FIC: Separate Sides, PG-13, Bill/Tom, 1/1
Title: Separate Sides
Author: ???
Pairing(s): Bill/Tom, mentions of Bill/OFC and Tom/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Twincest, Mental disorder, and brief mention of eating disorder
Summary: Of course he would see Tom, he saw Tom wherever he went. Even looking in a mirror Bill couldn’t help but try to imagine it was Tom. He felt lost without his twin, and despite the fact that they both should have really gotten over this by now, that they should have both grown up and grown away from this obsession over the fact that they were identical twins, two halves of the same whole, Bill had somehow not been able to let it go. And clearly, looking at the scene before him, neither had Tom.
FQF Prompt: Bill goes to a super upscale, super exclusive sex club and finds Tom there, chatting up a blond that looks like Bill from behind. He puts two and two together and heads for Tom, who sees him and bolts. When Bill catches up to him, they realize there's one thing they haven't told each other, after all, and they end up consummating in one of those ritzy upscale rooms. And the morning after...was it just one night, or will it change everything between them? Submitted by fyredancer
Author's notes: As soon as I saw this prompt it was like a film in my head, I hope that comes across a little, although I kind of broke prompt a little bit, just a smidgen, hopefully you barely even notice…
~*~
Bill promised himself that this would be the last time he came here. It was starting to become a pattern; patterns were risky, patterns could be recognised.
And he didn’t want to court with scandal when he didn’t even come here to have sex, well not in the traditional sense anyway. He more saw it as enjoying the luxury of not having to give himself an orgasm. It didn’t matter to him about the cost of services, but… manual stimulation was just much easier and cleaner, as well as being quite enjoyable really all things considered, than the other available alternatives. Penetrative sex just carried far too much risk, he could imagine the field day that would be had if he somehow got one of the women pregnant.
There was always the solution of courting with the males this particular establishment, who were boasted as being the best of the best outside Amsterdam (what Bill feared was a private joke on their part), but Bill was fairly certain that, even though the club ensured client confidentiality, it wasn’t exactly the secure option to take. He had heard of too many horror stories involving the front pages of trash talk tabloids emblazoned with the splashy photos of the rent boys who tell all about celebrity X.
It was true what they said though; prostitutes were not paid to have sex with people, they were paid to leave afterwards. And despite the romantic notions that he wanted to spout, this was truer for him than anyone else. He could get sex easily enough, even if he wasn’t mildly rich and famous he was tall, good looking and had a lean toned body. Casual sex, as cynical as it made him sound, was not an issue.
What was an issue was trying to have sex without engendering some form of attachment. He had the soul deep knowledge that if he got to know someone enough to have sex with them, there would be more of an attachment there than he could know how to deal with, and more demands created by that attachment that he had pieces of himself left to give.
It seemed sometimes like he was the only person he knew who didn’t own his heart.
It was clear to him who had the biggest piece of it as well, after all he had been granted guardianship over the other heart in return. In a way though, it was even worse. How could he profess to want to find love, deep and everlasting, when he knew that nothing in the world could possibly compare to the truly unconditional affection, and desperate dependence that he shared with his twin.
Theirs was not a healthy relationship, he would be lying if he said otherwise, but it was a relationship of equals. Whilst in their early career Bill was the one to dive in head first into unchartered waters and Tom was the one following behind on a life raft, now they were both smart enough and mature enough to look out for each other mutually, and Tom made sure that Bill never felt like he had anything to prove. He could protect Tom just as much as Tom could protect him, no matter what their joint pasts showed.
He wasn’t sure whether Tom would protect him from this particular establishment. He was fairly sure that his twin knew exactly where he had been going these past few weeks, and even if Bill hadn’t mentioned his plans for the day to Tom, he was sure that Bill wouldn’t be able to hid the evidence of this particular escapade. The scent of the strong men’s cologne that the girls wore - to be discreet of course - that seemed to permeate the air was enough of a lingering mark that alarm bells would be ringing.
At least they didn’t smell like candyfloss, he couldn’t imagine coming home smelling like a cheap hooker, it was bad enough that he would be coming home smelling of hookers in the first place.
Bill’s eyes lingered over the sea of faceless bodies, gyrating and dancing as one inseparable mass, salacious deals being made in darkened corners and wondered if he would be able to spot anyone in this crowd.
The height advantage made no odds here, even if he could see over most of the people, the low lighting and the inherent sense of anonymity, both of client and staff, always meant you couldn’t pick out a face amongst that crowd unless you were in it. That’s why Bill always stayed by the edge of the dance floor, he wasn’t here to go clubbing anyway.
He pondered for a moment over the strangeness of this place. It was clearly, though not advertised openly as such, a strange mix between a brothel and a night club. A place where many could solicit with the benefits of safety and regularity, as long as they were willing to pay the exorbitant fees that gave one access to the club and bar and obviously after that booking rooms had its own hefty sum. The club got a big cut of the evening’s pay check, they just happened to take their cut up in ways other than up front.
The club itself didn’t lay any claim to the workers here, almost certainly for legal reasons rather than practical ones, but they knew who they would let through the door and they knew who they would let hire a room at short notice. It was simply an exclusive nightclub, what went on afterwards, no matter how it was… filtered for, was none of their business, despite the certainly a strange set of criteria that got a person on the waiting list for the club, including a clean bill of health and no history of drug addiction.
Bill himself knew what he was looking for, he was looking for someone who was quiet and discreet, he was looking for someone who was flirting with the edge of the dance floor, clearly showing themselves to be in the game, rather than just on it, and who valued being able to see their client. Such things would preclude Bill’s desire for safety, speed and anonymity.
He had spotted someone he thought was likely, hovering between the bar and the dance floor, sitting openly and demurely and sitting with a single drink in hand. Bill had been watching for a while and, whilst she was giving the impression of blending in and drinking for fun, Bill could see that this person had been subtly drinking from this singular cocktail for the better part of half an hour. That was a clear sign of someone who wanted to be sober whilst their potential clients weren’t.
He was working up the courage to go over there and work out a way of subtly asking whether she was indeed a prostitute or not without getting a drink thrown in his face, when he spotted something that stopped him immediately in his tracks.
He had though that he wouldn’t have been able to see anyone through this crowd, but he had been wrong, there was one exception, there had always been one exception, and that was Tom.
Of course he would see Tom, he saw Tom wherever he went. Even looking in a mirror Bill couldn’t help but try to imagine it was Tom. He felt lost without his twin, and despite the fact that they both should have really gotten over this by now, that they should have both grown up and grown away from this obsession over the fact that they were identical twins, two halves of the same whole, Bill had somehow not been able to let it go.
And clearly, looking at the scene before him, neither had Tom.
Bill felt like he had been let in on a secret too late. Everything about this was making his blood boil, and not just with anger. How could Tom have kept this from him? How could he try to pretend to be with Bill, to indulge in the closest fantasy with a duplicate, and not realise or acknowledge that Bill craved exactly the same?
So there Bill was, frozen in place as he watched Tom letting himself be propositioned by someone who, from the back at least, could have been Bill’s clone. Same frame, same blond hair, even, to some extent, the same style of dress. And Bill knew, he felt it to his very core, that Tom’s choice was deliberate.
Just as his eyes had found Tom across the room without even realising that his twin would be here, Tom’s eyes found his immediately. The shock that he saw there, palpable even over such distance was enough to confirm Bill’s first impressions of the situation. As Tom turned and hurried from the club without a word, as fast as could manage without raising suspicion, that confirmation was cemented in Bill’s head.
Between Bill and the exit was the dense crowd of bodies congregated on the floor, he knew, no matter how fast he tried, Tom would be long gone before he got passed it if he tried to take the direct route. He dropped his drink at the bar, not caring much what happened to it and moved around the edge pushing and shoving at hands that were trying to encourage him to join the tangle, he knew that he couldn’t see Tom anymore, but there was a maze of corridors to the exit to ensure client anonymity, and Bill knew if he could just get passed the door he could catch up to Tom. He needed to.
The flashes of his brother were ahead of him now that he had escaped the main hall, and he was running, Bill knew he wouldn’t catch up to Tom on pure speed, he had always been slower than him, not interested in athletic activities if he could avoid them, but Tom wasn’t running yet, and Bill willed his own body to move faster.
It wasn’t long before he could grab his brother’s arm and swing him around, making Tom stop, so as not to hurt Bill more than anything else probably, and he looked as defeated by it as Bill felt.
When Bill caught up to Tom he punched his twin square in the jaw. He was no longer the frail princess of the band that he used to be, and he knew that there was some weight behind his fists now. Bill could hear the crack as the connection was made, probably not a break, but a definite click of bone against bone, perhaps a minute dislocation, or a clash of teeth. He couldn’t bring himself to regret his actions though; he had probably done more damage to his own knuckles that to Tom’s face.
Tom didn’t question why Bill hit him; even if the rest, the unspoken rest, had remained hidden, running way from his twin was a punishable enough offence on its own.
It all seems kind of obvious now that Bill thinks about it, in retrospect it had always been obvious, it was just that now those clear, and mutual, signs were being acknowledged -though silently- by each other.
Tom’s response to Bill’s attack was to kiss him, and Bill saw it coming from a mile off. Instead of pushing him away, as society would dictate, or punching him again, as a certain part of his mind was entertaining, he held Tom tightly and breathed him in. No matter the reputation of this particular establishment, he knew that two twins together might put out a different image to the one that they were trying to cultivate and so leaving for a more private arena was becoming the next pressing item on Bill’s to-do list.
Tom, of course thinking the same, let go of Bill’s face and ran a firm hand down his back before taking his hand in his and walking calmly away from that place. They didn’t need to rush or run, despite the heat rolling between them and the feeling like a dragon just hatched in his stomach, there was no question about where they were going and what they were doing. That feeling would remain the whole time it took to get them back home, nerves wouldn’t factor in here, not now, they had come too far to stop.
Inside their own home they stumbled in through the door together, pressed as tightly together as they could manage, gasping into each other all the while. Tom’s palms bled heat into his skin, into his scalp where he had his fingers shoved through Bill’s hair.
He wanted everything of Tom, he was drunk from it, the smells, the lingering feel of skin under fingertips, the taste, it was all so much that Bill couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes for fear that the additional sense would cause his already saturated mind to overload.
There was little recollection of how he got from their front door to Tom’s bedroom, but once tipped back onto the bed, clothes conspicuously missing and his twin’s feverish weight pressing down on him, it was just a simple case of asking Tom, in filthy tones, to fuck him into the mattress and they were undone.
~*~
Bill didn’t stick around in the morning.
Despite the knowledge that he had consumed alcohol the previous evening, he had no illusions as to what might or might not have happened; his consumption had been limited and his mind was clear. There was no intoxication based amnesia, no ‘maybe I dreamed it’, it was real. The evidence was imprinted on every sense and sharp in his memory. It made him feel sick to his stomach. It had been messed up, totally and undeniably so and he was acutely aware of it, as well as the disgust in himself that he felt in that moment If he couldn’t reconcile the feelings with the experience then and there, then there was going to be a tough time ahead for the both of them.
He had never regretted something so greatly.
Bill paused at the door, turning to watch Tom for a moment, trying to reclaim the feeling that overwhelmed him the previous evening, but it was being tinted by too much guilt. The light streamed over the bronzed shoulder blades and back as he sprawled out on the bed sheets, but despite still feeling that bone deep love, and that desire to never let go, Bill was not feeling as he did before and he wasn’t sure why.
He loved Tom in every way possible, he always had, and he had no doubt that he always would. He didn’t think there was anything that Tom could do to make Bill stop loving him, but it seemed that there were things that they could do which made Bill unable to be around his brother, no matter what his feelings.
Making his way down to the kitchen gave him some respite, the relative silence of the house was a change from his usual morning where he woke after Tom. Normally, he could hear his twin clattering pots in the sink and setting up the coffee machine, but today there was no such sound. Today Bill would be making his own breakfast, and it was a necessary distraction from his own mind.
How could he have done that? What could he have been thinking to let his own brother follow him from the private fantasy to the devastating reality? Trying to rationalise it in his head wasn’t helping. “It was just sex.” He whispered into the quiet of the kitchen as though speaking those words out loud would erase the terrible churning he felt within himself. So very similar to the desire he felt for Tom, but encapsulated in the polar opposite sentiments.
The toast is just ready when he hears his twin wake up, he’s hyper aware of the sound despite the desperate wish to not be. It was like being a scared child trying not to listen to the thunder; the more he willed himself not to listen, the more he heard.
He instinctively turned towards the door when Tom entered the room, a habit that even this nightmare couldn’t break immediately, but as soon as their eyes met it was clear that Tom couldn’t hold his gaze.
Bill takes a strange sort of comfort in that, despite everything that they’ve done, and all the wrong that goes with it, they’re identical in this way, identical in their crisis of self that comes with having done something so consummately wrong, even for them. Bill never had held much store for the rules, if he had he probably would have felt guilt and sickness before climbing into bed with his own brother, but that didn’t meant that he was without a moral compass, and this one was pointing directly at, unforgivable.
Tom sat at the table and put his head in his hands, Bill found himself looking at his brother like some sort of train wreck, unable to glance away despite the gore. He knew what was going through Tom’s mind, it was the same that was going through his. There was abject disgust and horror at himself, there was the fear and guilt of having ruined everything that they had ever held dear between them.
There was only one thing that Bill could think to do for now, and that was to try to pretend that everything was normal. Not being able to look at his brother, and feeling like he was one step away from being catatonic and his brother looking as though he was about to cry or scream in turn was not normal, but sitting down at the breakfast table with a pot of yogurt, a slice of toast and strong coffee in hand was as close to normal as he felt he could get right now.
He was eating his yogurt in silence, he was not used to this noiselessness, but it was okay, he could just pretend that this was normal.
Then the metallic tang of the spoon hit against his tongue ring and all the sensations from the previous day, clashes of Tom’s and Bill’s piercings, came flooding back. The hot spike of lust in the memory mixed with the guilt from the harsh light of morning and it was all he could do to run to the bathroom rather than throwing up then and there in the kitchen sink.
What had he done?
~*~
Bill stood in the shower for hours after that. He didn’t try to scrub himself or use soap or wash his hair. He just stood under the water and froze. Maybe unconsciously he was trying to wash away the guilt from this morning, but he knew that in reality it wasn’t the case. He wasn’t thinking enough for that to be true. He wasn’t thinking anything. After washing his mouth out he was aware that he should probably take a shower and then… That was it. That was where he found himself when he came to, though it wasn’t anything like passing out.
Maybe it would be best to avoid metal cutlery for now.
Maybe it would be best to avoid Tom for now.
The thought of it made him physically ache from the loss of his twin, who always was the most important person to him. If he avoided talking to Tom in the home then maybe he could feel as though he wasn’t missing his twin as he had done those few times they had been separated as children, but he could still give his mind some time to recover.
And as he brought his hand up to turn off the shower, his skin shrivelled from being water logged, he realised giving his mind time to recover would have to be priority. What if the next time he fell into himself like this he was driving? Or stuck out in the middle of nowhere, or somewhere dangerous? It would be much worse than having a shower for a bit too long.
His legs were somewhat exhausted from being held in the same position for so long and his eyes were taking a while to focus on anything properly from staring into the middle distance. He hoped that Tom hadn’t tried to come in here, he wasn’t even sure if he locked the door in his confusion. Not that he normally locked the door anyway, but he thought that maybe he needed to start making an exception.
He was going to lock Tom out, whether Bill liked it or not, because he had spent five silent minutes in his brother’s company and gone into a full blow mental breakdown.
It was easy to avoid Tom that day. He seemed to be just as lost as Bill was. Bill had found him in the living room, playing the same chord sequence on the guitar again and again. He recognised the song, how could he not; they wrote it together, but he refused to acknowledge it or let it run through his head. It would be too much now to think about what those lyrics could mean in their new situation, with their new(older than Bill liked to admit) feelings and revelations placed on top of them.
The next day and the day after that Bill wouldn’t enter a room if Tom was there, and fortunately Tom seemed to be doing the same thing, but it wasn’t the comfort it perhaps could have been. As the days drew by he felt that Tom was starting to want to talk about it, rationalise it. Despite Bill’s chatterbox ways, Tom was always the one to speak through his problems and try to get closure.
But Bill didn’t want closure, closure meant that they would explain away what had happened, accept it and then discard it. Bill didn’t want to discard it, surely if they pretended it never happened, then those uncontrollable feelings of lust mixed with their twin bond would just cause another overspill and they would repeat the same mistakes again. Or the other option would be to embrace it in full, but considering what one night of weakness was doing to Bill’s psyche, his relationship with his brother and his physical health, he wasn’t sure he’d survive making sexuality part of their normal every day lives.
Bill either wanted this under his terms, with his sanity intact, or not at all.
So he avoided Tom more and more, trying to minimise the blackouts, they had only happened a handful of times since that morning, but they were still terrifying to him. He didn’t even realise they were going to happen until he was waking up out of them, and he knew that this was what losing his mind felt like.
He would listen outside doors so he couldn’t even accidentally walk into the same room as his brother. It wasn’t helpful to do this to himself, he knew that, anybody could tell him the same, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a viable option for now.
He just hoped his mind would fix itself soon.
~*~
Before long the night is no longer a break from the tension of the day.
He dreams about Tom, it’s innocent at first; their first days at school. Grinning children, fully ready to be class clowns and creative creatures play in his head, but then somehow the innocence of their youth melts away and the Tom of now replaces the scene. Bill feels the shift in the dream, and though asleep, even his unconscious mind seems to be highlighting the stark difference between what was right - the cherished, carefree relationship between siblings - and the wrong that happened afterwards.
He can feel Tom’s hands again, clever fingers playing on every nerve ending, setting Bill on fire from the outside in, then the feel of Tom losing control in turn, loosing moans that had spurred Bill on, rising and falling in harsh rhythms they had started to drown in. Orgasms hitting them like a tsunami before they both fell.
It was the collapsing onto Tom that had jerked Bill awake, like any dream about falling, but much, much worse. He had tried so hard to keep the details of that night from his mind, and now his mind was reliving them without his permission. And fuck a duck, he had cum coating the inside of his boxers like a fucking teenager.
He thankfully doesn’t feel the urge to throw up again, though it seems a close run thing. It’s good though, because Bill doesn’t exactly have much to throw up right now; he’s too scared of Tom coming into the kitchen to spend much time there eating, and despite the claustrophobia he’s starting to feel, he doesn’t want to leave the house for fear that people would be able to look at him and just know. Know everything that happened and judge him for it.
Not that there was anyone judging him more than himself right now.
Bill is unable to sleep after that, he strips himself and his bed clean and sits naked on the bare mattress. He spends the rest of the night there staring at the wall, eyes unseeing, avoiding thinking about anything that had to do with Tom, even the good memories.
He doesn’t sleep after that, or at least tries to avoid sleeping, he doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to last, but he knows that his mind can’t put up with the dreams again. He decides that he’ll just have to stay awake until his body is too tired to dream.
~*~
It’s been a week, and Bill is trying to survive on snatches of sleep here and there. As long as he doesn’t have to dream it’s okay, but whenever he feels the urge to sleep he sets his alarm for no more than half an hour later, just in case.
He justifies his strange behaviour to himself by saying that he is sleeping, and that he’s had plenty of sleepless nights before this, and that this is much better than obsessing over things that had already happened.
But the rational part of his mind, the part that was growing quieter as sleep eluded him, insisted that this was obsessing, just because he wasn’t actively thinking of Tom, didn’t meant that he wasn’t acting in response to his thoughts to Tom, and obsessively at that.
Tom seemed to have given up on trying to talk to Bill for now, though he had been making him healthy and hearty breakfasts and leaving them about with notes attached. “Eat Me.” was all the notes would say, like some bizarre version of Alice in Wonderland - a thought that almost makes Bill laugh considering how bizarre Alice in Wonderland is in the first place - and on the notes there’s no name, though they’re clearly written in Tom’s handwriting.
He’s grateful for the effort that Tom is putting into not forcing the two of them to view what happened yet; through not signing the notes Tom has made sure that Bill’s willing to eat the offerings through not forcing the memory of his presence onto Bill. And in turn Bill decides that he can acknowledge his brother’s existence this much, and eats what’s given.
He hopes that the empty plates and washed pots and pans are enough of a reply that Tom understands how grateful he truly is, even if he can’t say it out loud.
He’s seeing Gustav today, which seems like a stupid thing to do if he can’t even handle the thought of a stranger possibly knowing what happened, someone who he actually knew meeting him was far worse. Seeing Gustav was sometimes like going to confession though, scary, but cathartic. There was a chance that he might tell his friend what had happened with Tom, but he suspected that Gustav would realise that something was up when Bill turned up alone, after all the invitation for coffee had actually been for the both of them.
Feeling much better on a full stomach and ready to see his friend in a neutral setting outside of the house, Bill picked up his things, said a silent goodbye to his twin for a couple of hours and walked to the local café. Ideally he would have wanted to drive, but he knew that in his state it wasn’t a good idea, not yet anyway.
Ordering a coffee as strong as he could make in an attempt to stave off fatigue, he took a quiet seat near the back of the café that he had privately taken to calling his own. When Gustav came through the door he spotted his friend immediately, stopping to order his own coffee before joining Bill. He was looking well-rested and happy with life, causing a sharp stab of envy to hit him, but it passed quickly.
“Bill, are you on something?” were the first words to pass Gustav’s lips. It was definitely telling when your friend, who knew your full history and limits, suggested that you were having real problems rather than saying hello.
“No,” Bill said honestly, and Gustav seemed to believe him, at least enough to drop the idea.
“Sorry,” Gustav apologised, “It’s just you look really rough and, I don’t know, sunken maybe. Are you ill?”
“No,” Bill said, “not really anyway, I’ve not been sleeping very much and it’s really dragging me down.” He wouldn’t mention that the lack of sleep was self-afflicted.
Staring for a moment at Bill’s face and then back to his coffee, Gustav opened and closed his mouth several times as wanting to speak, but not finding the words.
“Look,” he managed to start eventually, “I know we joked about it before, and maybe we shouldn’t have, it was really insensitive of us, but you look anorexic, your cheeks are hollowing out like you’ve not eaten properly for days, weeks even.” He replied, and the sheer honesty behind those words shocked Bill.
He knew that he’d been looking a bit rough of late, but he supposed that he hadn’t been able to look in the mirror properly in a while, so the change hadn’t become obvious, but Gustav’s concern was highlighting everything thing for him now.
“I wasn’t eating properly for a bit, but I am now.” He tried to reassure his friend, “It was nothing to do with trying to lose weight or gain control though, I promise. I just had so much on that I never had time to eat, but I’m getting into a more stable routine again now, I’ll be fine. You can order the fattest thing on the menu for me and I swear I’ll eat it all. I’ve not had a problem with food, just work.” ‘And fucking my own brother.’ He tacked on in his head, though the words weren’t to be spoken out loud.
“You’ve got to look out for yourself more. I know Tom will always be there to feed you up, but there’s…” but Gustav trailed off in the wake of Bill’s obvious flinch.
Bill was such an idiot for it, just the mention of his brother’s name caused the involuntary reaction that would be a clear signal to anyone with brain cells that something was up. It would have never gone unnoticed by someone who had known him more than half his life.
“What’s wrong with Tom?” Gustav replied immediately, worry laced through his words “is that why you’ve been busy? Is he the one who’s ill? Fuck, he’s got cancer hasn’t he, that’s why he’s not here with you. You needed to tell me on your own. God.” Gustav was starting to head into hyperventilation territory, but Bill placed a hand on his arm, halting his stream of words.
“No, we’re fine. Something happened between us and we’re still trying to sort it. That’s all I swear.”
“You need to sort it with him quickly then,” Gustav said without preamble, “because it’s really damaging you.”
“I know.” Bill said, tears suddenly pushing out from the corner of his eyes.
He let himself be bear-hugged by Gustav, it was the tiredness that was making him show these emotions more readily, but he knew that there was only one cure for how tired he was and that was sleep. Sooner or later his body would make him do it, and then he would go back to normal, more or less, but he found that he couldn’t let his mind do that yet, the fear of those dreams was too strong.
Eventually his body would make him sleep properly and Bill was terrified.
~*~
Bill arrives home and doesn’t talk to Tom.
He knows he probably should, but he’s also aware that it’s only him who can decide that he’s ready to talk to Tom and right now, despite the desire to be okay, and the knowledge that he’s being completely messed up because of his lack of communication with his brother, he knows that he’s still not ready.
But he’s ready to start getting ready. He’s ready to start building himself up again so that he’s no longer stuck in this rut of not talking. He’s ready to prepare himself for starting to fix these problems.
It seems like the most minuscule of baby steps that he could take whilst still moving forward, but he’s glad he’s taken it, and he’s going to try and sleep tonight so that his mind is ready for spending time in Tom’s presence, even if he can’t say a word.
~*~
That night is hard, for Bill. The decision to sleep properly is not quite as easy as it at first seemed, and his body is now, despite finally being given permission, stubbornly refusing to shut down. It’s as though the fear of sleep he still feels coursing through him is making his mind wake up. The last vestiges of this terrified fortnight are still clinging onto his brain and keeping it on high alert.
The other part of him, the part that remembers other times he’s been scared of sleep, longs to curl up in bed with Tom again, like they used to do as kids, like they used to do in cramped tour busses and interchangeable hotel rooms, like they did on stormy night and lazy summer evenings. But now every time Bill thinks of sharing a bed with Tom, it’s sullied by the memory of that last night together, and Bill’s subsequent reaction to it, which in turn doesn’t help Bill’s need to try and sleep.
He flung himself out of bed - his room felt too rigid, too adult for him right now - and went to the airing cupboard, pulling out as much bedding and as many pillows as he could carry and then waddled with them to his room. The concept of time was lost on him as he started the arduous, and yet somehow ridiculous task, of turning his bed into a pillow and blanket fort. As though he were five.
But that was good. Five had been a good age. A good time to be alive. No school to worry about, no cares in the world. Nothing had existed but the here and now and fun and joy. If this helped him recapture that, even just a little bit, then he didn’t care how ridiculous he must have looked to the casual outsider. It wasn’t as though anyone would be watching him.
He curled up inside, his body far too long now to make himself a tiny inhabitant in the centre of this cotton and down castle, but it was close enough, and with everything that had gone before hiding itself from sight for a while, he fell asleep.
~*~
It took Bill a while to leave his bedroom in the morning, he was psyching himself up for the task at hand, the first step towards some semblance of normality, after all that was what was needed; small, planned controlled steps.
He was going to sit in the same room as his brother, and he was going to try and stay there. Bill wasn’t sure that Tom would want to be in the same room as him, he had assumed that Tom was doing better than he was, but that was only a guess on his part, and he knew it could well be the case that Tom was just as messed up as Bill was, if not more.
When Bill heard the sounds of cooking in the kitchen, he forced himself to enter the room, rather than flee from it. Tom stuttered by the stove. Not turning to face his brother, but the stiffness in his shoulders and the tightness across his back indicated his awareness of Bill’s presence.
Bill sat down at the kitchen table. It was clear that Tom had been plating up two lots of eggs on toast before Bill had walked in, probably intended to be left with another note, but instead he grabbed two sets of cutlery before sitting the plate in front of Bill along with a mug of fresh strong coffee.
There was no eye contact still, Bill had looked over at his twin, but Tom’s eyes were focused firmly on the plate in front of him. Fear was welling up inside his chest, but he knew that this was the moment he needed to break the radio silence, it had been almost a month of this madness, almost two weeks since he had lost the ability to let himself sleep, and he was still trying to wrap his lips around simple words.
“Thank you,” Bill said, softly. It was hoarse, as though his voice was protesting the lack of exercise it had had recently.
Tom looked at his brother, and Bill forced himself to meet his eyes. ‘Small steps’ he reminded himself ‘You can always look away if it hurts.’.
The smile in acknowledgement was the best thing that he could have expected from Tom, they sat there in silence, not unwilling to break this rare peace that had been missing for so long.
“Do you regret it?” Tom asked over the rim of his coffee cup, suddenly, his voice is quiet but not a word is unclear.
Bill considered this, Tom deserved that much. Did he regret it? What had he gotten out of it and what had he lost in return?
He nodded gently affirming the feelings that had flooded him on the morning after, he knew himself too well to deny it, “But I don’t know if I always will.” He added, trying out the compromise, for himself, if not for Tom.
~*~
They didn’t say much more after that, but that was okay. The few scant words that had been shared between them were enough to sooth Bill and start to dispel the fears that had been consuming him for far too long.
It was a long day of doing nothing. Bill hadn’t been able to spend the whole day in Tom’s presence, but the casual meeting in the hallway and the silent comfort of sitting together for meals was more than enough the make Bill happy for now. Considering he was working in baby steps, he felt that he was making massive progress.
The childish fort he had made in a fit of sleeplessness last night still stood in his room, but he was finding some comfort in it with a good night’s rest behind him as well. He didn’t think it was just the deranged wishes of a sleep deprived mind, there was something more to this that was good for him.
He would sleep in it and let it guard him.
Hot hands and clever fingers filled his dreams again that night, but this time when he awoke, it was okay. It wasn’t good, but it was okay. He still knew it was wrong, but he knew that he could get over it. It wouldn’t break him like it did the first time.
He put his head to the pillow and let a dreamless sleep take him once more.
~*~
The first time Bill was able to laugh at Tom again was another month after they had started to speak. Their conversations weren’t always as meaningful as they had been, or as instant and easy, but they were comfortable and familiar. They held the truth of their relationship in them without making Bill feel like he was drowning under it all, and though it wasn’t ideal, he thought it was getting there.
It was the dogs really that had started it, and if Bill didn’t have a reason to adore them already, he definitely had one now.
This morning was Tom’s turn to take the dogs for a walk, and he was being a bit pathetic about the cold. He had wrapped himself up in so many layers that he was verging on a marshmallow man type look, something that Bill was fairly sure he wasn’t going for, but had achieved anyway.
He was adding a final scarf around his neck, one that was hugely long and probably more for fashion than function, but he was trying to get what warmth he could out of it anyway, when one of the puppies bit the end of the scarf as if it was a particular interesting game of fetch that Tom had started. The littlest, clearly not wanting to be left out, started going for the other half, and it took some interesting ballet, a hand on the dog’s collars and not a little crude language for Tom to avoid being turned into an immobilised human maypole.
Bill giggled slightly, then his chuckles turn into all out guffaws as Tom managed to pick the smaller puppy by the scarf. Whatever Tom was thinking, the dogs were certainly enjoying it at least. At the sound of Bill’s laughter Tom stopped and turned. For a second he looked bemused, as though he had forgotten that Bill could laugh, but before long hisown smile broke out and mutated into gleeful laughter,
This was normal, and it made Bill happier than anything had for far too long.
~*~
It was almost three months after the original incident before they talked about it.
Tom was the one who broached the subject, but Bill knew that the conversation was going to happen, Tom had been twitchy all day and kept looking at Bill as though trying to assess his potential reactions. Despite the problems he had faced in the past few months, he didn’t feel scared anymore. He was ready to talk about it.
“Can I ask,” Tom started curled in on himself on the sofa, but closer to Bill than he had been in a while, “can I ask if it was my fault? Did I make you do something you didn’t want to do?”
“No,” Bill replied immediately shaking his head, “I wanted it as much as you did, I just…” he took a gulping breath, trying to let himself describe those feelings without experiencing them again. “I felt like I was trapped under ice. I was drowning with no way out and I just panicked, I thought I might, well, I don’t know what really. I thought I might do something bad afterwards. I’ve just never felt like that before, so completely lost.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t help you.” Tom whispered, “I just started to lose it too, and I didn’t know how to help you if I couldn’t go near you, and I didn’t think you wanted to be near me.” Tom confessed, “I was terrified that we’d ruined everything. Even though another part of me was saying the whole thing was inevitable.”
“Yeah,” Bill said noncommittally, though he agreed really, “I’d always kind of felt that way, and felt a little disgusted at myself for it, but then there’s a difference between thought and action isn’t there?”
There was a strange huffed half laugh of agreement from Tom; there was definitely a big, big difference.
“It felt so perfect at the time.” Tom said, “being with you. I’ve always loved you so much, and to think that you could have felt even a little of what I felt around you was electric, but then I woke up and you weren’t there and everything was crap, for a really long time.”
“I love you, too, you know.” Bill said softly, and the rest that went with it of course, but he didn’t think that needed saying.
“I know,” Tom said, giving him a half smirk and a glance out of the corner of his eye, “Well, I guess I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed a while back, and it was pretty convincing confirmation.”
“Do you think we could do that again?” Bill asked, not even knowing whether he wanted what he was asking for, “Be like that again, like lovers, only without the nightmare that came afterwards.”
Tom shrugged, but seemed to err on the side of confidence, “I don’t know, part of me wants that, but part of me doesn’t know whether I could handle it. Sometimes I already feel like I’m about to be ripped apart by us, and that was before everything else.”
“Maybe it’ll be better,” Bill said, “maybe we’ll be more prepared if we know what we’re letting ourselves in for and we accept that at any time, either one of us could say ‘enough’, and then we can try to go back to normal.”
“But slow yeah? Time to get used to change, and let go of the preconceived notions that go with… incest.” He picked out the last word delicately, but Bill was glad it had been voiced out loud. It needed airing as an idea, it needed to be felt, and contemplated, and then discarded as something that the two of them transcended, otherwise they would get stuck on it. Stuck on a stupid word, like they had done before.
“As long as we try.”
Tom received Bill’s kiss, nothing more than a gentle press of lips with warmth and peace. He wasn’t fixed yet, or happy yet, but he wasn’t unhappy about it. There was still so much that was wrong, and more to talk through than Bill knew how to express, but if they were working together they would work through this.
Though everything had changed, now at least they were changing together. Together they could move forward.
And that was okay.
Author: ???
Pairing(s): Bill/Tom, mentions of Bill/OFC and Tom/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Twincest, Mental disorder, and brief mention of eating disorder
Summary: Of course he would see Tom, he saw Tom wherever he went. Even looking in a mirror Bill couldn’t help but try to imagine it was Tom. He felt lost without his twin, and despite the fact that they both should have really gotten over this by now, that they should have both grown up and grown away from this obsession over the fact that they were identical twins, two halves of the same whole, Bill had somehow not been able to let it go. And clearly, looking at the scene before him, neither had Tom.
FQF Prompt: Bill goes to a super upscale, super exclusive sex club and finds Tom there, chatting up a blond that looks like Bill from behind. He puts two and two together and heads for Tom, who sees him and bolts. When Bill catches up to him, they realize there's one thing they haven't told each other, after all, and they end up consummating in one of those ritzy upscale rooms. And the morning after...was it just one night, or will it change everything between them? Submitted by fyredancer
Author's notes: As soon as I saw this prompt it was like a film in my head, I hope that comes across a little, although I kind of broke prompt a little bit, just a smidgen, hopefully you barely even notice…
~*~
Bill promised himself that this would be the last time he came here. It was starting to become a pattern; patterns were risky, patterns could be recognised.
And he didn’t want to court with scandal when he didn’t even come here to have sex, well not in the traditional sense anyway. He more saw it as enjoying the luxury of not having to give himself an orgasm. It didn’t matter to him about the cost of services, but… manual stimulation was just much easier and cleaner, as well as being quite enjoyable really all things considered, than the other available alternatives. Penetrative sex just carried far too much risk, he could imagine the field day that would be had if he somehow got one of the women pregnant.
There was always the solution of courting with the males this particular establishment, who were boasted as being the best of the best outside Amsterdam (what Bill feared was a private joke on their part), but Bill was fairly certain that, even though the club ensured client confidentiality, it wasn’t exactly the secure option to take. He had heard of too many horror stories involving the front pages of trash talk tabloids emblazoned with the splashy photos of the rent boys who tell all about celebrity X.
It was true what they said though; prostitutes were not paid to have sex with people, they were paid to leave afterwards. And despite the romantic notions that he wanted to spout, this was truer for him than anyone else. He could get sex easily enough, even if he wasn’t mildly rich and famous he was tall, good looking and had a lean toned body. Casual sex, as cynical as it made him sound, was not an issue.
What was an issue was trying to have sex without engendering some form of attachment. He had the soul deep knowledge that if he got to know someone enough to have sex with them, there would be more of an attachment there than he could know how to deal with, and more demands created by that attachment that he had pieces of himself left to give.
It seemed sometimes like he was the only person he knew who didn’t own his heart.
It was clear to him who had the biggest piece of it as well, after all he had been granted guardianship over the other heart in return. In a way though, it was even worse. How could he profess to want to find love, deep and everlasting, when he knew that nothing in the world could possibly compare to the truly unconditional affection, and desperate dependence that he shared with his twin.
Theirs was not a healthy relationship, he would be lying if he said otherwise, but it was a relationship of equals. Whilst in their early career Bill was the one to dive in head first into unchartered waters and Tom was the one following behind on a life raft, now they were both smart enough and mature enough to look out for each other mutually, and Tom made sure that Bill never felt like he had anything to prove. He could protect Tom just as much as Tom could protect him, no matter what their joint pasts showed.
He wasn’t sure whether Tom would protect him from this particular establishment. He was fairly sure that his twin knew exactly where he had been going these past few weeks, and even if Bill hadn’t mentioned his plans for the day to Tom, he was sure that Bill wouldn’t be able to hid the evidence of this particular escapade. The scent of the strong men’s cologne that the girls wore - to be discreet of course - that seemed to permeate the air was enough of a lingering mark that alarm bells would be ringing.
At least they didn’t smell like candyfloss, he couldn’t imagine coming home smelling like a cheap hooker, it was bad enough that he would be coming home smelling of hookers in the first place.
Bill’s eyes lingered over the sea of faceless bodies, gyrating and dancing as one inseparable mass, salacious deals being made in darkened corners and wondered if he would be able to spot anyone in this crowd.
The height advantage made no odds here, even if he could see over most of the people, the low lighting and the inherent sense of anonymity, both of client and staff, always meant you couldn’t pick out a face amongst that crowd unless you were in it. That’s why Bill always stayed by the edge of the dance floor, he wasn’t here to go clubbing anyway.
He pondered for a moment over the strangeness of this place. It was clearly, though not advertised openly as such, a strange mix between a brothel and a night club. A place where many could solicit with the benefits of safety and regularity, as long as they were willing to pay the exorbitant fees that gave one access to the club and bar and obviously after that booking rooms had its own hefty sum. The club got a big cut of the evening’s pay check, they just happened to take their cut up in ways other than up front.
The club itself didn’t lay any claim to the workers here, almost certainly for legal reasons rather than practical ones, but they knew who they would let through the door and they knew who they would let hire a room at short notice. It was simply an exclusive nightclub, what went on afterwards, no matter how it was… filtered for, was none of their business, despite the certainly a strange set of criteria that got a person on the waiting list for the club, including a clean bill of health and no history of drug addiction.
Bill himself knew what he was looking for, he was looking for someone who was quiet and discreet, he was looking for someone who was flirting with the edge of the dance floor, clearly showing themselves to be in the game, rather than just on it, and who valued being able to see their client. Such things would preclude Bill’s desire for safety, speed and anonymity.
He had spotted someone he thought was likely, hovering between the bar and the dance floor, sitting openly and demurely and sitting with a single drink in hand. Bill had been watching for a while and, whilst she was giving the impression of blending in and drinking for fun, Bill could see that this person had been subtly drinking from this singular cocktail for the better part of half an hour. That was a clear sign of someone who wanted to be sober whilst their potential clients weren’t.
He was working up the courage to go over there and work out a way of subtly asking whether she was indeed a prostitute or not without getting a drink thrown in his face, when he spotted something that stopped him immediately in his tracks.
He had though that he wouldn’t have been able to see anyone through this crowd, but he had been wrong, there was one exception, there had always been one exception, and that was Tom.
Of course he would see Tom, he saw Tom wherever he went. Even looking in a mirror Bill couldn’t help but try to imagine it was Tom. He felt lost without his twin, and despite the fact that they both should have really gotten over this by now, that they should have both grown up and grown away from this obsession over the fact that they were identical twins, two halves of the same whole, Bill had somehow not been able to let it go.
And clearly, looking at the scene before him, neither had Tom.
Bill felt like he had been let in on a secret too late. Everything about this was making his blood boil, and not just with anger. How could Tom have kept this from him? How could he try to pretend to be with Bill, to indulge in the closest fantasy with a duplicate, and not realise or acknowledge that Bill craved exactly the same?
So there Bill was, frozen in place as he watched Tom letting himself be propositioned by someone who, from the back at least, could have been Bill’s clone. Same frame, same blond hair, even, to some extent, the same style of dress. And Bill knew, he felt it to his very core, that Tom’s choice was deliberate.
Just as his eyes had found Tom across the room without even realising that his twin would be here, Tom’s eyes found his immediately. The shock that he saw there, palpable even over such distance was enough to confirm Bill’s first impressions of the situation. As Tom turned and hurried from the club without a word, as fast as could manage without raising suspicion, that confirmation was cemented in Bill’s head.
Between Bill and the exit was the dense crowd of bodies congregated on the floor, he knew, no matter how fast he tried, Tom would be long gone before he got passed it if he tried to take the direct route. He dropped his drink at the bar, not caring much what happened to it and moved around the edge pushing and shoving at hands that were trying to encourage him to join the tangle, he knew that he couldn’t see Tom anymore, but there was a maze of corridors to the exit to ensure client anonymity, and Bill knew if he could just get passed the door he could catch up to Tom. He needed to.
The flashes of his brother were ahead of him now that he had escaped the main hall, and he was running, Bill knew he wouldn’t catch up to Tom on pure speed, he had always been slower than him, not interested in athletic activities if he could avoid them, but Tom wasn’t running yet, and Bill willed his own body to move faster.
It wasn’t long before he could grab his brother’s arm and swing him around, making Tom stop, so as not to hurt Bill more than anything else probably, and he looked as defeated by it as Bill felt.
When Bill caught up to Tom he punched his twin square in the jaw. He was no longer the frail princess of the band that he used to be, and he knew that there was some weight behind his fists now. Bill could hear the crack as the connection was made, probably not a break, but a definite click of bone against bone, perhaps a minute dislocation, or a clash of teeth. He couldn’t bring himself to regret his actions though; he had probably done more damage to his own knuckles that to Tom’s face.
Tom didn’t question why Bill hit him; even if the rest, the unspoken rest, had remained hidden, running way from his twin was a punishable enough offence on its own.
It all seems kind of obvious now that Bill thinks about it, in retrospect it had always been obvious, it was just that now those clear, and mutual, signs were being acknowledged -though silently- by each other.
Tom’s response to Bill’s attack was to kiss him, and Bill saw it coming from a mile off. Instead of pushing him away, as society would dictate, or punching him again, as a certain part of his mind was entertaining, he held Tom tightly and breathed him in. No matter the reputation of this particular establishment, he knew that two twins together might put out a different image to the one that they were trying to cultivate and so leaving for a more private arena was becoming the next pressing item on Bill’s to-do list.
Tom, of course thinking the same, let go of Bill’s face and ran a firm hand down his back before taking his hand in his and walking calmly away from that place. They didn’t need to rush or run, despite the heat rolling between them and the feeling like a dragon just hatched in his stomach, there was no question about where they were going and what they were doing. That feeling would remain the whole time it took to get them back home, nerves wouldn’t factor in here, not now, they had come too far to stop.
Inside their own home they stumbled in through the door together, pressed as tightly together as they could manage, gasping into each other all the while. Tom’s palms bled heat into his skin, into his scalp where he had his fingers shoved through Bill’s hair.
He wanted everything of Tom, he was drunk from it, the smells, the lingering feel of skin under fingertips, the taste, it was all so much that Bill couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes for fear that the additional sense would cause his already saturated mind to overload.
There was little recollection of how he got from their front door to Tom’s bedroom, but once tipped back onto the bed, clothes conspicuously missing and his twin’s feverish weight pressing down on him, it was just a simple case of asking Tom, in filthy tones, to fuck him into the mattress and they were undone.
~*~
Bill didn’t stick around in the morning.
Despite the knowledge that he had consumed alcohol the previous evening, he had no illusions as to what might or might not have happened; his consumption had been limited and his mind was clear. There was no intoxication based amnesia, no ‘maybe I dreamed it’, it was real. The evidence was imprinted on every sense and sharp in his memory. It made him feel sick to his stomach. It had been messed up, totally and undeniably so and he was acutely aware of it, as well as the disgust in himself that he felt in that moment If he couldn’t reconcile the feelings with the experience then and there, then there was going to be a tough time ahead for the both of them.
He had never regretted something so greatly.
Bill paused at the door, turning to watch Tom for a moment, trying to reclaim the feeling that overwhelmed him the previous evening, but it was being tinted by too much guilt. The light streamed over the bronzed shoulder blades and back as he sprawled out on the bed sheets, but despite still feeling that bone deep love, and that desire to never let go, Bill was not feeling as he did before and he wasn’t sure why.
He loved Tom in every way possible, he always had, and he had no doubt that he always would. He didn’t think there was anything that Tom could do to make Bill stop loving him, but it seemed that there were things that they could do which made Bill unable to be around his brother, no matter what his feelings.
Making his way down to the kitchen gave him some respite, the relative silence of the house was a change from his usual morning where he woke after Tom. Normally, he could hear his twin clattering pots in the sink and setting up the coffee machine, but today there was no such sound. Today Bill would be making his own breakfast, and it was a necessary distraction from his own mind.
How could he have done that? What could he have been thinking to let his own brother follow him from the private fantasy to the devastating reality? Trying to rationalise it in his head wasn’t helping. “It was just sex.” He whispered into the quiet of the kitchen as though speaking those words out loud would erase the terrible churning he felt within himself. So very similar to the desire he felt for Tom, but encapsulated in the polar opposite sentiments.
The toast is just ready when he hears his twin wake up, he’s hyper aware of the sound despite the desperate wish to not be. It was like being a scared child trying not to listen to the thunder; the more he willed himself not to listen, the more he heard.
He instinctively turned towards the door when Tom entered the room, a habit that even this nightmare couldn’t break immediately, but as soon as their eyes met it was clear that Tom couldn’t hold his gaze.
Bill takes a strange sort of comfort in that, despite everything that they’ve done, and all the wrong that goes with it, they’re identical in this way, identical in their crisis of self that comes with having done something so consummately wrong, even for them. Bill never had held much store for the rules, if he had he probably would have felt guilt and sickness before climbing into bed with his own brother, but that didn’t meant that he was without a moral compass, and this one was pointing directly at, unforgivable.
Tom sat at the table and put his head in his hands, Bill found himself looking at his brother like some sort of train wreck, unable to glance away despite the gore. He knew what was going through Tom’s mind, it was the same that was going through his. There was abject disgust and horror at himself, there was the fear and guilt of having ruined everything that they had ever held dear between them.
There was only one thing that Bill could think to do for now, and that was to try to pretend that everything was normal. Not being able to look at his brother, and feeling like he was one step away from being catatonic and his brother looking as though he was about to cry or scream in turn was not normal, but sitting down at the breakfast table with a pot of yogurt, a slice of toast and strong coffee in hand was as close to normal as he felt he could get right now.
He was eating his yogurt in silence, he was not used to this noiselessness, but it was okay, he could just pretend that this was normal.
Then the metallic tang of the spoon hit against his tongue ring and all the sensations from the previous day, clashes of Tom’s and Bill’s piercings, came flooding back. The hot spike of lust in the memory mixed with the guilt from the harsh light of morning and it was all he could do to run to the bathroom rather than throwing up then and there in the kitchen sink.
What had he done?
~*~
Bill stood in the shower for hours after that. He didn’t try to scrub himself or use soap or wash his hair. He just stood under the water and froze. Maybe unconsciously he was trying to wash away the guilt from this morning, but he knew that in reality it wasn’t the case. He wasn’t thinking enough for that to be true. He wasn’t thinking anything. After washing his mouth out he was aware that he should probably take a shower and then… That was it. That was where he found himself when he came to, though it wasn’t anything like passing out.
Maybe it would be best to avoid metal cutlery for now.
Maybe it would be best to avoid Tom for now.
The thought of it made him physically ache from the loss of his twin, who always was the most important person to him. If he avoided talking to Tom in the home then maybe he could feel as though he wasn’t missing his twin as he had done those few times they had been separated as children, but he could still give his mind some time to recover.
And as he brought his hand up to turn off the shower, his skin shrivelled from being water logged, he realised giving his mind time to recover would have to be priority. What if the next time he fell into himself like this he was driving? Or stuck out in the middle of nowhere, or somewhere dangerous? It would be much worse than having a shower for a bit too long.
His legs were somewhat exhausted from being held in the same position for so long and his eyes were taking a while to focus on anything properly from staring into the middle distance. He hoped that Tom hadn’t tried to come in here, he wasn’t even sure if he locked the door in his confusion. Not that he normally locked the door anyway, but he thought that maybe he needed to start making an exception.
He was going to lock Tom out, whether Bill liked it or not, because he had spent five silent minutes in his brother’s company and gone into a full blow mental breakdown.
It was easy to avoid Tom that day. He seemed to be just as lost as Bill was. Bill had found him in the living room, playing the same chord sequence on the guitar again and again. He recognised the song, how could he not; they wrote it together, but he refused to acknowledge it or let it run through his head. It would be too much now to think about what those lyrics could mean in their new situation, with their new(older than Bill liked to admit) feelings and revelations placed on top of them.
The next day and the day after that Bill wouldn’t enter a room if Tom was there, and fortunately Tom seemed to be doing the same thing, but it wasn’t the comfort it perhaps could have been. As the days drew by he felt that Tom was starting to want to talk about it, rationalise it. Despite Bill’s chatterbox ways, Tom was always the one to speak through his problems and try to get closure.
But Bill didn’t want closure, closure meant that they would explain away what had happened, accept it and then discard it. Bill didn’t want to discard it, surely if they pretended it never happened, then those uncontrollable feelings of lust mixed with their twin bond would just cause another overspill and they would repeat the same mistakes again. Or the other option would be to embrace it in full, but considering what one night of weakness was doing to Bill’s psyche, his relationship with his brother and his physical health, he wasn’t sure he’d survive making sexuality part of their normal every day lives.
Bill either wanted this under his terms, with his sanity intact, or not at all.
So he avoided Tom more and more, trying to minimise the blackouts, they had only happened a handful of times since that morning, but they were still terrifying to him. He didn’t even realise they were going to happen until he was waking up out of them, and he knew that this was what losing his mind felt like.
He would listen outside doors so he couldn’t even accidentally walk into the same room as his brother. It wasn’t helpful to do this to himself, he knew that, anybody could tell him the same, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a viable option for now.
He just hoped his mind would fix itself soon.
~*~
Before long the night is no longer a break from the tension of the day.
He dreams about Tom, it’s innocent at first; their first days at school. Grinning children, fully ready to be class clowns and creative creatures play in his head, but then somehow the innocence of their youth melts away and the Tom of now replaces the scene. Bill feels the shift in the dream, and though asleep, even his unconscious mind seems to be highlighting the stark difference between what was right - the cherished, carefree relationship between siblings - and the wrong that happened afterwards.
He can feel Tom’s hands again, clever fingers playing on every nerve ending, setting Bill on fire from the outside in, then the feel of Tom losing control in turn, loosing moans that had spurred Bill on, rising and falling in harsh rhythms they had started to drown in. Orgasms hitting them like a tsunami before they both fell.
It was the collapsing onto Tom that had jerked Bill awake, like any dream about falling, but much, much worse. He had tried so hard to keep the details of that night from his mind, and now his mind was reliving them without his permission. And fuck a duck, he had cum coating the inside of his boxers like a fucking teenager.
He thankfully doesn’t feel the urge to throw up again, though it seems a close run thing. It’s good though, because Bill doesn’t exactly have much to throw up right now; he’s too scared of Tom coming into the kitchen to spend much time there eating, and despite the claustrophobia he’s starting to feel, he doesn’t want to leave the house for fear that people would be able to look at him and just know. Know everything that happened and judge him for it.
Not that there was anyone judging him more than himself right now.
Bill is unable to sleep after that, he strips himself and his bed clean and sits naked on the bare mattress. He spends the rest of the night there staring at the wall, eyes unseeing, avoiding thinking about anything that had to do with Tom, even the good memories.
He doesn’t sleep after that, or at least tries to avoid sleeping, he doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to last, but he knows that his mind can’t put up with the dreams again. He decides that he’ll just have to stay awake until his body is too tired to dream.
~*~
It’s been a week, and Bill is trying to survive on snatches of sleep here and there. As long as he doesn’t have to dream it’s okay, but whenever he feels the urge to sleep he sets his alarm for no more than half an hour later, just in case.
He justifies his strange behaviour to himself by saying that he is sleeping, and that he’s had plenty of sleepless nights before this, and that this is much better than obsessing over things that had already happened.
But the rational part of his mind, the part that was growing quieter as sleep eluded him, insisted that this was obsessing, just because he wasn’t actively thinking of Tom, didn’t meant that he wasn’t acting in response to his thoughts to Tom, and obsessively at that.
Tom seemed to have given up on trying to talk to Bill for now, though he had been making him healthy and hearty breakfasts and leaving them about with notes attached. “Eat Me.” was all the notes would say, like some bizarre version of Alice in Wonderland - a thought that almost makes Bill laugh considering how bizarre Alice in Wonderland is in the first place - and on the notes there’s no name, though they’re clearly written in Tom’s handwriting.
He’s grateful for the effort that Tom is putting into not forcing the two of them to view what happened yet; through not signing the notes Tom has made sure that Bill’s willing to eat the offerings through not forcing the memory of his presence onto Bill. And in turn Bill decides that he can acknowledge his brother’s existence this much, and eats what’s given.
He hopes that the empty plates and washed pots and pans are enough of a reply that Tom understands how grateful he truly is, even if he can’t say it out loud.
He’s seeing Gustav today, which seems like a stupid thing to do if he can’t even handle the thought of a stranger possibly knowing what happened, someone who he actually knew meeting him was far worse. Seeing Gustav was sometimes like going to confession though, scary, but cathartic. There was a chance that he might tell his friend what had happened with Tom, but he suspected that Gustav would realise that something was up when Bill turned up alone, after all the invitation for coffee had actually been for the both of them.
Feeling much better on a full stomach and ready to see his friend in a neutral setting outside of the house, Bill picked up his things, said a silent goodbye to his twin for a couple of hours and walked to the local café. Ideally he would have wanted to drive, but he knew that in his state it wasn’t a good idea, not yet anyway.
Ordering a coffee as strong as he could make in an attempt to stave off fatigue, he took a quiet seat near the back of the café that he had privately taken to calling his own. When Gustav came through the door he spotted his friend immediately, stopping to order his own coffee before joining Bill. He was looking well-rested and happy with life, causing a sharp stab of envy to hit him, but it passed quickly.
“Bill, are you on something?” were the first words to pass Gustav’s lips. It was definitely telling when your friend, who knew your full history and limits, suggested that you were having real problems rather than saying hello.
“No,” Bill said honestly, and Gustav seemed to believe him, at least enough to drop the idea.
“Sorry,” Gustav apologised, “It’s just you look really rough and, I don’t know, sunken maybe. Are you ill?”
“No,” Bill said, “not really anyway, I’ve not been sleeping very much and it’s really dragging me down.” He wouldn’t mention that the lack of sleep was self-afflicted.
Staring for a moment at Bill’s face and then back to his coffee, Gustav opened and closed his mouth several times as wanting to speak, but not finding the words.
“Look,” he managed to start eventually, “I know we joked about it before, and maybe we shouldn’t have, it was really insensitive of us, but you look anorexic, your cheeks are hollowing out like you’ve not eaten properly for days, weeks even.” He replied, and the sheer honesty behind those words shocked Bill.
He knew that he’d been looking a bit rough of late, but he supposed that he hadn’t been able to look in the mirror properly in a while, so the change hadn’t become obvious, but Gustav’s concern was highlighting everything thing for him now.
“I wasn’t eating properly for a bit, but I am now.” He tried to reassure his friend, “It was nothing to do with trying to lose weight or gain control though, I promise. I just had so much on that I never had time to eat, but I’m getting into a more stable routine again now, I’ll be fine. You can order the fattest thing on the menu for me and I swear I’ll eat it all. I’ve not had a problem with food, just work.” ‘And fucking my own brother.’ He tacked on in his head, though the words weren’t to be spoken out loud.
“You’ve got to look out for yourself more. I know Tom will always be there to feed you up, but there’s…” but Gustav trailed off in the wake of Bill’s obvious flinch.
Bill was such an idiot for it, just the mention of his brother’s name caused the involuntary reaction that would be a clear signal to anyone with brain cells that something was up. It would have never gone unnoticed by someone who had known him more than half his life.
“What’s wrong with Tom?” Gustav replied immediately, worry laced through his words “is that why you’ve been busy? Is he the one who’s ill? Fuck, he’s got cancer hasn’t he, that’s why he’s not here with you. You needed to tell me on your own. God.” Gustav was starting to head into hyperventilation territory, but Bill placed a hand on his arm, halting his stream of words.
“No, we’re fine. Something happened between us and we’re still trying to sort it. That’s all I swear.”
“You need to sort it with him quickly then,” Gustav said without preamble, “because it’s really damaging you.”
“I know.” Bill said, tears suddenly pushing out from the corner of his eyes.
He let himself be bear-hugged by Gustav, it was the tiredness that was making him show these emotions more readily, but he knew that there was only one cure for how tired he was and that was sleep. Sooner or later his body would make him do it, and then he would go back to normal, more or less, but he found that he couldn’t let his mind do that yet, the fear of those dreams was too strong.
Eventually his body would make him sleep properly and Bill was terrified.
~*~
Bill arrives home and doesn’t talk to Tom.
He knows he probably should, but he’s also aware that it’s only him who can decide that he’s ready to talk to Tom and right now, despite the desire to be okay, and the knowledge that he’s being completely messed up because of his lack of communication with his brother, he knows that he’s still not ready.
But he’s ready to start getting ready. He’s ready to start building himself up again so that he’s no longer stuck in this rut of not talking. He’s ready to prepare himself for starting to fix these problems.
It seems like the most minuscule of baby steps that he could take whilst still moving forward, but he’s glad he’s taken it, and he’s going to try and sleep tonight so that his mind is ready for spending time in Tom’s presence, even if he can’t say a word.
~*~
That night is hard, for Bill. The decision to sleep properly is not quite as easy as it at first seemed, and his body is now, despite finally being given permission, stubbornly refusing to shut down. It’s as though the fear of sleep he still feels coursing through him is making his mind wake up. The last vestiges of this terrified fortnight are still clinging onto his brain and keeping it on high alert.
The other part of him, the part that remembers other times he’s been scared of sleep, longs to curl up in bed with Tom again, like they used to do as kids, like they used to do in cramped tour busses and interchangeable hotel rooms, like they did on stormy night and lazy summer evenings. But now every time Bill thinks of sharing a bed with Tom, it’s sullied by the memory of that last night together, and Bill’s subsequent reaction to it, which in turn doesn’t help Bill’s need to try and sleep.
He flung himself out of bed - his room felt too rigid, too adult for him right now - and went to the airing cupboard, pulling out as much bedding and as many pillows as he could carry and then waddled with them to his room. The concept of time was lost on him as he started the arduous, and yet somehow ridiculous task, of turning his bed into a pillow and blanket fort. As though he were five.
But that was good. Five had been a good age. A good time to be alive. No school to worry about, no cares in the world. Nothing had existed but the here and now and fun and joy. If this helped him recapture that, even just a little bit, then he didn’t care how ridiculous he must have looked to the casual outsider. It wasn’t as though anyone would be watching him.
He curled up inside, his body far too long now to make himself a tiny inhabitant in the centre of this cotton and down castle, but it was close enough, and with everything that had gone before hiding itself from sight for a while, he fell asleep.
~*~
It took Bill a while to leave his bedroom in the morning, he was psyching himself up for the task at hand, the first step towards some semblance of normality, after all that was what was needed; small, planned controlled steps.
He was going to sit in the same room as his brother, and he was going to try and stay there. Bill wasn’t sure that Tom would want to be in the same room as him, he had assumed that Tom was doing better than he was, but that was only a guess on his part, and he knew it could well be the case that Tom was just as messed up as Bill was, if not more.
When Bill heard the sounds of cooking in the kitchen, he forced himself to enter the room, rather than flee from it. Tom stuttered by the stove. Not turning to face his brother, but the stiffness in his shoulders and the tightness across his back indicated his awareness of Bill’s presence.
Bill sat down at the kitchen table. It was clear that Tom had been plating up two lots of eggs on toast before Bill had walked in, probably intended to be left with another note, but instead he grabbed two sets of cutlery before sitting the plate in front of Bill along with a mug of fresh strong coffee.
There was no eye contact still, Bill had looked over at his twin, but Tom’s eyes were focused firmly on the plate in front of him. Fear was welling up inside his chest, but he knew that this was the moment he needed to break the radio silence, it had been almost a month of this madness, almost two weeks since he had lost the ability to let himself sleep, and he was still trying to wrap his lips around simple words.
“Thank you,” Bill said, softly. It was hoarse, as though his voice was protesting the lack of exercise it had had recently.
Tom looked at his brother, and Bill forced himself to meet his eyes. ‘Small steps’ he reminded himself ‘You can always look away if it hurts.’.
The smile in acknowledgement was the best thing that he could have expected from Tom, they sat there in silence, not unwilling to break this rare peace that had been missing for so long.
“Do you regret it?” Tom asked over the rim of his coffee cup, suddenly, his voice is quiet but not a word is unclear.
Bill considered this, Tom deserved that much. Did he regret it? What had he gotten out of it and what had he lost in return?
He nodded gently affirming the feelings that had flooded him on the morning after, he knew himself too well to deny it, “But I don’t know if I always will.” He added, trying out the compromise, for himself, if not for Tom.
~*~
They didn’t say much more after that, but that was okay. The few scant words that had been shared between them were enough to sooth Bill and start to dispel the fears that had been consuming him for far too long.
It was a long day of doing nothing. Bill hadn’t been able to spend the whole day in Tom’s presence, but the casual meeting in the hallway and the silent comfort of sitting together for meals was more than enough the make Bill happy for now. Considering he was working in baby steps, he felt that he was making massive progress.
The childish fort he had made in a fit of sleeplessness last night still stood in his room, but he was finding some comfort in it with a good night’s rest behind him as well. He didn’t think it was just the deranged wishes of a sleep deprived mind, there was something more to this that was good for him.
He would sleep in it and let it guard him.
Hot hands and clever fingers filled his dreams again that night, but this time when he awoke, it was okay. It wasn’t good, but it was okay. He still knew it was wrong, but he knew that he could get over it. It wouldn’t break him like it did the first time.
He put his head to the pillow and let a dreamless sleep take him once more.
~*~
The first time Bill was able to laugh at Tom again was another month after they had started to speak. Their conversations weren’t always as meaningful as they had been, or as instant and easy, but they were comfortable and familiar. They held the truth of their relationship in them without making Bill feel like he was drowning under it all, and though it wasn’t ideal, he thought it was getting there.
It was the dogs really that had started it, and if Bill didn’t have a reason to adore them already, he definitely had one now.
This morning was Tom’s turn to take the dogs for a walk, and he was being a bit pathetic about the cold. He had wrapped himself up in so many layers that he was verging on a marshmallow man type look, something that Bill was fairly sure he wasn’t going for, but had achieved anyway.
He was adding a final scarf around his neck, one that was hugely long and probably more for fashion than function, but he was trying to get what warmth he could out of it anyway, when one of the puppies bit the end of the scarf as if it was a particular interesting game of fetch that Tom had started. The littlest, clearly not wanting to be left out, started going for the other half, and it took some interesting ballet, a hand on the dog’s collars and not a little crude language for Tom to avoid being turned into an immobilised human maypole.
Bill giggled slightly, then his chuckles turn into all out guffaws as Tom managed to pick the smaller puppy by the scarf. Whatever Tom was thinking, the dogs were certainly enjoying it at least. At the sound of Bill’s laughter Tom stopped and turned. For a second he looked bemused, as though he had forgotten that Bill could laugh, but before long hisown smile broke out and mutated into gleeful laughter,
This was normal, and it made Bill happier than anything had for far too long.
~*~
It was almost three months after the original incident before they talked about it.
Tom was the one who broached the subject, but Bill knew that the conversation was going to happen, Tom had been twitchy all day and kept looking at Bill as though trying to assess his potential reactions. Despite the problems he had faced in the past few months, he didn’t feel scared anymore. He was ready to talk about it.
“Can I ask,” Tom started curled in on himself on the sofa, but closer to Bill than he had been in a while, “can I ask if it was my fault? Did I make you do something you didn’t want to do?”
“No,” Bill replied immediately shaking his head, “I wanted it as much as you did, I just…” he took a gulping breath, trying to let himself describe those feelings without experiencing them again. “I felt like I was trapped under ice. I was drowning with no way out and I just panicked, I thought I might, well, I don’t know what really. I thought I might do something bad afterwards. I’ve just never felt like that before, so completely lost.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t help you.” Tom whispered, “I just started to lose it too, and I didn’t know how to help you if I couldn’t go near you, and I didn’t think you wanted to be near me.” Tom confessed, “I was terrified that we’d ruined everything. Even though another part of me was saying the whole thing was inevitable.”
“Yeah,” Bill said noncommittally, though he agreed really, “I’d always kind of felt that way, and felt a little disgusted at myself for it, but then there’s a difference between thought and action isn’t there?”
There was a strange huffed half laugh of agreement from Tom; there was definitely a big, big difference.
“It felt so perfect at the time.” Tom said, “being with you. I’ve always loved you so much, and to think that you could have felt even a little of what I felt around you was electric, but then I woke up and you weren’t there and everything was crap, for a really long time.”
“I love you, too, you know.” Bill said softly, and the rest that went with it of course, but he didn’t think that needed saying.
“I know,” Tom said, giving him a half smirk and a glance out of the corner of his eye, “Well, I guess I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed a while back, and it was pretty convincing confirmation.”
“Do you think we could do that again?” Bill asked, not even knowing whether he wanted what he was asking for, “Be like that again, like lovers, only without the nightmare that came afterwards.”
Tom shrugged, but seemed to err on the side of confidence, “I don’t know, part of me wants that, but part of me doesn’t know whether I could handle it. Sometimes I already feel like I’m about to be ripped apart by us, and that was before everything else.”
“Maybe it’ll be better,” Bill said, “maybe we’ll be more prepared if we know what we’re letting ourselves in for and we accept that at any time, either one of us could say ‘enough’, and then we can try to go back to normal.”
“But slow yeah? Time to get used to change, and let go of the preconceived notions that go with… incest.” He picked out the last word delicately, but Bill was glad it had been voiced out loud. It needed airing as an idea, it needed to be felt, and contemplated, and then discarded as something that the two of them transcended, otherwise they would get stuck on it. Stuck on a stupid word, like they had done before.
“As long as we try.”
Tom received Bill’s kiss, nothing more than a gentle press of lips with warmth and peace. He wasn’t fixed yet, or happy yet, but he wasn’t unhappy about it. There was still so much that was wrong, and more to talk through than Bill knew how to express, but if they were working together they would work through this.
Though everything had changed, now at least they were changing together. Together they could move forward.
And that was okay.