Presents, Bill/Tom, G
Season's Greetings to sashimi_salad from your Secret Santa
Title: Presents
Rating: G
Author: sarahsan
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction for the th_fanfic Secret Santa fiction exchange. It never happened and no money is being made from this publication.
Recipient: sashimi_salad
Prompt: Pairings: Bill/Tom gen; Any fluffy bb TH twins always makes me happy. Bonus Christmas Prompt: Bill gets a Christmas gift that makes him cry. You win 10 internets if Tom finds out why and makes Bill smile again.
A/N: Thanks be to lirren for the beta. Merry Christmas, Shirin, I do hope you enjoy! <3
"So what do you think you want to get your brother for Christmas, Tom?" his teacher asked solicitously, peering over his shoulder to see the picture he was drawing in the margins of his journal entry. Tom startled a little in his seat and slyly put one hand over the drawing, shooting the woman a sidelong look. She smiled at him encouragingly.
“Oh, I promise not to tell,” she whispered, leaning down conspiratorially. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Tom pursed his lips. “We don’t get each other presents,” he replied finally, tersely. “And even if we did he’d know what I was going to get him ahead of time, so that kind of ruins the surprise.”
His teacher blinked at him. “He’d know?” she repeated wonderingly.
Tom nodded once, going back to scribbling on his drawing, still shielding it from his teacher’s eyes with one hand. “Bill always knows what I’m thinking. We don’t keep secrets.”
A little dumbfounded, the confused teacher looked across the room to where Bill was helping decorate the little classroom Christmas tree. He kept darting looks over to Tom as if afraid his brother might disappear while he wasn’t watching.
“Oh,” the woman murmured, at a bit of a loss. She’d heard of twins being close, but mind-reading? “Well, I’m sure your mother could help you…maybe if you told her what to buy, and she did it for you, Bill wouldn’t be able to figure it out.”
Tom just shook his head, not looking up. When he replied, he sounded exasperated. “He knows, he doesn’t figure it out. I’m not stupid, I’m smarter than he is. He just always knows. And I always know his secrets, too. So we decided not to keep them. I’m almost done with this picture. When I’m finished can I go help Bill with the tree?”
The woman sighed, straightening. She’d been trying all semester to get Tom to open up. He was so serious all the time, and meticulous when it came to looking after his brother. It bordered on paranoia. She’d been warned by their previous year’s teacher that they were a handful, but she hadn’t been worried. Troublemakers she could handle. But twins…twins she hadn’t known could be worse, in their way. Not that they were bad kids, usually. They were just so different.
“Yes, you may,” she stressed the correct word, more out of habit than out of any real intent. “But clean up your desk, first, please.”
Tom waited until after she had wandered off to go bother someone else before rolling his eyes and sighing quietly. Teachers were so dumb, sometimes.
Quickly he slopped down the rest of his cheery lopsided Christmas tree, brightly festooned in red and black ornaments because that was his dream tree even though his mom said black was “not an appropriate Christmas color,” and tossed his crayons back in their tin. He stuffed the page into his messy journal and then, the drawing, his teacher, and his annoyance forgotten, he jumped up and joined Bill and their few other classmates also decorating, commandeering all the red ornaments to hang himself. Bill smiled at him brightly and tried to hang a green bulb on his ear, and in the ensuing tussle they broke one of the bulbs and ended up in time out.
But at least they were in it together, so it wasn’t a total tragedy.
***
Eventually, as always happens no matter how much it seems like it might just not, school let out for the Christmas holidays. Tom and Bill ran all the way to the bus stop that afternoon and managed to get in a quick snowball fight before the bus turned up.
As soon as they were home they were begging their mom to let them decorate the house, and fifteen minutes after Simone dragged down the boxes out of the attic and set the boys to their task, they were in the kitchen hovering around her as she made cookies and stealing bites of dough. The living room was about half decorated. Simone ended up finishing it herself while Tom and Bill iced the cookies (and each other, and the kitchen table, and a large portion of the refrigerator).
Later that week the twins holed up in their room to wrap the little presents they’d bought Mom and Gordon with their own allowance money (and maybe a little extra from Gordon). It was the first time their mother had let them wrap presents unsupervised, and she still warned them sternly not to kill each other with the scissors and if she came up there later and found a whole roll of sellotape plastered all over the walls of their room they were going to get it. To their credit, only a little more tape than necessary was unrolled from the dispenser, and that mostly because Bill got a little tape-happy when it came to wrapping presents. He liked the smell of it.
Tom was just putting the finishing touches on his mother’s gift (a pretty china plate with her favorite bird on it) when he looked up at Bill, who was humming to himself while winding ribbon around a brightly-colored and over-taped package, and said, “Bill, did you get me anything this year?”
Bill looked up in surprise, then grinned. He liked this game. “Yeah. I got you a new head, the one you’ve got is ugly.”
Tom smirked. “Looks exactly the same as yours, dumbass.”
“Does not, my hair actually looks good.” He patted it. It looked like a deadly weapon, actually, all gelled and spiky, but Tom didn’t say that.
“Good for a hedgehog, maybe,” he shot back instead.
“You should talk, snake-scalp.”
“Douchebag.”
“Fart sniffer.”
“Asshole.”
“Tom!” Bill looked scandalized, but he was having a very hard time not giggling.
“What, we’re eleven. We can say that.”
“If mom hears youuuuu…”
“You gonna tell her?”
“Depends on if you’re nice to me.”
Tom grinned devilishly, then crawled over the wreckage of their present-wrapping, prowling towards Bill. “If you tell her, I’ll tell her you shaved the cat.”
Bill’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would. I will.”
Bill brandished an empty wrapping paper tube and waved it at Tom, trying to keep him at bay. “I know where you sleep.”
“I never sleep. I’m always ready and waiting.”
Bill squealed as Tom lunged for him, scuttling backwards and onto his bed, thwacking Tom about the head and shoulders with the cardboard tube. The hollow thwunk thwunk thwunk made Tom laugh hysterically. Ignoring the blows, he climbed on the bed and sat on Bill.
“Do you surrender?”
“Never!!” THWUNK!
“What if I tickle you?” Which he proceeded to do, sending Bill’s giggles up an octave.
“Get-ahaha!-off me, you-!” THWUNK! THWUNK THWUNK!!
“Give up!”
“N-no!!”
Tom tickled harder. Bill couldn’t breathe, he was laughing so hard.
“Tom…Tom, fuck!!”
Both of them froze suddenly, staring at each other with huge eyes as they realized what had just come out of Bill’s mouth. To make matters worse, suddenly they heard their mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Boys, what are you doing in there? You sound like a herd of rhinoceroses.”
For a split second more Tom and Bill just looked at each other in terror, and then in unison they yelled, “Nothing!”
They could hear their mother’s disbelief through the door, but finally she said, sounding like she was trying not to laugh, “Well, if you could do nothing a bit more quietly, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Sure thing, mom,” Tom called over his shoulder, and then they heard her footsteps receding.
They both sighed in relief at the same time. Tom flopped over in the bed next to Bill.
“God, Bill, if she had heard you…”
Bill didn’t reply for a moment, and then burst into new giggles. “That would’ve been so bad, wouldn’t it?”
“Uh, duh, genius.” Tom wriggled down into the bed. He was convinced Bill’s bed was softer than his, but Bill always just told him he was imagining things whenever he complained about it.
Bill laced his fingers with Tom’s, squeezing his hand a little, and they lay for a minute just listening to each other breathing until Bill broke the silence again. “Tom…you didn’t get me anything, did you?”
Tom could tell by the tone of Bill’s voice that he wasn’t playing around this time. He looked over at his brother, but Bill was just staring up at the ceiling. Tom frowned.
“No. I thought we said-”
“We did!” Bill interjected hurriedly. “But I thought…well…”
“Thought what?”
Bill sighed, plucked at a loose thread on his shirt, inspecting it with undue interest. “It’s just that Mrs. Lorentz asked me the other day, about what I was gonna get you for Christmas.”
Tom’s frown deepened. “She asked me, too,” he said encouragingly. “So what?”
“So she seemed like…like it was weird we weren’t getting anything for each other.” That thread on Bill’s shirt was the most fascinating thing in the universe to him just then.
“What does she know, anyway?” Tom huffed, angry that she had upset his baby brother.
“Is it weird, do you think?” Bill asked, finally looking over at Tom with big eyes. Tom sighed and flopped his head back on the pillow, taking his turn at staring at the ceiling.
“Bill, if I was going to get you a Christmas present, what would it be?”
Bill was silent a moment, then started giggling. “That shirt with the glitter skull on it that I saw at the shop the other day.”
“Exactly. And you’d get me new guitar picks.” He folded the arm not currently stretched out next to Bill’s up under his head, satisfied. Next to him, Bill let out a happy sigh.
“Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right, I’m the oldest.”
“That doesn’t make you right automatically,” Bill sneered, wiggling restlessly. Now that Bill’s momentary thoughtfulness had been expended, he’d want to get up and move again.
“Sure it does. Being the oldest makes me smarter and better looking. Everybody knows that.”
“You’re full of shit,” Bill said, clearly emboldened by his earlier swearing. Still he blushed a little when he muttered, “Fuck you.”
Tom grinned broadly. “You have a potty mouth.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Bill chanted happily, pulled the pillow out from under Tom’s head, and brought it down - whumph! - on Tom’s face.
***
By the time Mom’s big old grandfather clock chimed midnight on Christmas Eve, Bill was almost vibrating with intense anxiety. Tom was a little worried he was going to attack the presents with his teeth before Mom could finally fish one out and shove it into Bill’s quaking hands.
“Good lord, child, open it before you explode,” Simone said sarcastically, winking at Tom. She turned and found a similar-looking box and handed it to him. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”
Bill had already demolished the wrapping paper on his and was gaping wide-eyed at the box in his hands. “Gameboy Advance? Seriously? Oh my god, thank you, Mom!!” He was up and hugging his mom before Simone was ready for it, and she lost her balance and tumbled back into the couch, she and Bill both laughing breathlessly. Gordon and Tom traded a look and rolled their eyes in unison.
Tom more politely unwrapped his own Advance and gave his mom a slightly more sedate hug, and then the boys passed their parents a couple of packages each and they all traded thanks and compliments as they worked through the healthy pile of boxes under the tree.
Finally, when all the presents were unwrapped and Bill was beginning to eyeball his new Gameboy with covetous intent, Simone and Gordon stood up and traded a secretive-looking smile.
“Okay, boys,” Simone began slowly, “you each have one more present. But you have to close your eyes while your father and I go get them, okay?”
Tom and Bill glanced at each other. The excitement in the air between them was tangible. They looked back at their parents and said, “Okay!”
The twins sealed their eyes shut, though taking sideways peeks at each other every now and again as they both thought feverishly of what the big surprise could possibly be.
“Eyes closed!” came Gordon’s authoritative voice from the hallway, and with little squeaks of anticipation the twins complied.
There was some shuffling, footsteps, the sound of something heavy being put down. Then Simone said, “Okay, open your eyes.”
Twin sets of eyes opened and two twin mouths gaped at the case at Gordon’s feet. It was an electric guitar case, and on the corner of it in silver foil lettering was the Gibson logo.
“Merry Christmas, Tom,” Gordon said, nudging the case a bit closer to Tom with his foot and grinning down at his stunned stepson. Tom looked at Bill, who was already staring at him in shock.
Tom reached out and reverently maneuvered the case closer to himself. Gently, so gently, he levered it to the floor, popped the latches, and opened it up.
It was even more beautiful than he had thought it was when he’d seen it in the music store window. Its body gleamed white and silvery, reflecting the golden twinkle of the fairy lights on the tree. The black fretboard practically disappeared in the velvety lining of the case, and the pickups and strings glinted in the low lamplight. Tom’s breath left him in a rush.
He eventually tore his eyes away from the magnificent thing in front of him and looked up at his parents. He didn’t know what to say. Simone looked back at him expectantly but Gordon seemed to understand his predicament and cleared his throat, talking for him.
“I thought it was about time you had one of your own so you don’t have to keep using my old secondhand practice axe,” he said, his lips quirking. “This one should at least be able to hold a key for more than five minutes.”
Tom’s face split in an enormous grin. For about a half-second, he’d been sort of afraid that Gordon might snatch back the Gibson, thrust the aforementioned ancient, battered Les Paul into his hands, and say, “Just kidding, the new one’s for me.” But he hadn’t. The Gibson - that beautiful Gibson - was really going to be Tom’s.
“Thank you,” he finally managed to croak out, looking from Gordon to his mom and back again. “Thanks a lot.”
Simone’s face lit up. “You’re welcome, honey. It was really Gordon’s idea, I just had to approve the purchase.” She was already pulling a cream-colored envelope out of the pocket of her houserobe. “Okay, Bill’s turn!”
She handed the envelope to Bill, who took it excitedly. Only Tom noticed the distinct tilt of Bill’s mouth that betrayed his disappointment at getting a letter when Tom had gotten a guitar.
Bill tore into the paper, sending bits of it everyplace, and finally withdrew a plain, folded piece of paper. He turned it over, frowning at it, then unfolded it and read it silently, his lips moving a little.
Suddenly he went stiff, his eyes widening enormously, and Tom watched him go back up to the top and start reading from the beginning again.
It was a long minute before Bill looked up over the top of the paper at his mom and said, “For real?”
“For real,” Simone replied warmly. “Your father and I looked at the schedule and looked at our budgets and we decided we could do it, after all. I’m sorry I told you no before, sweetheart, I didn’t want you to get your hopes up til we knew for sure.”
Tom didn’t wait for Bill to get over whatever the shock was; he snatched the paper out of Bill’s hands and quickly skimmed the paragraph there. It was actually just a printout of an online confirmation message; the words “thank you for your entry,” “StarSearch,” and “audition time is” jumped out of the jumble of text and made Tom’s jaw drop again.
By the time he looked up, Bill was already in their mother’s lap, clinging to her and crying uncontrollably. Tom jumped up with a whoop and waved the paper around like a crazy person.
“Holy shit, Bill!!” he cried, ignoring his mother’s protest at his language. “Are you gonna do it? What’re you gonna sing? You should sing one of our songs…”
Gordon laughed. “I think he has to sing songs by already-published artists, Tom,” he said cajolingly. “But maybe if he makes it to the final he can sing one of your songs.”
Tom was entirely too excited at the prospect of his little brother on television to care what Bill sang. Just so long as he got to sing. Holy shit.
Bill was gulping at air, trying to quell his hysterics, and rubbing at his eyes and his damp cheeks, smiling all over his face. He blinked wetly at Tom. “You’re gonna-sniff!-come with me, right, Tom?”
“Of course I am, I’m sure not gonna stay here!” Tom grinned and read the paper again, hardly believing the words in front of his face. “Bill…you’re gonna be a star,” he breathed, having completely forgotten, for that moment, about the beautiful guitar at his feet.
Holy shit.
***
It was a long time after that before the twins calmed down nearly enough to go to bed, and even when they got there, they weren’t sleepy. They lay awake talking to each other, making plans, speculating about the competition, until finally they lapsed into exhausted, happy silence, curled next to each other in Bill’s bed breathing each other’s relaxed exhalations.
Tom was almost falling asleep when suddenly he felt the bed jerk a little. Blinking awake again, he was surprised to see the glitter of tears on Bill’s cheeks, scant centimeters away from his own.
“Bill?” he whispered thickly, trying to find his voice in the fuzziness of half-sleep.
Bill sucked in a breath and sniffled again, but did not reply.
“Bill, what’s wrong?” Tom was waking up quickly, now
“N-nothing,” Bill lied unconvincingly.
“C’mon, Bill,” Tom prodded his brother in the side, “no secrets, remember?”
Bill sighed heavily, his breath shaking over Tom’s cheek. “I don’t really know,” he murmured, scrubbing at his tears with one hand. “It’s just…this competition…”
Tom frowned in concern. “You scared?”
Bill nodded.
“You afraid you’re gonna mess up.”
Nod.
“…You afraid you’re gonna win?”
Bill hesitated, then nodded more slowly. “I mean, I want to, of course,” he explained, though he sounded a little confused about that. “But what happens if I do win? Do I have to quit Devilish? I don’t want to quit playing with you guys, I love being in a band. And…I don’t want to sing by myself, y’know? It’s just not the same, without…”
“Without the band,” Tom finished.
“Without you there,” Bill corrected, squirming a little closer to Tom. “I’m not gonna leave you behind.”
“I know,” Tom replied, sure of it. He hadn’t for an instant considered that Bill might leave him. He wondered if he should have. But that was ridiculous. Bill didn’t do anything without Tom. “And I think you will win, Bill. You have to. You’re an awesome singer. And if you win, then maybe Devilish will get more famous, you know? It could be really good for us.”
Bill stilled, sniffing a couple of times. “I guess I never thought of it like that.”
Tom smiled, wiping off a tear Bill had missed. “That’s why you’ve got me, to be smart like that.”
Bill’s teeth were white in the dimness as he beamed, and then he pressed his damp face into the front of Tom’s t-shirt and wound his skinny arms around his brother’s neck.
“I love you, Tom. You’re a great Christmas present.”
Tom hugged Bill back, laughing. “I love you too, even if you are kinda weird.”
“I know.”
They were quiet for a few more minutes, and then, softly, half asleep and muffled in the fabric of Tom’s shirt, Bill said, “Merry Christmas.”
And Tom replied, half asleep and muffled in Bill’s soft clean hair, “Merry Christmas.”
Title: Presents
Rating: G
Author: sarahsan
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction for the th_fanfic Secret Santa fiction exchange. It never happened and no money is being made from this publication.
Recipient: sashimi_salad
Prompt: Pairings: Bill/Tom gen; Any fluffy bb TH twins always makes me happy. Bonus Christmas Prompt: Bill gets a Christmas gift that makes him cry. You win 10 internets if Tom finds out why and makes Bill smile again.
A/N: Thanks be to lirren for the beta. Merry Christmas, Shirin, I do hope you enjoy! <3
"So what do you think you want to get your brother for Christmas, Tom?" his teacher asked solicitously, peering over his shoulder to see the picture he was drawing in the margins of his journal entry. Tom startled a little in his seat and slyly put one hand over the drawing, shooting the woman a sidelong look. She smiled at him encouragingly.
“Oh, I promise not to tell,” she whispered, leaning down conspiratorially. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Tom pursed his lips. “We don’t get each other presents,” he replied finally, tersely. “And even if we did he’d know what I was going to get him ahead of time, so that kind of ruins the surprise.”
His teacher blinked at him. “He’d know?” she repeated wonderingly.
Tom nodded once, going back to scribbling on his drawing, still shielding it from his teacher’s eyes with one hand. “Bill always knows what I’m thinking. We don’t keep secrets.”
A little dumbfounded, the confused teacher looked across the room to where Bill was helping decorate the little classroom Christmas tree. He kept darting looks over to Tom as if afraid his brother might disappear while he wasn’t watching.
“Oh,” the woman murmured, at a bit of a loss. She’d heard of twins being close, but mind-reading? “Well, I’m sure your mother could help you…maybe if you told her what to buy, and she did it for you, Bill wouldn’t be able to figure it out.”
Tom just shook his head, not looking up. When he replied, he sounded exasperated. “He knows, he doesn’t figure it out. I’m not stupid, I’m smarter than he is. He just always knows. And I always know his secrets, too. So we decided not to keep them. I’m almost done with this picture. When I’m finished can I go help Bill with the tree?”
The woman sighed, straightening. She’d been trying all semester to get Tom to open up. He was so serious all the time, and meticulous when it came to looking after his brother. It bordered on paranoia. She’d been warned by their previous year’s teacher that they were a handful, but she hadn’t been worried. Troublemakers she could handle. But twins…twins she hadn’t known could be worse, in their way. Not that they were bad kids, usually. They were just so different.
“Yes, you may,” she stressed the correct word, more out of habit than out of any real intent. “But clean up your desk, first, please.”
Tom waited until after she had wandered off to go bother someone else before rolling his eyes and sighing quietly. Teachers were so dumb, sometimes.
Quickly he slopped down the rest of his cheery lopsided Christmas tree, brightly festooned in red and black ornaments because that was his dream tree even though his mom said black was “not an appropriate Christmas color,” and tossed his crayons back in their tin. He stuffed the page into his messy journal and then, the drawing, his teacher, and his annoyance forgotten, he jumped up and joined Bill and their few other classmates also decorating, commandeering all the red ornaments to hang himself. Bill smiled at him brightly and tried to hang a green bulb on his ear, and in the ensuing tussle they broke one of the bulbs and ended up in time out.
But at least they were in it together, so it wasn’t a total tragedy.
***
Eventually, as always happens no matter how much it seems like it might just not, school let out for the Christmas holidays. Tom and Bill ran all the way to the bus stop that afternoon and managed to get in a quick snowball fight before the bus turned up.
As soon as they were home they were begging their mom to let them decorate the house, and fifteen minutes after Simone dragged down the boxes out of the attic and set the boys to their task, they were in the kitchen hovering around her as she made cookies and stealing bites of dough. The living room was about half decorated. Simone ended up finishing it herself while Tom and Bill iced the cookies (and each other, and the kitchen table, and a large portion of the refrigerator).
Later that week the twins holed up in their room to wrap the little presents they’d bought Mom and Gordon with their own allowance money (and maybe a little extra from Gordon). It was the first time their mother had let them wrap presents unsupervised, and she still warned them sternly not to kill each other with the scissors and if she came up there later and found a whole roll of sellotape plastered all over the walls of their room they were going to get it. To their credit, only a little more tape than necessary was unrolled from the dispenser, and that mostly because Bill got a little tape-happy when it came to wrapping presents. He liked the smell of it.
Tom was just putting the finishing touches on his mother’s gift (a pretty china plate with her favorite bird on it) when he looked up at Bill, who was humming to himself while winding ribbon around a brightly-colored and over-taped package, and said, “Bill, did you get me anything this year?”
Bill looked up in surprise, then grinned. He liked this game. “Yeah. I got you a new head, the one you’ve got is ugly.”
Tom smirked. “Looks exactly the same as yours, dumbass.”
“Does not, my hair actually looks good.” He patted it. It looked like a deadly weapon, actually, all gelled and spiky, but Tom didn’t say that.
“Good for a hedgehog, maybe,” he shot back instead.
“You should talk, snake-scalp.”
“Douchebag.”
“Fart sniffer.”
“Asshole.”
“Tom!” Bill looked scandalized, but he was having a very hard time not giggling.
“What, we’re eleven. We can say that.”
“If mom hears youuuuu…”
“You gonna tell her?”
“Depends on if you’re nice to me.”
Tom grinned devilishly, then crawled over the wreckage of their present-wrapping, prowling towards Bill. “If you tell her, I’ll tell her you shaved the cat.”
Bill’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would. I will.”
Bill brandished an empty wrapping paper tube and waved it at Tom, trying to keep him at bay. “I know where you sleep.”
“I never sleep. I’m always ready and waiting.”
Bill squealed as Tom lunged for him, scuttling backwards and onto his bed, thwacking Tom about the head and shoulders with the cardboard tube. The hollow thwunk thwunk thwunk made Tom laugh hysterically. Ignoring the blows, he climbed on the bed and sat on Bill.
“Do you surrender?”
“Never!!” THWUNK!
“What if I tickle you?” Which he proceeded to do, sending Bill’s giggles up an octave.
“Get-ahaha!-off me, you-!” THWUNK! THWUNK THWUNK!!
“Give up!”
“N-no!!”
Tom tickled harder. Bill couldn’t breathe, he was laughing so hard.
“Tom…Tom, fuck!!”
Both of them froze suddenly, staring at each other with huge eyes as they realized what had just come out of Bill’s mouth. To make matters worse, suddenly they heard their mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Boys, what are you doing in there? You sound like a herd of rhinoceroses.”
For a split second more Tom and Bill just looked at each other in terror, and then in unison they yelled, “Nothing!”
They could hear their mother’s disbelief through the door, but finally she said, sounding like she was trying not to laugh, “Well, if you could do nothing a bit more quietly, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Sure thing, mom,” Tom called over his shoulder, and then they heard her footsteps receding.
They both sighed in relief at the same time. Tom flopped over in the bed next to Bill.
“God, Bill, if she had heard you…”
Bill didn’t reply for a moment, and then burst into new giggles. “That would’ve been so bad, wouldn’t it?”
“Uh, duh, genius.” Tom wriggled down into the bed. He was convinced Bill’s bed was softer than his, but Bill always just told him he was imagining things whenever he complained about it.
Bill laced his fingers with Tom’s, squeezing his hand a little, and they lay for a minute just listening to each other breathing until Bill broke the silence again. “Tom…you didn’t get me anything, did you?”
Tom could tell by the tone of Bill’s voice that he wasn’t playing around this time. He looked over at his brother, but Bill was just staring up at the ceiling. Tom frowned.
“No. I thought we said-”
“We did!” Bill interjected hurriedly. “But I thought…well…”
“Thought what?”
Bill sighed, plucked at a loose thread on his shirt, inspecting it with undue interest. “It’s just that Mrs. Lorentz asked me the other day, about what I was gonna get you for Christmas.”
Tom’s frown deepened. “She asked me, too,” he said encouragingly. “So what?”
“So she seemed like…like it was weird we weren’t getting anything for each other.” That thread on Bill’s shirt was the most fascinating thing in the universe to him just then.
“What does she know, anyway?” Tom huffed, angry that she had upset his baby brother.
“Is it weird, do you think?” Bill asked, finally looking over at Tom with big eyes. Tom sighed and flopped his head back on the pillow, taking his turn at staring at the ceiling.
“Bill, if I was going to get you a Christmas present, what would it be?”
Bill was silent a moment, then started giggling. “That shirt with the glitter skull on it that I saw at the shop the other day.”
“Exactly. And you’d get me new guitar picks.” He folded the arm not currently stretched out next to Bill’s up under his head, satisfied. Next to him, Bill let out a happy sigh.
“Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right, I’m the oldest.”
“That doesn’t make you right automatically,” Bill sneered, wiggling restlessly. Now that Bill’s momentary thoughtfulness had been expended, he’d want to get up and move again.
“Sure it does. Being the oldest makes me smarter and better looking. Everybody knows that.”
“You’re full of shit,” Bill said, clearly emboldened by his earlier swearing. Still he blushed a little when he muttered, “Fuck you.”
Tom grinned broadly. “You have a potty mouth.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Bill chanted happily, pulled the pillow out from under Tom’s head, and brought it down - whumph! - on Tom’s face.
***
By the time Mom’s big old grandfather clock chimed midnight on Christmas Eve, Bill was almost vibrating with intense anxiety. Tom was a little worried he was going to attack the presents with his teeth before Mom could finally fish one out and shove it into Bill’s quaking hands.
“Good lord, child, open it before you explode,” Simone said sarcastically, winking at Tom. She turned and found a similar-looking box and handed it to him. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”
Bill had already demolished the wrapping paper on his and was gaping wide-eyed at the box in his hands. “Gameboy Advance? Seriously? Oh my god, thank you, Mom!!” He was up and hugging his mom before Simone was ready for it, and she lost her balance and tumbled back into the couch, she and Bill both laughing breathlessly. Gordon and Tom traded a look and rolled their eyes in unison.
Tom more politely unwrapped his own Advance and gave his mom a slightly more sedate hug, and then the boys passed their parents a couple of packages each and they all traded thanks and compliments as they worked through the healthy pile of boxes under the tree.
Finally, when all the presents were unwrapped and Bill was beginning to eyeball his new Gameboy with covetous intent, Simone and Gordon stood up and traded a secretive-looking smile.
“Okay, boys,” Simone began slowly, “you each have one more present. But you have to close your eyes while your father and I go get them, okay?”
Tom and Bill glanced at each other. The excitement in the air between them was tangible. They looked back at their parents and said, “Okay!”
The twins sealed their eyes shut, though taking sideways peeks at each other every now and again as they both thought feverishly of what the big surprise could possibly be.
“Eyes closed!” came Gordon’s authoritative voice from the hallway, and with little squeaks of anticipation the twins complied.
There was some shuffling, footsteps, the sound of something heavy being put down. Then Simone said, “Okay, open your eyes.”
Twin sets of eyes opened and two twin mouths gaped at the case at Gordon’s feet. It was an electric guitar case, and on the corner of it in silver foil lettering was the Gibson logo.
“Merry Christmas, Tom,” Gordon said, nudging the case a bit closer to Tom with his foot and grinning down at his stunned stepson. Tom looked at Bill, who was already staring at him in shock.
Tom reached out and reverently maneuvered the case closer to himself. Gently, so gently, he levered it to the floor, popped the latches, and opened it up.
It was even more beautiful than he had thought it was when he’d seen it in the music store window. Its body gleamed white and silvery, reflecting the golden twinkle of the fairy lights on the tree. The black fretboard practically disappeared in the velvety lining of the case, and the pickups and strings glinted in the low lamplight. Tom’s breath left him in a rush.
He eventually tore his eyes away from the magnificent thing in front of him and looked up at his parents. He didn’t know what to say. Simone looked back at him expectantly but Gordon seemed to understand his predicament and cleared his throat, talking for him.
“I thought it was about time you had one of your own so you don’t have to keep using my old secondhand practice axe,” he said, his lips quirking. “This one should at least be able to hold a key for more than five minutes.”
Tom’s face split in an enormous grin. For about a half-second, he’d been sort of afraid that Gordon might snatch back the Gibson, thrust the aforementioned ancient, battered Les Paul into his hands, and say, “Just kidding, the new one’s for me.” But he hadn’t. The Gibson - that beautiful Gibson - was really going to be Tom’s.
“Thank you,” he finally managed to croak out, looking from Gordon to his mom and back again. “Thanks a lot.”
Simone’s face lit up. “You’re welcome, honey. It was really Gordon’s idea, I just had to approve the purchase.” She was already pulling a cream-colored envelope out of the pocket of her houserobe. “Okay, Bill’s turn!”
She handed the envelope to Bill, who took it excitedly. Only Tom noticed the distinct tilt of Bill’s mouth that betrayed his disappointment at getting a letter when Tom had gotten a guitar.
Bill tore into the paper, sending bits of it everyplace, and finally withdrew a plain, folded piece of paper. He turned it over, frowning at it, then unfolded it and read it silently, his lips moving a little.
Suddenly he went stiff, his eyes widening enormously, and Tom watched him go back up to the top and start reading from the beginning again.
It was a long minute before Bill looked up over the top of the paper at his mom and said, “For real?”
“For real,” Simone replied warmly. “Your father and I looked at the schedule and looked at our budgets and we decided we could do it, after all. I’m sorry I told you no before, sweetheart, I didn’t want you to get your hopes up til we knew for sure.”
Tom didn’t wait for Bill to get over whatever the shock was; he snatched the paper out of Bill’s hands and quickly skimmed the paragraph there. It was actually just a printout of an online confirmation message; the words “thank you for your entry,” “StarSearch,” and “audition time is” jumped out of the jumble of text and made Tom’s jaw drop again.
By the time he looked up, Bill was already in their mother’s lap, clinging to her and crying uncontrollably. Tom jumped up with a whoop and waved the paper around like a crazy person.
“Holy shit, Bill!!” he cried, ignoring his mother’s protest at his language. “Are you gonna do it? What’re you gonna sing? You should sing one of our songs…”
Gordon laughed. “I think he has to sing songs by already-published artists, Tom,” he said cajolingly. “But maybe if he makes it to the final he can sing one of your songs.”
Tom was entirely too excited at the prospect of his little brother on television to care what Bill sang. Just so long as he got to sing. Holy shit.
Bill was gulping at air, trying to quell his hysterics, and rubbing at his eyes and his damp cheeks, smiling all over his face. He blinked wetly at Tom. “You’re gonna-sniff!-come with me, right, Tom?”
“Of course I am, I’m sure not gonna stay here!” Tom grinned and read the paper again, hardly believing the words in front of his face. “Bill…you’re gonna be a star,” he breathed, having completely forgotten, for that moment, about the beautiful guitar at his feet.
Holy shit.
***
It was a long time after that before the twins calmed down nearly enough to go to bed, and even when they got there, they weren’t sleepy. They lay awake talking to each other, making plans, speculating about the competition, until finally they lapsed into exhausted, happy silence, curled next to each other in Bill’s bed breathing each other’s relaxed exhalations.
Tom was almost falling asleep when suddenly he felt the bed jerk a little. Blinking awake again, he was surprised to see the glitter of tears on Bill’s cheeks, scant centimeters away from his own.
“Bill?” he whispered thickly, trying to find his voice in the fuzziness of half-sleep.
Bill sucked in a breath and sniffled again, but did not reply.
“Bill, what’s wrong?” Tom was waking up quickly, now
“N-nothing,” Bill lied unconvincingly.
“C’mon, Bill,” Tom prodded his brother in the side, “no secrets, remember?”
Bill sighed heavily, his breath shaking over Tom’s cheek. “I don’t really know,” he murmured, scrubbing at his tears with one hand. “It’s just…this competition…”
Tom frowned in concern. “You scared?”
Bill nodded.
“You afraid you’re gonna mess up.”
Nod.
“…You afraid you’re gonna win?”
Bill hesitated, then nodded more slowly. “I mean, I want to, of course,” he explained, though he sounded a little confused about that. “But what happens if I do win? Do I have to quit Devilish? I don’t want to quit playing with you guys, I love being in a band. And…I don’t want to sing by myself, y’know? It’s just not the same, without…”
“Without the band,” Tom finished.
“Without you there,” Bill corrected, squirming a little closer to Tom. “I’m not gonna leave you behind.”
“I know,” Tom replied, sure of it. He hadn’t for an instant considered that Bill might leave him. He wondered if he should have. But that was ridiculous. Bill didn’t do anything without Tom. “And I think you will win, Bill. You have to. You’re an awesome singer. And if you win, then maybe Devilish will get more famous, you know? It could be really good for us.”
Bill stilled, sniffing a couple of times. “I guess I never thought of it like that.”
Tom smiled, wiping off a tear Bill had missed. “That’s why you’ve got me, to be smart like that.”
Bill’s teeth were white in the dimness as he beamed, and then he pressed his damp face into the front of Tom’s t-shirt and wound his skinny arms around his brother’s neck.
“I love you, Tom. You’re a great Christmas present.”
Tom hugged Bill back, laughing. “I love you too, even if you are kinda weird.”
“I know.”
They were quiet for a few more minutes, and then, softly, half asleep and muffled in the fabric of Tom’s shirt, Bill said, “Merry Christmas.”
And Tom replied, half asleep and muffled in Bill’s soft clean hair, “Merry Christmas.”