they go back to bed to sleep a little while longer. She promised that when they woke up, they could play whatever they wanted-drag out whatever toys they wanted to and make a mess of the house (as long as they cleaned it up later).
Tom was grateful for the opportunity to become reacquainted with the warmth of his bed once again, and he didn’t protest when Bill curled up beside him. He tugged the covers up over both of them, content to pretend that he was in a little cocoon, where everything was made of warmth and Bill and both of them were safe from the outside world.
He was just beginning to drift off again, exhausted from trying to keep Bill and Simone - and himself - afloat, when Bill spoke, voice quiet and sounding very much like he was on the edge of tears again. “Tomi? This… divorce… thing. Do you think it’ll happen to us, too?”
Tom scoffed, not opening his eyes, although he pulled Bill a little closer. “Don’t be silly, Bill. You’re my brother. Of course we can’t get a divorce-only married people get those, I guess.”
Bill poked Tom sharply in the ribs. “I don’t mean it like that,” he said, and there was annoyance mixed in with his sadness this time. “I mean… do you think one of us will stop caring one day and one of us will just leave? I don’t want to think that, but I never thought Dad would leave, and….”
Tom opened his eyes, and found Bill staring at him anxiously, biting on his lower lip. “Stop doing that,” he lightly scolded. “You’re going to make yourself bleed, and you know you squeal like a girl when you see blood.”
“Shut up,” Bill retorted, but he stopped chewing on his lip. “Just answer me, Tomi. Do you think we’ll get in this really huge fight one day and we’ll hate each other and--”
“No, I do not,” Tom interrupted, voice firm. He and Bill got into little spats sometimes, yelling and saying that they hated one another, but they always reconciled quickly, because it was rather difficult for them to ever stay angry at one another for more than five minutes, much less an extended period of time. Why couldn’t grown-ups be like that too? Tom didn’t understand that, either. “I’m never going to just hate you and walk away from you for good, Bill. Ever.”
“I’m sure Dad said that to Mom,” Bill replied, sounding just the tiniest bit skeptical. “I don’t want to be a grown-up if all this lying and leaving and stuff happens. Can we be like Peter Pan?”
Growing up was inevitable, and there was no magic that could change that. This was real life, not a fairy-tale, and today was one of those days in which Tom was forced to realize that things did not always turn out for the absolute best, not like it did in storybooks. “We’ll grow up, but we’ll still be us. Bill and Tom. I can’t be me without you.” Tom frowned, trying to explain better. “We aren’t our parents. We aren’t them. We’re us, and that’s all we can be, and I promise that I won’t go anywhere without you.” He was young and he didn’t understand a lot of things, but he now fully understood what it felt like to be abandoned by someone you loved, and he never wanted to put Bill through that again. Besides, the two of them were inseparable-had been since before birth. Why should that change when they grew up?
They were their parents’ children. They were not their parents. They would not repeat the same mistakes.
“How do you know, though?” Bill asked, still sounding unsure, and Tom supposed he couldn’t really blame him. Their father had just left them, after all, leaving seven years’ worth of lies behind. Or so it felt. But Tom never wanted to be the source of that wounded look in Bill’s eyes. As young as he was, he was still fairly certain that it would kill him, if he ever hurt Bill like that.
“Because I’m the oldest,” Tom replied, sticking his tongue out at his twin. It was a silly thing to do, and did not match the soberness of neither the situation at hand nor Bill’s question. Bill had been utterly serious. Tom was suddenly not being serious at all, because sometimes big brothers needed to be the most childish in order to reassure the little brother of something he should have already known since the moment they were born, if not before then.
The hidden message in his childish (which was appropriate for a seven-year-old) response? I won’t leave you. It was unthinkable, and he knew that Bill already knew this; he was just questioning it because they’d been deceived.
Bill wrinkled his nose for an instant, and then there it was: that ghost of a smile that Tom had always been comforted by. That smile was his, even though it was not all that it should have or could have been, because he - their father - had taken it away from Tom, and from Bill, too. It was unfair, how grown-ups would always tell children to do the right thing. Don’t steal, for example, and yet… Jörg had taken so much from them - from all of them - in just a few minutes. He’d taken away Bill’s smile (the one that was reserved for Tom-their special smile). He’d taken away the light in Simone’s eyes. He’d taken away their perfect Saturday (and probably several Saturdays to come). He’d taken away Bill’s belief that love lasted forever, and that had been a belief that Tom had held, too. He’d taken away Simone’s heart-or perhaps that was inaccurate. It was still there, but not in the state it had been in before. It was broken now, like that old toy car that used to be Tom’s favorite. Bill had broken it on accident and Tom had forgiven him, but there would be no forgiveness for the man that had left them and had taken so much more with him than just his clothes and other such necessities.
“I promise,” Tom repeated, proud of how brave he sounded when in reality, he felt like the entire world had crashed down around him, and was now in pieces. The only thing keeping him from falling into pieces along with it was Bill. He knew he had to stay strong for him right now.
“Promise what?” Bill asked, tilting his head slightly to one side. He could be a bit of a dummy sometimes, forgetting things that he’d already been told a thousand times. Granted, this only made twice, but it should have been enough.
“You know what,” Tom replied, narrowing his eyes slightly.
“Yeah,” Bill agreed after a moment, and he gave that same ghost-smile again. Tom vowed that one day, he’d see the real one again, because Bill’s smiles always made him smile, too.
“Believe me?” Tom shouldn’t have had to ask, but he did anyway, because if Bill could be a dummy sometimes, so could he.
“Yes,” Bill said, and then he relaxed, closing his eyes. “I… think I can go back to sleep now.”
“Good, you big baby.” Tom jumped a little when Bill elbowed him lightly in the ribs, but it made him smile a little-his smile was a ghost of his old smile, though. Like Bill’s.
They would have to do a lot of searching in the next few weeks, or months, or however long it took to find all of the things that he had taken from them.
But as Tom closed his eyes, Bill already drifting to sleep beside him, he thought that maybe this wasn’t a bad start.
~*~
Simone gently woke them around noon. At first, Tom didn’t even wriggle. He wanted to stay in his safe cocoon of covers with his brother, because it felt more like home than anything else. Outside their little bubble of protection and the lingering innocence of childhood lurked the knowledge of things that would hurt them (realization, remembrance), and the moment that their feet touched the floor, Tom knew that that innocence would be shattered once again and scattered to the wind.
He didn’t open his eyes when he heard Bill giggle quietly beside him, and he knew that their mother was tickling his twin. Seconds later, and Tom himself was being given the same treatment. He squirmed around, tried not to laugh, and failed.
“Wake up, boys,” Simone told them, and she sounded better now, like she hadn’t been the blubbering mess she was earlier, but Tom had not forgotten the look in her eyes. He probably never would. “You should eat something.”
As if on cue, Tom’s stomach rumbled, and then Bill’s, and two sets of dark brown eyes flew open, staring at one another as they shared a small, secret smile. Yes, they did need to eat, but that didn’t mean Tom wanted to leave the bed. They were safe here.
“Come downstairs,” Simone continued to coax them, lifting the covers away from their bodies (Tom missed the warmth almost immediately). There was still a sort of… emptiness in her eyes, but Tom almost expected that. Still, she smiled. “I’ll make something special for you. You can play while I cook, and you can even stay in your pajamas all day if you want.”
Surprisingly, it was Bill who decided to brave the outside world first, one hand clutching at Tom’s wrist like it was his lifeline while he sat up and slid to the edge of the bed, feet not yet touching the floor. Tom hurried to join him, sitting beside his brother, letting his legs dangle off the side of the bed, feet just inches from the floor.
They moved in perfect accord, feet touching the floor at the same moment, and Tom made a conscious effort not too look out the window-the same window that he’d looked through as their father had driven away. He noticed that Bill did the same, keeping his eyes carefully trained elsewhere until they were safely facing Simone.
They went downstairs together, all three of them, their smaller hands clutched in her larger, though somehow seemingly more-fragile ones. Delicate. Feminine. Motherly. And yet… strong, too. Her hands had to be, now.
Tom and Bill set to work on gathering as many pillows and blankets as they could get their hands on, wordlessly agreeing that today was a fort-building day, because forts meant protection and secret-sharing and the outside being disallowed to come inside.
They worked quietly, for the most part, the sounds of Simone in the kitchen drowning out what little noise they did make, until Bill - for whatever reason, or no reason at all - decided to smack Tom with one of the pillows, which began a pillow-fight that had them both squealing and laughing, though not quite as loudly or as joyously as was typical for them. Simone intervened anyway, threatening punishment if they wound up getting pillow-feathers all over her living room floor.
The pillow-fight ceased, though not before Bill whacked Tom - albeit softly - on the shoulder. Tom scowled, silently vowing that he would get his twin back for that, even though no harm whatsoever had been done. It was a matter of principle!
Bill admired their work - their too-many pillows and their haphazardly-arranged blankets - and Tom gazed at his brother, lost for a moment in his own thoughts.
Now that Bill was dry-eyed and seemingly in no danger of bursting into tears again in the immediate future, Tom figured that maybe, just for now, he could let himself sink into his own grief over all of this. Maybe now, just for a few minutes, he could stop trying to be the protector. Maybe, for a few minutes, Bill would be okay with being the stronger one.
“Bill?” Tom suddenly asked, voice quiet so that Simone would not hear him.
“Yeah?” Bill whispered back, tossing the pillow that he held aside, apparently deciding that they had enough pillows on their fort already. He sat down beside Tom, grabbing one of the extra blankets and toying with it while he looked at Tom expectantly.
“Dad’s… gone.” It was the first time he’d said it today-the first time he’d really let himself think about it, because he’d pushed it all away from himself in order to protect his little brother. In order to make him smile.
Bill frowned, but his eyes didn’t well with tears. Good. The last thing Tom wanted was to cause his twin more pain, when it hadn’t been his intention. “Yeah,” he agreed after a moment, scooting just a little closer.
Tom tried to process it-tried to understand why the man that had been their father for seven years (their whole lives up to that point) had just walked out on them. All of them. He couldn’t quite fathom how a person could do that to so-called ‘loved ones’. If their father truly loved them, wouldn’t he have stayed? Wouldn’t he have at least explained to them what was going on? Wouldn’t he have told them goodbye?
He knew an adult would have tried to tell him that it was ‘complicated’, but he didn’t see anything complicated about it. He saw cowardice and he saw lies, and those were obvious things-not difficult to explain or to see at all. Tom wanted to ask why, but he knew he’d never get an answer.
Hot tears of anger spilled down his cheeks and Bill caught them with his fingers, brushing them away before they could fall. Bill didn’t tell him that it was okay. He simply pulled the blanket over both of them and curled close, hugging Tom to himself while Tom shook and tried not to sob.
“There’s still Mom,” Bill said softly. “She loves us. And there’s me, too. I won’t go away like he did. You promised me, and I’ll promise too.” He repeated Tom’s earlier words: “We aren’t them.”
“We aren’t,” Tom agreed, sniffling a little.
“And don’t you dare wipe your icky nose on my shirt,” Bill warned then, and it made Tom laugh. Even funnier was the fact that Bill didn’t seem to want to pull away from Tom and his ‘icky nose’, but Tom was grateful for that.
This was, by far, the worst day of Tom’s entire life, but just then, in that moment (cuddled between the warmth of Bill and the warmth of the blanket), it seemed just a little better.
“It’s not so bad, I guess,” Tom suddenly mumbled, briefly contemplating being a little mean and wiping his nose on Bill’s shirt anyway, but he decided against it.
“What isn’t?” Bill asked, clearly not bothering to hide his confusion.
The sounds in the kitchen were getting quieter now-Simone was placing ice in their glasses. Everything was almost ready. Tom lowered his voice a little more when he answered, just to make sure Simone wouldn’t hear, still: “Today.”
“But Dad left.” Bill continued to sound confused.
“You didn’t,” Tom pointed out. “And that… makes it better.”
Bill wrinkled his nose. “I just promised, didn’t I? Why would--?”
But then Simone was interrupting them, calling for them to come eat. They moved slowly, tossing the blanket aside as they stood and made their way into the kitchen. She’d made their favorite: Königsberger Klopse. Another reason to like today.
“Thank you, Mom,” Tom said quietly, moving quickly (and awkwardly, because he thought he was too old for these sorts of things most of the time-earlier he’d had an excuse because she’d been crying) to hug her and kiss her on the cheek. It made her smile, at any rate, and that made today better, too.
Later, after their bellies were full and all they wanted to do was lay on the couch and watch cartoons and faux-argue over everything from the remote to the blanket to the pillows (which were still in a bit of a mess on the floor) to which side of the couch was whose. They compromised in the end, sharing the same blanket and sitting close together on the couch instead of lying down.
While Simone washed dishes and Bill and Tom stared at the television screen, Bill said, “I wouldn’t, you dummy. I promised. Even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t.” To anyone else, it wouldn’t have made sense. But to Tom, it made perfect sense.
Tom smiled. “I know.” And it was all the better, because he did know.
And today? Today was, quite possibly, the best worst day of Tom’s entire life.
~END~
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Sneak attack of fluff there at the end for the win~. You guys, I can’t help it. XD At least this isn’t rot-your-teeth-out cute? Or… well, maybe it is. Maybe that’s just what I do best, when it comes to these two. I tried for a balance here, though-a parent leaving is definitely a traumatic experience, and everything can’t always be happy.