Into The Night
Title: Into The Night
Pairing Bill/Tom Kaulitz, Tokio Hotel
Rating: R
Summary: Love. The word’s heavy on your tongue but heavier on your heart. Turning your head, you cast your eyes at Tom. He loses all his cockiness in sleep, so open, looking as vulnerable as he makes you feel. Does he understand what goes through your mind every time he looks at you for a heartbeat too long? Or has he just justified it to himself? Does he feel nothing but happiness when your hand lingers on his thigh or your head rests on his shoulder?
You’re sitting scrunched up on an airport bench, glancing intermittently up at the arrival and departure times; yours is still ‘DELAYED’. You huff to yourself and hug your knees closer, closing your eyes in the hopes that the world around you dissolves.
“Bill, I’ve got coffee.”
It’s worth the effort of opening your eyes to see your twin’s tired smile as he extends a paper Starbucks cup towards you.
“Thank you, Tomi,” you murmur, taking the beverage.
He nods and sits down next to you, too close, always too close. Your eyes skirt around the sparsely-populated waiting area, paranoid of people seeing you, before you lean inevitably into the touch. It makes you feel better and worse at the same time as you rest your head on his shoulder and you sip at your drink to try and stop your stomach churning.
“It’s times like these I wish we still lived in Germany,” Tom muses. “We could just drive home instead of being stuck in Schiphol Airport.”
“I still have your keys in my pocket.”
Your lips stifle a gasp as his hand reaches to the top of your thigh to confirm this for himself. The sharp teeth dig in as he presses down.
“We wouldn’t get very far in this weather.”
He barely strains his vocal chords. You can make out the words against your cheek. The snowstorm outside may deaden the sounds but it’s not responsible for the heightened silence ringing in your ears. You watch the flakes flurry and you should feel tense and on edge but the corners of your mouth tilt upwards as you nod to his statement. It’s the sort of snow that looks like it will never stop falling, eternally underlying your life, impeding your progress. It’s the sort of snow that doesn’t melt for days, freezes into patches of ice that trip you up when you’re least expecting it. It’s still breath-taking in its beauty, regardless of its inconvenience.
Any tension seems to drain from you as you watch the snowflakes chase each other, occasionally lifting the cardboard coffee cup to sip from it, chuckling as your warmed fingertips brush your brother’s when he drinks. The noise around you sounds like static, snow-deadened almost, until pierced by the screech of the intercom. You and Tom break apart as if scalded, eyes darting around the waiting area.
“Attention passengers of flight UA2483 to Los Angeles, California. Due to the extreme weather we are currently experiencing, this flight has been cancelled and rescheduled for the following morning. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Please report to the United Airlines desk at your terminal for further information and a voucher for a complimentary stay at Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.”
“Looks like they really fucked up,” you mumble, Tom nodding back at you. “You look exhausted.” You’re not surprised by the over-whelming urge to reach up and trace the tired skin under his eyes, arm twitching before you remember to stop it.
His eyes warm and he briefly touches your forearm in acknowledgement or your aborted gesture.
“I guess this is the best sort of Hilton to spend one night in. Get it? One Night In Paris? Hilton?” he jokes lamely. You groan. “You may despair for me, but I know you’re only upset that you haven’t mastered wit like I have.”
“You need sleep.”
“Yeah. Take me to bed.”
If there’s a seductive glimmer in his eyes, you look away too quickly to notice it.
*
It’s not until Tom has pulled back the covers on the bed for you and you’ve tucked yourself under them that you realise there’s another bed in the room; it’s so automatic for you to sleep under the same sheets. He pulls off his shirt and tosses it onto the other bed alongside his earlier discarded jeans, smiling at you with warm eyes before lying down with his back to you. Maybe there’s an invitation there - even though the two of you are so in sync it’s sometimes hard to tell - but you’re not sure you could take him up on it, so instead you lean over him and flick off the light on his bedside. Maybe there’s intent when your forearm brushes his shoulder, but you can already sense him relaxing into sleep.
You wish it were that easy for you.
You can blame it on the caffeine from your earlier dose of coffee, but there’s a skittish restlessness stinging in your skin. You can hear your muscles and bones creak as you attempt to relax them. Tom’s breathing becomes deep and even, too prominent in the silence, and usually it would reassure you to have the solid proof that he’s alive and close to you, but tonight it just makes you claustrophobic.
“Not claustrophobic enough to move to the other bed though,” you spit to yourself, words ringing wrongly in the darkness.
You shudder. The television remote sits on the bedside table next to you and you grab at it, slamming down on the power button with your thumb. You flick idly through the channels, waiting for something to grab your attention. 24-hour news channel. Click. H2O Mop infomercial. Click. Overly-dramatic Spanish soap opera. Click. Hardcore pornography. Cli- wait, what?
A laugh gasps from between your lips. Only in Amsterdam with its famous Red Light District and legal drugs would they show porn 24/7 on terrestrial channels in airport hotels. Sleazy saxophone music strains through tinny speakers and you start laughing again until you realise something disconcertingly familiar about the scene playing out before you. Both performers are male, which isn’t unusual in itself these days, but they’re identical twins.
It hits far too close to home.
Your thumb hovers over the power button, but something stops you from pressing it. You can’t tear your eyes from the screen even as your thoughts wander.
You think, if this were a movie, the camera lens would peer through grime, lights dimmed. Then the old hotel television screen would saturate the room in colour, tanned flesh slapping, over-practiced moans permeating the dull buzz of your thoughts.
If your life were a movie, it’d be a shit indie film where nothing’s resolved by the end and dissatisfaction lingers. You can’t learn from your experiences or solve your problems by the time the credits roll. You’re stuck in the same place, stuck in this airport hotel lying with the one you love so much it nauseates you.
Love. The word’s heavy on your tongue but heavier on your heart. Turning your head, you cast your eyes at Tom. He loses all his cockiness in sleep, so open, looking as vulnerable as he makes you feel. Does he understand what goes through your mind every time he looks at you for a heartbeat too long? Or has he just justified it to himself? Does he feel nothing but happiness when your hand lingers on his thigh or your head rests on his shoulder?
Your body shakes with shame as you turn back to the TV. There’s no emotion there, you tell yourself. It’s just fucking. It’s not even that. It’s lips stretched wide, self-satisfied. It’s rhythmic and calculated thrusting, fake elation, false affection. Nothing about it is real; even the climax is just hand cream squirted through the end of a condom.
“It’s not the same,” you tell yourself as tears darken the bedsheets. “It’s not the same,” flinching as he turns over and your legs brush. “It’s not the same,” chest tightening as his sleeping lips quirk upwards.
A twin makes a joke about how he’s happy to know what it’s like to fuck himself, and you finally fumble to switch it off as bile rises in your throat. With nothing to distract you now, you start picking at your nails, polish peeling off like sunburn. Within minutes, shards shaped like your nails litter the sheets around you and the skin around your cuticles aches. You want to pick at the skin, peel off tiny white strands of it until you bleed, but someone will notice, someone will ask questions. Tom will notice, but he won’t ask questions. His eyes will flood with guilt and he’ll make a point of not touching you, and that will hurt more than the flesh on your fingers.
You brush the chipped-off nail varnish to the floor. It kind of looks like snow, fluttering to the floor, and you draw your knees to your chest as if fending off some imaginary cold. It’s such a familiar position, rooted deep in your childhood; even then you’d rest your head on your knees and gaze at your brother, wishing your arms were around him instead of your legs, wondering if he felt it too. You remember a lazy summer afternoon where your skin was kissed by the sun as you lay in the grass, carefree as children should be. Tom spots a freckle on your collarbone that isn’t mirrored on his, solid evidence that there is a difference between you; his relief is almost tangible. You remember when bedtime kisses stopped being innocent, lips lingering for too long, no longer light-hearted. Then again, the end of innocence is also the beginning of guilt. What really gets you though is that you’re never aware of being innocent, but guilt consumes, eats away at you until you can’t even enter a room without feeling its taunting flush. There used to be a time when you and Tom could talk for hours with just significant glances but now you’re afraid that if you meet his eyes for too long you won’t be able to look away.
Even now you have to stop yourself from looking at the back of his head or his bare arm clutching the blankets to him, scrunching your eyelids together and squeezing your legs closer to you, willing yourself to fall asleep, anything to escape your thoughts before they consume you and leave you a wreck.
*
The trilling of the hotel phone screeches into your eardrums and you tense, curling into the warmth next to your torso. The body beside you shifts; a clumsy arm scrabbles for the telephone. You realise you’ve shifted somehow in sleep, open mouth pressed on a warm chest, Tom’s other arm secure around your back. You know you should flinch away and not allow yourself this, but his hand starts stroking at your hair and you find that you don’t care, not for the next few minutes anyway.
“Hello?” your brother mumbles into the receiver.
“This is an automated message from United Airlines,” drones a muted voice. “We are calling to inform you that flight UA2483 has been rescheduled and will be available for boarding at 8:13AM. Please can all passengers make their way back to the terminal with passports and boarding passes at the ready. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for flying with United Airlines.”
“Mm,” Tom groans, returning the handset to the cradle.
You can hear him try to blink himself awake, giving your hair a final stroke before sitting up and pulling you with him.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks, arm still clutched around you.
“Yes.”
He doesn’t have to know how difficult it was for you to drift off; he hates to see you unhappy.
“Get dressed,” you say, pushing him away in what you hope is a playful manner. “We’ve got a flight to catch.”
His hand touches your leg through the sheets. You don’t meet his eyes for long enough to read what’s in them. He shakes his head and you hear the smile in his breath as he picks up the T-shirt he discarded last night.
*
You’re sitting scrunched up on an airport bench, eyes closed against the arrival and departure times.
“Bill, I’ve got coffee,” your twin interrupts, pressing the cup into your hands as he sits down too close to you.
You lean into him. The snow is still falling outside. You sigh, resigned, and drop your head onto his shoulder.
Pairing Bill/Tom Kaulitz, Tokio Hotel
Rating: R
Summary: Love. The word’s heavy on your tongue but heavier on your heart. Turning your head, you cast your eyes at Tom. He loses all his cockiness in sleep, so open, looking as vulnerable as he makes you feel. Does he understand what goes through your mind every time he looks at you for a heartbeat too long? Or has he just justified it to himself? Does he feel nothing but happiness when your hand lingers on his thigh or your head rests on his shoulder?
You’re sitting scrunched up on an airport bench, glancing intermittently up at the arrival and departure times; yours is still ‘DELAYED’. You huff to yourself and hug your knees closer, closing your eyes in the hopes that the world around you dissolves.
“Bill, I’ve got coffee.”
It’s worth the effort of opening your eyes to see your twin’s tired smile as he extends a paper Starbucks cup towards you.
“Thank you, Tomi,” you murmur, taking the beverage.
He nods and sits down next to you, too close, always too close. Your eyes skirt around the sparsely-populated waiting area, paranoid of people seeing you, before you lean inevitably into the touch. It makes you feel better and worse at the same time as you rest your head on his shoulder and you sip at your drink to try and stop your stomach churning.
“It’s times like these I wish we still lived in Germany,” Tom muses. “We could just drive home instead of being stuck in Schiphol Airport.”
“I still have your keys in my pocket.”
Your lips stifle a gasp as his hand reaches to the top of your thigh to confirm this for himself. The sharp teeth dig in as he presses down.
“We wouldn’t get very far in this weather.”
He barely strains his vocal chords. You can make out the words against your cheek. The snowstorm outside may deaden the sounds but it’s not responsible for the heightened silence ringing in your ears. You watch the flakes flurry and you should feel tense and on edge but the corners of your mouth tilt upwards as you nod to his statement. It’s the sort of snow that looks like it will never stop falling, eternally underlying your life, impeding your progress. It’s the sort of snow that doesn’t melt for days, freezes into patches of ice that trip you up when you’re least expecting it. It’s still breath-taking in its beauty, regardless of its inconvenience.
Any tension seems to drain from you as you watch the snowflakes chase each other, occasionally lifting the cardboard coffee cup to sip from it, chuckling as your warmed fingertips brush your brother’s when he drinks. The noise around you sounds like static, snow-deadened almost, until pierced by the screech of the intercom. You and Tom break apart as if scalded, eyes darting around the waiting area.
“Attention passengers of flight UA2483 to Los Angeles, California. Due to the extreme weather we are currently experiencing, this flight has been cancelled and rescheduled for the following morning. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Please report to the United Airlines desk at your terminal for further information and a voucher for a complimentary stay at Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.”
“Looks like they really fucked up,” you mumble, Tom nodding back at you. “You look exhausted.” You’re not surprised by the over-whelming urge to reach up and trace the tired skin under his eyes, arm twitching before you remember to stop it.
His eyes warm and he briefly touches your forearm in acknowledgement or your aborted gesture.
“I guess this is the best sort of Hilton to spend one night in. Get it? One Night In Paris? Hilton?” he jokes lamely. You groan. “You may despair for me, but I know you’re only upset that you haven’t mastered wit like I have.”
“You need sleep.”
“Yeah. Take me to bed.”
If there’s a seductive glimmer in his eyes, you look away too quickly to notice it.
*
It’s not until Tom has pulled back the covers on the bed for you and you’ve tucked yourself under them that you realise there’s another bed in the room; it’s so automatic for you to sleep under the same sheets. He pulls off his shirt and tosses it onto the other bed alongside his earlier discarded jeans, smiling at you with warm eyes before lying down with his back to you. Maybe there’s an invitation there - even though the two of you are so in sync it’s sometimes hard to tell - but you’re not sure you could take him up on it, so instead you lean over him and flick off the light on his bedside. Maybe there’s intent when your forearm brushes his shoulder, but you can already sense him relaxing into sleep.
You wish it were that easy for you.
You can blame it on the caffeine from your earlier dose of coffee, but there’s a skittish restlessness stinging in your skin. You can hear your muscles and bones creak as you attempt to relax them. Tom’s breathing becomes deep and even, too prominent in the silence, and usually it would reassure you to have the solid proof that he’s alive and close to you, but tonight it just makes you claustrophobic.
“Not claustrophobic enough to move to the other bed though,” you spit to yourself, words ringing wrongly in the darkness.
You shudder. The television remote sits on the bedside table next to you and you grab at it, slamming down on the power button with your thumb. You flick idly through the channels, waiting for something to grab your attention. 24-hour news channel. Click. H2O Mop infomercial. Click. Overly-dramatic Spanish soap opera. Click. Hardcore pornography. Cli- wait, what?
A laugh gasps from between your lips. Only in Amsterdam with its famous Red Light District and legal drugs would they show porn 24/7 on terrestrial channels in airport hotels. Sleazy saxophone music strains through tinny speakers and you start laughing again until you realise something disconcertingly familiar about the scene playing out before you. Both performers are male, which isn’t unusual in itself these days, but they’re identical twins.
It hits far too close to home.
Your thumb hovers over the power button, but something stops you from pressing it. You can’t tear your eyes from the screen even as your thoughts wander.
You think, if this were a movie, the camera lens would peer through grime, lights dimmed. Then the old hotel television screen would saturate the room in colour, tanned flesh slapping, over-practiced moans permeating the dull buzz of your thoughts.
If your life were a movie, it’d be a shit indie film where nothing’s resolved by the end and dissatisfaction lingers. You can’t learn from your experiences or solve your problems by the time the credits roll. You’re stuck in the same place, stuck in this airport hotel lying with the one you love so much it nauseates you.
Love. The word’s heavy on your tongue but heavier on your heart. Turning your head, you cast your eyes at Tom. He loses all his cockiness in sleep, so open, looking as vulnerable as he makes you feel. Does he understand what goes through your mind every time he looks at you for a heartbeat too long? Or has he just justified it to himself? Does he feel nothing but happiness when your hand lingers on his thigh or your head rests on his shoulder?
Your body shakes with shame as you turn back to the TV. There’s no emotion there, you tell yourself. It’s just fucking. It’s not even that. It’s lips stretched wide, self-satisfied. It’s rhythmic and calculated thrusting, fake elation, false affection. Nothing about it is real; even the climax is just hand cream squirted through the end of a condom.
“It’s not the same,” you tell yourself as tears darken the bedsheets. “It’s not the same,” flinching as he turns over and your legs brush. “It’s not the same,” chest tightening as his sleeping lips quirk upwards.
A twin makes a joke about how he’s happy to know what it’s like to fuck himself, and you finally fumble to switch it off as bile rises in your throat. With nothing to distract you now, you start picking at your nails, polish peeling off like sunburn. Within minutes, shards shaped like your nails litter the sheets around you and the skin around your cuticles aches. You want to pick at the skin, peel off tiny white strands of it until you bleed, but someone will notice, someone will ask questions. Tom will notice, but he won’t ask questions. His eyes will flood with guilt and he’ll make a point of not touching you, and that will hurt more than the flesh on your fingers.
You brush the chipped-off nail varnish to the floor. It kind of looks like snow, fluttering to the floor, and you draw your knees to your chest as if fending off some imaginary cold. It’s such a familiar position, rooted deep in your childhood; even then you’d rest your head on your knees and gaze at your brother, wishing your arms were around him instead of your legs, wondering if he felt it too. You remember a lazy summer afternoon where your skin was kissed by the sun as you lay in the grass, carefree as children should be. Tom spots a freckle on your collarbone that isn’t mirrored on his, solid evidence that there is a difference between you; his relief is almost tangible. You remember when bedtime kisses stopped being innocent, lips lingering for too long, no longer light-hearted. Then again, the end of innocence is also the beginning of guilt. What really gets you though is that you’re never aware of being innocent, but guilt consumes, eats away at you until you can’t even enter a room without feeling its taunting flush. There used to be a time when you and Tom could talk for hours with just significant glances but now you’re afraid that if you meet his eyes for too long you won’t be able to look away.
Even now you have to stop yourself from looking at the back of his head or his bare arm clutching the blankets to him, scrunching your eyelids together and squeezing your legs closer to you, willing yourself to fall asleep, anything to escape your thoughts before they consume you and leave you a wreck.
*
The trilling of the hotel phone screeches into your eardrums and you tense, curling into the warmth next to your torso. The body beside you shifts; a clumsy arm scrabbles for the telephone. You realise you’ve shifted somehow in sleep, open mouth pressed on a warm chest, Tom’s other arm secure around your back. You know you should flinch away and not allow yourself this, but his hand starts stroking at your hair and you find that you don’t care, not for the next few minutes anyway.
“Hello?” your brother mumbles into the receiver.
“This is an automated message from United Airlines,” drones a muted voice. “We are calling to inform you that flight UA2483 has been rescheduled and will be available for boarding at 8:13AM. Please can all passengers make their way back to the terminal with passports and boarding passes at the ready. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for flying with United Airlines.”
“Mm,” Tom groans, returning the handset to the cradle.
You can hear him try to blink himself awake, giving your hair a final stroke before sitting up and pulling you with him.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks, arm still clutched around you.
“Yes.”
He doesn’t have to know how difficult it was for you to drift off; he hates to see you unhappy.
“Get dressed,” you say, pushing him away in what you hope is a playful manner. “We’ve got a flight to catch.”
His hand touches your leg through the sheets. You don’t meet his eyes for long enough to read what’s in them. He shakes his head and you hear the smile in his breath as he picks up the T-shirt he discarded last night.
*
You’re sitting scrunched up on an airport bench, eyes closed against the arrival and departure times.
“Bill, I’ve got coffee,” your twin interrupts, pressing the cup into your hands as he sits down too close to you.
You lean into him. The snow is still falling outside. You sigh, resigned, and drop your head onto his shoulder.