(no subject)
Posting this tonight before I go sleep. I'll try to have something fluffy up tomorrow for Fluff Friday :)
Title: Through the looking glass (4/?)
Genre: Twins gen
Rating: PG13
Summary: Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he never thought he'd see again. Five years ago, Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he couldn't wait to see. Will they get back where they belong?
Tom was quite possibly having the best day of his life.
They’d finished their tour of the house and were now outside in the driveway, examining every square centimeter of the Audi R8. Tom was, anyway; Bill looked inexplicably unexcited about the car. He sat in the open trunk of his mom mobile, his arms crossed, shivering. “Can we go back inside? It’s cold. I promise you’ll get to do this again in four years.”
Tom appeared, pink-faced, from under the passenger seat, where he’d just found a state-of-the-art handheld vacuum cleaner. Happily, he vacuumed some lint off his sweats. Now if this wasn’t awesome, he didn’t know what was.
Behind him, Bill snorted.
Tom turned to him grudgingly, the vacuum cleaner clutched to his chest. “What? You can go ahead, I just want to look at it some more.”
Bill didn’t move. “I’m not leaving you alone out here.”
Tom glanced at the bushes. Bill had moved the car closer to the garage before he’d let Tom out of the house; there hadn’t been any weird, disembodied screams from beyond the fence in over an hour, but maybe that also had to do with the patrol car that had gone by a while ago. “Did you call the police on them?”
Bill looked down at his feet.
“Why?” Tom asked. “Who are they?”
Bill’s legs began to twitch, moving incessantly like hummingbird wings. “Very persistent…well, not fans, I shouldn’t call them that, but. They started out as fans, I suppose.”
“You’re afraid of them,” Tom observed. He shoved the vacuum cleaner back under the front seat of the car and swung the door closed.
“I’m not afraid!” Bill almost shouted. Wincing, he glanced around. “They’re annoying.”
Tom tilted his head. “Well. Wanna get out of here?”
Bill pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket and looked at the display. “We need to meet Gustav and Georg at the studio in an hour. Why?”
Tom turned wide, hypnotic eyes on him that he hoped conveyed the full force of his determination. “You have to let me drive this car.”
“No,” Bill said firmly. “You’d kill me yourself, your twenty-year-old self anyway, if I let anything happen to your car.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Tom pleaded. “You know how often I’ve driven mom’s car down the dirt road.”
“That’s different,” Bill protested. “Mom’s car is a wreck, and besides, if we get caught here and now, we’ll be on RTL first thing tomorrow morning.”
Tom huffed. “Are you going to let me have any fun?”
That wasn’t fair; he’d gotten to do more amazing things today than he’d imagined doing in a lifetime, but here was this car, this shiny, incredible car, and Tom had never wanted anything so badly in his life. Not even sex.
Bill frowned at him. “I’ll drive us to the studio and you can drive around the house there, okay?”
“Around the house!” Tom scoffed. “I want to drive fast, that’s the point of the car!”
“No. No. No way,” Bill said.
“You’re not the boss of me,” Tom snapped. “You said it yourself, this is my car.”
“This is your car when you’re twenty,” Bill shot back, annoyed. “Not at fifteen. I can’t let you.”
Tom kicked at the pebbles that lined the driveway. “God, what happened to you? You’re so uptight, do you ever do anything against the rules anymore at all?”
Bill shrugged jerkily. He jumped off the edge of the trunk and slammed it shut loudly. “Come inside, I’ll get you a jacket. And be nice or we’re taking my car.”
“You’re worse than mom,” Tom told him scornfully. “Way worse.”
Bill didn’t say anything. He stalked off towards the house, his shoulders pulled up against the cold. Tom glanced at his car, considering, but then there was a beep from it and Bill’s car both and it was locked; Bill had used the remote control. Huffing, Tom had no choice but to follow him.
Inside the house, it was cozy warm and nice. Tom trotted into the living room, rubbing his hands. He hadn’t noticed in his excitement, but he was cold. He hoped future Tom had something decent to wear; he’d been really happy with the drawers that held his hats, but he hadn’t checked the closet.
“Here.” Bill reappeared, tossing some large, shapeless lump at him. It turned out to be a big black down jacket with a hood, which Tom pulled up to cover his dreads. The jacket was way too big on him, just perfect. He grinned out from under the hood and saw Bill give him a sour look.
“Nice tent you’re wearing. Come on. Grab the bottle, will you.” He jerked his head at a large bottle of vodka on the living room table, turned sharply on his heel and marched out. Once again, Tom had to follow. He walked slowly behind Bill, feeling the hostility radiate off his brother in waves. Bill’s back was tense, and he refused to look Tom in the eye while they stood on opposite sides of the car, Bill fumbling with the keys. Tom tried very hard to ignore the bad feeling that crept up on him - it wasn’t his damn fault if this Bill was so damn silly and particular about everything - but he couldn’t quite shake it off. It was stupid; everything else was upside down, why did the twin thing have to work?
They sat side by side in Tom’s car, silently listening to the roar of the engine as Bill started it up. Tom’s heart began to flutter to the rhythm of it, but before he could voice his excitement, the car jumped forward, sputtered and died.
“Fuck,” Bill cursed quietly. He shot Tom a glance that dared him to complain. “You never usually let me drive!”
“I’m sure there’s a good reason for that,” Tom remarked and received a hard slap across the chest for his troubles.
Bill started the car again and slowly maneuvered it down the driveway. The gate at the end swung open for them as if by magic. Tom leaned back in the seat and enjoyed the view of the darkening streets, the rumbling sound of the engine, the lights speeding past as they finally made it onto the Autobahn. Bill drove too slowly for his liking, but at least Bill drove. Looking to his left, Tom could hardly believe it.
“Hey. You’re driving.”
“Yeah,” Bill spat.
Tom rolled his eyes. “I just meant, you can drive. You have a license. You’re twenty years old and your life is freaking amazing. Why aren’t you celebrating?”
“Because right now nothing about my life is right at all,” Bill burst out. “Goddammit, have you forgotten where you came from? There’s a me, a Bill, waiting for you back there and you don’t even care!”
“Of course I care,” Tom said, startled. “But he probably has a Tom with him he can annoy and quiz about the future, so I’m sure he isn’t too bored.”
“Annoy!” Bill muttered, pissed. “How do you even know my Tom is there?”
“Where else would he be?” Tom countered, shrugging. “I’m here, so there’s a place for him to fill four years ago, in Loitsche. Wouldn’t that be logical?”
“Nothing’s fucking logical about any of this!” Bill snapped. He ran one hand through his hair in agitation. “God! We don’t even know how the hell you got here.”
“Wished for it and it came true,” Tom smirked. “Because clearly, I’ve been very very good and I deserved a reward.”
“Fucking brat,” Bill said. “You wished for what, exactly?”
“To see what’d happen. To talk to us. Future us. Future me. It’s too bad I don’t get to talk to me. I bet I’m awesome.”
“You are,” Bill said quietly. He sighed. “Tom wished he could go back to the past. Last night, before he disappeared.”
Tom considered this. He’d wished to come here the night before, Tom had wished to go back, right before they both fell asleep. Maybe, if their wishes had coincided, their combined wishpower had made them come true. It all didn’t make much sense, but he was here now and he might as well enjoy it; he didn’t see what was wrong with that.
“I’m sure Bill is having just as much fun as I am,” he said.
The side of Bill’s face he could see looked unhappy. The corner of his mouth curved downward. “Don’t you miss him at all?”
Tom thought about his little brother, the Bill he got to tease without being frowned at, who laughed with him over a silly joke, who would’ve been excited over all the amazing things the future had to offer. The Bill who’d hang on his every word when Tom returned and told him the story of his adventure. “Sure I miss him,” he said. “He’s Bill.”
“I’m Bill,” Bill said.
“You’re…different,” Tom told him. “You worry too much. You’re all responsible and shit.” He slapped Bill’s shoulder. “Loosen up a bit.”
Bill gave him the finger. In some ways, he hadn’t changed that much. “Fine. I’ll let you drive the car for the last bit, after we get off the Autobahn, okay?” He heaved a sigh. “I hope there’s no paparazzi by the studio.”
Tom laughed.
“What,” Georg said, “what is this.”
“Impossible,” Gustav gasped.
“Tell me about it.” Bill collapsed into one of the too-soft armchairs in the rehearsal room and watched young Tom shuffle his feet by the door together with their two friends.
Gustav and Georg were gaping dumbly. “What…how?” Gustav asked after several minutes of stunned silence.
“He wished himself here,” Bill explained tiredly. “And our Tom wished himself away, so now he’s gone and I’m stuck with him.”
“Hey!” Tom protested. He set the bottle they’d brought on one of the amps and shrugged off his enormous jacket. “Hi, guys! Wow, Gustav, you got fat.”
“It’s really him,” Georg said in disbelief. “Dreads and all. Holy fuck.” He turned to Bill. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Bill gestured vaguely. “Merry fucking Christmas, guys.”
“Where exactly did you come from?” Gustav asked. “Do you even know yet what’s going to happen?”
“June 2005,” Tom said. He grinned. “Um. We’re going to be rich and famous?”
“Two months before the single release,” Gustav concluded. He turned to Bill. “Oh dear. He’s totally fucking clueless then, eh?”
“He thinks he knows everything,” Bill told him, voice dripping with scorn.
“I know we’re going to have a single and an album out,” Tom shrugged. “And I’ve seen our house, we’re loaded! What else is there to know?”
Gustav looked at him as if Tom was a particularly stupid sort, which was a look Tom knew all too well. Gustav hadn’t changed all that much. “What are we going to do if our Tom doesn’t come back?” he asked. “I mean, we have a tour coming up and this one knows only one third of our discography.”
Bill threw up his hands. Curled up in the armchair, with his legs folded up under him, he suddenly looked very small to Tom, much less grown up. He was just Bill. Just Bill, and pretty fucking scared at that; Tom could see it in the tight set of his jaw, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners.
He moved a little closer to Bill’s armchair. “Really? We’ve made more albums? Wow.” He looked around the studio curiously, but it was still mostly the same. There was a life-sized poster of the four of them on one wall which had, by the looks of it, been used as a dart board before, but they still had the same battered furniture, the same old practice amps. Georg didn’t look much different except that his hair was longer, and Gustav looked slightly chubby and unimpressed with everything, especially Tom, as usual. “Well, this is cool.”
Georg quirked a small smile. “You must’ve had a field day,” he grinned. “A lot’s happened.”
“Yeah. It’s great.” Tom smiled at Georg. Five years older than he at this point, but Georg still understood him. He was a good friend.
“Have you seen your guitars? Your home studio?” Georg’s excitement seemed to grow with every detail he pictured from young Tom’s point of view. “Your car?”
“I’ve driven it!” Tom said proudly.
Gustav harrumphed. He didn’t seem to approve of this. “You know how quickly accidents happen,” he told Bill.
Bill slapped at the drummer’s tattooed - tattooed! - arm. “You know what he’s like when he wants something.”
“Yeah, almost as bad as you,” Gustav retorted with a small smile. He sat down on the armrest of Bill’s chair and laid a hand on his shoulder. “How are you holding up?”
“Don’t ask,” Bill said thickly. His manicured fingers curled around Gustav’s wrist and held on tight.
“Don’t worry too much,” Gustav said gruffly. “This isn’t natural, it isn’t the right order of things, it’ll sort itself out.”
Bill sighed deeply. “I hope so.”
“Thanks for the warm welcome, Gustav,” Tom said, disgruntled.
Gustav glanced up. “Oh, come on, Tom, you’re a sensible guy,” he gestured vaguely, “somewhere under all those horrible clothes. You know this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I’d bet our Tom is already trying to find a way back.”
Tom chewed his lower lip, feeling a little flustered being addressed like an adult. “Yeah, well, sure. I can’t always stay here, I know that! But I’m here now. Can’t I have a little vacation while we wait for things to, oh, go back to their ‘natural order’?”
Gustav pondered this. He shrugged. “Yeah, well, nothing we can do right now, I suppose.”
“Right,” Georg said. “Come on, let’s do something fun, guys. It’s almost Christmas, it’s tradition to get plastered together.” He clapped his hands excitedly. “Let’s watch our DVDs with him!”
Gustav looked doubtful. “I don’t know, if he’s really from the future, maybe we shouldn’t let him in on too much, in the movies they’ll always tell you not to fuck up the timeline--”
“We’re not in the movies,” Georg said.
“But we have an actual case of timetravel on our hands,” Gustav pointed out. “A little caution? We need our guitarist back in the same condition he left.”
“I am your guitarist,” Tom said, feeling the truth of it slowly sink in as he stood before his older, long-haired, tattooed bandmates. He was going to be a guitarist. A rockstar. A real, actual musician.
Gustav looked like was developing a migraine headache. He patted Bill’s shoulder. “My sympathies, man.”
“So, DVDs?” Georg asked. Tom nodded enthusiastically, and Georg whooped. “Gustav, get the shot glasses! It’s a drinking game, every time Tom talks about getting laid.”
Bill groaned. “It’s not really that funny, Georg.”
“Oh, come on.” Georg wheeled in a TV/DVD set on a wobbly old TV stand that had been at the studio forever. The TV had been exchanged for a better one, though. Georg plugged it in, then handed a couple of discs to Tom. “Pick one.”
Tom looked through them. They were all labeled in Gustav’s handwriting: ‘Summer 2006’ or ‘Werchter’ or ‘Interviews part III’. He fished out one at random and handed it over for Georg to pop in.
Gustav reappeared dutifully with four shot glasses, which he set on the floor in front of the TV. He grabbed the vodka bottle off the amp where Tom had left it and opened it, sniffing appreciatively. “You brought the good stuff.”
“Only the best for our esteemed colleagues.” Bill finally cracked a small smile as the DVD began to play. It had said ‘Tom’s conquests, part infinity’ and the first bit showed them lounging in the recording room of the very studio they were in now, talking about some song called ‘Reden’. Bill’s hair was spiky and all over the place; Tom, Tom thought, looked pretty damn good. He smiled to himself, folding up his long legs to sit on the floor. 2007, the caption at the bottom read.
“Oh god, here it comes,” Bill whined.
“Glasses at the ready, guys,” Georg hollered, handing out the vodka shots.
Bill refused his. “I need to drive. And keep a clear head, this is all too insane already.”
“You could stay, party all night just like we used to?” Georg cajoled. “Come on, Bill!”
Bill scrunched up his nose. “I want to get him back home, that’s where the exchange happened, maybe it’ll happen again tonight.”
“Suit yourself,” Georg shrugged.
“Well I’m having one,” Tom said defiantly. He accepted a glass from Georg.
Bill’s eyes flashed. “You do what you want, but don’t come crying to me when you can’t hold your liquor.”
Tom tossed back the vodka, feeling it burn smoothly down his throat. He coughed only a little. “Good stuff.”
“…hot stuff,” Tom said, in the interview. “So I invited her in, just to talk, and then, well.” He grinned cockily. “The rest is history.”
“Bottoms up,” Georg said and downed his shot in one. “Ahhh. Thank you, Bill, this really is good stuff. Another?” He held the bottle up to Tom.
“Sure.” With the second shot on an almost-empty stomach, Tom was beginning to feel a light buzz, just enough to soften the edges of his vision and make every word sound a little funnier. He grinned as the second interview began to play, detailing much the same boastful story as the first. “So I get laid? A lot? Hee!”
“Not really,” Bill told him, obnoxiously set on bursting Tom’s bubble. “You just pretend so people don’t have to feel so sorry for you.”
“Bullshit,” Tom slurred through a third shot. “I get laid, guys, right?”
Georg laughed.
“Sometimes,” Gustav said diplomatically. “And sometimes, not so much.”
“Hmph.” The fourth shot tasted a bit funky. Tom rubbed his stomach. “Do we have gummi bears or something?”
Gustav tossed him a bag he’d brought from the kitchen. Apparently, in 2009, Gustav could read minds. “Merry Christmas, boy.”
“Yummy yummy yummy!” Greedily, Tom tore open the bag and stuffed a handful of gummi bears into his mouth. The fifth shot was delicious.
“Georg,” he heard Bill say as if from far away, “he’s going to get so sick! He’s just a kid.”
Indignant, Tom tossed back another drink, just because he could, and then, finally, he didn’t hear anything anymore.
Title: Through the looking glass (4/?)
Genre: Twins gen
Rating: PG13
Summary: Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he never thought he'd see again. Five years ago, Tom falls asleep one night and wakes up in a place he couldn't wait to see. Will they get back where they belong?
Tom was quite possibly having the best day of his life.
They’d finished their tour of the house and were now outside in the driveway, examining every square centimeter of the Audi R8. Tom was, anyway; Bill looked inexplicably unexcited about the car. He sat in the open trunk of his mom mobile, his arms crossed, shivering. “Can we go back inside? It’s cold. I promise you’ll get to do this again in four years.”
Tom appeared, pink-faced, from under the passenger seat, where he’d just found a state-of-the-art handheld vacuum cleaner. Happily, he vacuumed some lint off his sweats. Now if this wasn’t awesome, he didn’t know what was.
Behind him, Bill snorted.
Tom turned to him grudgingly, the vacuum cleaner clutched to his chest. “What? You can go ahead, I just want to look at it some more.”
Bill didn’t move. “I’m not leaving you alone out here.”
Tom glanced at the bushes. Bill had moved the car closer to the garage before he’d let Tom out of the house; there hadn’t been any weird, disembodied screams from beyond the fence in over an hour, but maybe that also had to do with the patrol car that had gone by a while ago. “Did you call the police on them?”
Bill looked down at his feet.
“Why?” Tom asked. “Who are they?”
Bill’s legs began to twitch, moving incessantly like hummingbird wings. “Very persistent…well, not fans, I shouldn’t call them that, but. They started out as fans, I suppose.”
“You’re afraid of them,” Tom observed. He shoved the vacuum cleaner back under the front seat of the car and swung the door closed.
“I’m not afraid!” Bill almost shouted. Wincing, he glanced around. “They’re annoying.”
Tom tilted his head. “Well. Wanna get out of here?”
Bill pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket and looked at the display. “We need to meet Gustav and Georg at the studio in an hour. Why?”
Tom turned wide, hypnotic eyes on him that he hoped conveyed the full force of his determination. “You have to let me drive this car.”
“No,” Bill said firmly. “You’d kill me yourself, your twenty-year-old self anyway, if I let anything happen to your car.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Tom pleaded. “You know how often I’ve driven mom’s car down the dirt road.”
“That’s different,” Bill protested. “Mom’s car is a wreck, and besides, if we get caught here and now, we’ll be on RTL first thing tomorrow morning.”
Tom huffed. “Are you going to let me have any fun?”
That wasn’t fair; he’d gotten to do more amazing things today than he’d imagined doing in a lifetime, but here was this car, this shiny, incredible car, and Tom had never wanted anything so badly in his life. Not even sex.
Bill frowned at him. “I’ll drive us to the studio and you can drive around the house there, okay?”
“Around the house!” Tom scoffed. “I want to drive fast, that’s the point of the car!”
“No. No. No way,” Bill said.
“You’re not the boss of me,” Tom snapped. “You said it yourself, this is my car.”
“This is your car when you’re twenty,” Bill shot back, annoyed. “Not at fifteen. I can’t let you.”
Tom kicked at the pebbles that lined the driveway. “God, what happened to you? You’re so uptight, do you ever do anything against the rules anymore at all?”
Bill shrugged jerkily. He jumped off the edge of the trunk and slammed it shut loudly. “Come inside, I’ll get you a jacket. And be nice or we’re taking my car.”
“You’re worse than mom,” Tom told him scornfully. “Way worse.”
Bill didn’t say anything. He stalked off towards the house, his shoulders pulled up against the cold. Tom glanced at his car, considering, but then there was a beep from it and Bill’s car both and it was locked; Bill had used the remote control. Huffing, Tom had no choice but to follow him.
Inside the house, it was cozy warm and nice. Tom trotted into the living room, rubbing his hands. He hadn’t noticed in his excitement, but he was cold. He hoped future Tom had something decent to wear; he’d been really happy with the drawers that held his hats, but he hadn’t checked the closet.
“Here.” Bill reappeared, tossing some large, shapeless lump at him. It turned out to be a big black down jacket with a hood, which Tom pulled up to cover his dreads. The jacket was way too big on him, just perfect. He grinned out from under the hood and saw Bill give him a sour look.
“Nice tent you’re wearing. Come on. Grab the bottle, will you.” He jerked his head at a large bottle of vodka on the living room table, turned sharply on his heel and marched out. Once again, Tom had to follow. He walked slowly behind Bill, feeling the hostility radiate off his brother in waves. Bill’s back was tense, and he refused to look Tom in the eye while they stood on opposite sides of the car, Bill fumbling with the keys. Tom tried very hard to ignore the bad feeling that crept up on him - it wasn’t his damn fault if this Bill was so damn silly and particular about everything - but he couldn’t quite shake it off. It was stupid; everything else was upside down, why did the twin thing have to work?
They sat side by side in Tom’s car, silently listening to the roar of the engine as Bill started it up. Tom’s heart began to flutter to the rhythm of it, but before he could voice his excitement, the car jumped forward, sputtered and died.
“Fuck,” Bill cursed quietly. He shot Tom a glance that dared him to complain. “You never usually let me drive!”
“I’m sure there’s a good reason for that,” Tom remarked and received a hard slap across the chest for his troubles.
Bill started the car again and slowly maneuvered it down the driveway. The gate at the end swung open for them as if by magic. Tom leaned back in the seat and enjoyed the view of the darkening streets, the rumbling sound of the engine, the lights speeding past as they finally made it onto the Autobahn. Bill drove too slowly for his liking, but at least Bill drove. Looking to his left, Tom could hardly believe it.
“Hey. You’re driving.”
“Yeah,” Bill spat.
Tom rolled his eyes. “I just meant, you can drive. You have a license. You’re twenty years old and your life is freaking amazing. Why aren’t you celebrating?”
“Because right now nothing about my life is right at all,” Bill burst out. “Goddammit, have you forgotten where you came from? There’s a me, a Bill, waiting for you back there and you don’t even care!”
“Of course I care,” Tom said, startled. “But he probably has a Tom with him he can annoy and quiz about the future, so I’m sure he isn’t too bored.”
“Annoy!” Bill muttered, pissed. “How do you even know my Tom is there?”
“Where else would he be?” Tom countered, shrugging. “I’m here, so there’s a place for him to fill four years ago, in Loitsche. Wouldn’t that be logical?”
“Nothing’s fucking logical about any of this!” Bill snapped. He ran one hand through his hair in agitation. “God! We don’t even know how the hell you got here.”
“Wished for it and it came true,” Tom smirked. “Because clearly, I’ve been very very good and I deserved a reward.”
“Fucking brat,” Bill said. “You wished for what, exactly?”
“To see what’d happen. To talk to us. Future us. Future me. It’s too bad I don’t get to talk to me. I bet I’m awesome.”
“You are,” Bill said quietly. He sighed. “Tom wished he could go back to the past. Last night, before he disappeared.”
Tom considered this. He’d wished to come here the night before, Tom had wished to go back, right before they both fell asleep. Maybe, if their wishes had coincided, their combined wishpower had made them come true. It all didn’t make much sense, but he was here now and he might as well enjoy it; he didn’t see what was wrong with that.
“I’m sure Bill is having just as much fun as I am,” he said.
The side of Bill’s face he could see looked unhappy. The corner of his mouth curved downward. “Don’t you miss him at all?”
Tom thought about his little brother, the Bill he got to tease without being frowned at, who laughed with him over a silly joke, who would’ve been excited over all the amazing things the future had to offer. The Bill who’d hang on his every word when Tom returned and told him the story of his adventure. “Sure I miss him,” he said. “He’s Bill.”
“I’m Bill,” Bill said.
“You’re…different,” Tom told him. “You worry too much. You’re all responsible and shit.” He slapped Bill’s shoulder. “Loosen up a bit.”
Bill gave him the finger. In some ways, he hadn’t changed that much. “Fine. I’ll let you drive the car for the last bit, after we get off the Autobahn, okay?” He heaved a sigh. “I hope there’s no paparazzi by the studio.”
Tom laughed.
“What,” Georg said, “what is this.”
“Impossible,” Gustav gasped.
“Tell me about it.” Bill collapsed into one of the too-soft armchairs in the rehearsal room and watched young Tom shuffle his feet by the door together with their two friends.
Gustav and Georg were gaping dumbly. “What…how?” Gustav asked after several minutes of stunned silence.
“He wished himself here,” Bill explained tiredly. “And our Tom wished himself away, so now he’s gone and I’m stuck with him.”
“Hey!” Tom protested. He set the bottle they’d brought on one of the amps and shrugged off his enormous jacket. “Hi, guys! Wow, Gustav, you got fat.”
“It’s really him,” Georg said in disbelief. “Dreads and all. Holy fuck.” He turned to Bill. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Bill gestured vaguely. “Merry fucking Christmas, guys.”
“Where exactly did you come from?” Gustav asked. “Do you even know yet what’s going to happen?”
“June 2005,” Tom said. He grinned. “Um. We’re going to be rich and famous?”
“Two months before the single release,” Gustav concluded. He turned to Bill. “Oh dear. He’s totally fucking clueless then, eh?”
“He thinks he knows everything,” Bill told him, voice dripping with scorn.
“I know we’re going to have a single and an album out,” Tom shrugged. “And I’ve seen our house, we’re loaded! What else is there to know?”
Gustav looked at him as if Tom was a particularly stupid sort, which was a look Tom knew all too well. Gustav hadn’t changed all that much. “What are we going to do if our Tom doesn’t come back?” he asked. “I mean, we have a tour coming up and this one knows only one third of our discography.”
Bill threw up his hands. Curled up in the armchair, with his legs folded up under him, he suddenly looked very small to Tom, much less grown up. He was just Bill. Just Bill, and pretty fucking scared at that; Tom could see it in the tight set of his jaw, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners.
He moved a little closer to Bill’s armchair. “Really? We’ve made more albums? Wow.” He looked around the studio curiously, but it was still mostly the same. There was a life-sized poster of the four of them on one wall which had, by the looks of it, been used as a dart board before, but they still had the same battered furniture, the same old practice amps. Georg didn’t look much different except that his hair was longer, and Gustav looked slightly chubby and unimpressed with everything, especially Tom, as usual. “Well, this is cool.”
Georg quirked a small smile. “You must’ve had a field day,” he grinned. “A lot’s happened.”
“Yeah. It’s great.” Tom smiled at Georg. Five years older than he at this point, but Georg still understood him. He was a good friend.
“Have you seen your guitars? Your home studio?” Georg’s excitement seemed to grow with every detail he pictured from young Tom’s point of view. “Your car?”
“I’ve driven it!” Tom said proudly.
Gustav harrumphed. He didn’t seem to approve of this. “You know how quickly accidents happen,” he told Bill.
Bill slapped at the drummer’s tattooed - tattooed! - arm. “You know what he’s like when he wants something.”
“Yeah, almost as bad as you,” Gustav retorted with a small smile. He sat down on the armrest of Bill’s chair and laid a hand on his shoulder. “How are you holding up?”
“Don’t ask,” Bill said thickly. His manicured fingers curled around Gustav’s wrist and held on tight.
“Don’t worry too much,” Gustav said gruffly. “This isn’t natural, it isn’t the right order of things, it’ll sort itself out.”
Bill sighed deeply. “I hope so.”
“Thanks for the warm welcome, Gustav,” Tom said, disgruntled.
Gustav glanced up. “Oh, come on, Tom, you’re a sensible guy,” he gestured vaguely, “somewhere under all those horrible clothes. You know this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I’d bet our Tom is already trying to find a way back.”
Tom chewed his lower lip, feeling a little flustered being addressed like an adult. “Yeah, well, sure. I can’t always stay here, I know that! But I’m here now. Can’t I have a little vacation while we wait for things to, oh, go back to their ‘natural order’?”
Gustav pondered this. He shrugged. “Yeah, well, nothing we can do right now, I suppose.”
“Right,” Georg said. “Come on, let’s do something fun, guys. It’s almost Christmas, it’s tradition to get plastered together.” He clapped his hands excitedly. “Let’s watch our DVDs with him!”
Gustav looked doubtful. “I don’t know, if he’s really from the future, maybe we shouldn’t let him in on too much, in the movies they’ll always tell you not to fuck up the timeline--”
“We’re not in the movies,” Georg said.
“But we have an actual case of timetravel on our hands,” Gustav pointed out. “A little caution? We need our guitarist back in the same condition he left.”
“I am your guitarist,” Tom said, feeling the truth of it slowly sink in as he stood before his older, long-haired, tattooed bandmates. He was going to be a guitarist. A rockstar. A real, actual musician.
Gustav looked like was developing a migraine headache. He patted Bill’s shoulder. “My sympathies, man.”
“So, DVDs?” Georg asked. Tom nodded enthusiastically, and Georg whooped. “Gustav, get the shot glasses! It’s a drinking game, every time Tom talks about getting laid.”
Bill groaned. “It’s not really that funny, Georg.”
“Oh, come on.” Georg wheeled in a TV/DVD set on a wobbly old TV stand that had been at the studio forever. The TV had been exchanged for a better one, though. Georg plugged it in, then handed a couple of discs to Tom. “Pick one.”
Tom looked through them. They were all labeled in Gustav’s handwriting: ‘Summer 2006’ or ‘Werchter’ or ‘Interviews part III’. He fished out one at random and handed it over for Georg to pop in.
Gustav reappeared dutifully with four shot glasses, which he set on the floor in front of the TV. He grabbed the vodka bottle off the amp where Tom had left it and opened it, sniffing appreciatively. “You brought the good stuff.”
“Only the best for our esteemed colleagues.” Bill finally cracked a small smile as the DVD began to play. It had said ‘Tom’s conquests, part infinity’ and the first bit showed them lounging in the recording room of the very studio they were in now, talking about some song called ‘Reden’. Bill’s hair was spiky and all over the place; Tom, Tom thought, looked pretty damn good. He smiled to himself, folding up his long legs to sit on the floor. 2007, the caption at the bottom read.
“Oh god, here it comes,” Bill whined.
“Glasses at the ready, guys,” Georg hollered, handing out the vodka shots.
Bill refused his. “I need to drive. And keep a clear head, this is all too insane already.”
“You could stay, party all night just like we used to?” Georg cajoled. “Come on, Bill!”
Bill scrunched up his nose. “I want to get him back home, that’s where the exchange happened, maybe it’ll happen again tonight.”
“Suit yourself,” Georg shrugged.
“Well I’m having one,” Tom said defiantly. He accepted a glass from Georg.
Bill’s eyes flashed. “You do what you want, but don’t come crying to me when you can’t hold your liquor.”
Tom tossed back the vodka, feeling it burn smoothly down his throat. He coughed only a little. “Good stuff.”
“…hot stuff,” Tom said, in the interview. “So I invited her in, just to talk, and then, well.” He grinned cockily. “The rest is history.”
“Bottoms up,” Georg said and downed his shot in one. “Ahhh. Thank you, Bill, this really is good stuff. Another?” He held the bottle up to Tom.
“Sure.” With the second shot on an almost-empty stomach, Tom was beginning to feel a light buzz, just enough to soften the edges of his vision and make every word sound a little funnier. He grinned as the second interview began to play, detailing much the same boastful story as the first. “So I get laid? A lot? Hee!”
“Not really,” Bill told him, obnoxiously set on bursting Tom’s bubble. “You just pretend so people don’t have to feel so sorry for you.”
“Bullshit,” Tom slurred through a third shot. “I get laid, guys, right?”
Georg laughed.
“Sometimes,” Gustav said diplomatically. “And sometimes, not so much.”
“Hmph.” The fourth shot tasted a bit funky. Tom rubbed his stomach. “Do we have gummi bears or something?”
Gustav tossed him a bag he’d brought from the kitchen. Apparently, in 2009, Gustav could read minds. “Merry Christmas, boy.”
“Yummy yummy yummy!” Greedily, Tom tore open the bag and stuffed a handful of gummi bears into his mouth. The fifth shot was delicious.
“Georg,” he heard Bill say as if from far away, “he’s going to get so sick! He’s just a kid.”
Indignant, Tom tossed back another drink, just because he could, and then, finally, he didn’t hear anything anymore.