I Only Want You for One Night

Comforting Bill was more of a brotherhood instinct. I know, stupid bipolar me, but I can’t help it. Leading Bill on with my declarations of love when I knew I didn’t

But I still felt bad for the Olsen Twins crack, so the next day, I decided to make it up to him. The only problem was, I couldn’t find him. Anywhere. He wasn’t in the den, watching TV, he wasn’t in the kitchen, stuffing his face, he wasn’t in bed, and he wasn’t in the office, playing on the computer.

I walked into the living room, plopping down sideways onto one of the recliners, my legs hanging off of the edge of the seat. I pulled out my phone and scrolled down my contact list, hitting the call button when I got to Bill’s name.

I put it on speaker and set it on my stomach, listening to it ring. He finally picked up.

“City morgue, you stab ‘em, we slab ‘em.”

I rolled my eyes. “You are such an idiot.”

“Yes, but you love me for it. So, what can I do you for, Tomi Boy?”

“I want to know where the hell you disappeared to.”

“Calm your balls, Tom, Mom made me go to the post office. I am currently three blocks from home and closing in fast. Oh guess what, we gots fan mail!”

“Don’t we always?” I randomly started to braid my dreads together for no reason. I’d pull them out soon.

“Yeah, but they smell good. I think some of the fangirls sprayed them with perfume. Or pheromones.”

I burst out laughing. “Well, they’ll have no luck, then, will they?”

“Yeah, because we got each other. And that’s all we’ll ever need.”

I fought the urge to sigh. “Yeah, we do have each other.”

“Now, before I forget, what do you want me home for? Is no one else there?” If this conversation were a chat room, the phrase ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge’ would have followed that statement.

“Well, I wanted to take you somewhere today. You know, just you and me, to make up for my stupidity last night.”

He squealed. “Ja, ja, bitte! I’ll be home soon, I want to spend the day with you! I’m passing Old Man Schulz’s house now.”

Old Man Schulz’s house. That was four blocks away. I swear Bill had no depth perception, and he didn’t know how to count. “Hurry home, love, I miss you.”

“I will! I’m practically running home. See you soon, babe!”

“Okay, bye Bill.”

I heard him hang up. I pressed ‘end call’ and stood up, stretching. Mom passed by the door with a basket of laundry in her hand.

“Well, look at you, Sleeping Beauty, you actually decided to get up.”

“I’m going to let that comment slide because you’re my mother and it’s still a bit too early to retaliate.”

“I figured,” she put the basket down and leaned against the doorframe. “Can I ask you something?”

“Nope,” I said sarcastically.

“I’m serious, Tom. It’s about your brother. Well, it’s about both of you.”

My blood stopped moving and turned icy. “What’s up?”

“Well, you two have always been close, and I accept that because of you two being twins. But it seems lately that Bill has been in a really sort of bipolar, PMS mood that only you can console him out of. I’ve tried, like the other day when you went out on that date, and he was so unresponsive I might as well have been talking to the wall. I probably could have got a better reaction out of the wall. I just want to know what’s wrong with him.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. He seems fine whenever he’s with me.”

It wasn’t a total lie. Bill was happier and easier to deal with when I was around, but it was for reasons she couldn’t know, ever.

She sighed. “Okay, then.”

“I noticed that he has kind of been restless in his sleep, maybe that has something to do with it,” I invented wildly. Of course, I had been the one who had been restlessly sleeping, because my mind was a battlefield of thoughts now, but she didn’t need to know that.

“That makes sense, as long as nothing horribly wrong is going on with him. Oh, and do me a favor,” she nudged the basket of clothes towards me. “Fold these.”

I groaned. “The things I do for you.”

“Be quiet, it’s all yours and Bill’s from the tour. Now fold, mister, or you don’t leave the house today.”

I rolled my eyes and brought the basket over to the couch, where I began to fold. I was pretty good at folding for a guy, I guess, but I knew my mom would critique it somehow. She always did.

I got halfway through the basket when I heard the door slam open and closed.

“Hi Mom, here’s the mail!” I heard Bill say. I heard him barreling down the hallway towards the living room.

I looked at the neat piles I created and knew it had been for nothing as Bill came flying into the doorway, jumping over the basket and into my lap, his arms snaking around my neck. “Hi Tomi! I got home as quick as I could.”

“Bill, I need that ear. Mind not yelling in it?”

He eased up a bit. “Sorry. But hey, are we going somewhere today?”

I looked at the destroyed pile of clothes. “Not anymore.”

His face fell. “What? Why? You said!”

“That was before you destroyed the clothes that I was commissioned to fold.”

“Ah, Mom’s rules, got it. Well, here, I’ll help, then we can leave.”

He got off my lap and sat on the floor, refolding a few of the things he demolished. “So, where are we going today?”

I picked up one of his shirts. “That’s a secret.”

“I’ll get it out of you somehow.”

“I doubt it. I want to surprise you.”

He paused. “Is it a strip club?”

“Yes, we’re going to watch women remove their clothes for money. Of course not, stupid!”

“It was just a guess, no need to get all angry on me.”

I ruffled his hair. “You’ll see when we get there. I swear, sometimes you’re as impatient as a four-year-old.”

“Well, duh.” He picked up a pair of my boxers. “Ooh, baby, when do I get to see you in these?” he joked, smiling.

“Whenever you want, Bill, whenever you want.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

He smiled widely. My stomach twisted with guilt, but seeing him happy sent it away.

~+~

“This is it? The big surprise was shopping?” Bill asked skeptically, his eyebrow raising under his huge sunglasses.

I shrugged. “That, and I figured since we do it all the time, there’s nothing holding us back from doing this,” I said, grabbing his hand in mine.

His face lit up and he gripped my hand tightly, pulling me towards the closest shop. It was a random music shop, one we had been in many times.

“Check it out,” Bill said, smiling and pointing at the wall. I looked up. There was a large poster of us, Tokio Hotel, plastered on the wall.

“What do you want to bet they have one in Leipzig, too?” I asked, smirking.

He rolled his eyes and dragged me to the back of the shop, where they kept things like records and stuff, which I though was odd, because we didn’t own a record player. He let go of my hand and started skimming through them, looking at things that would interest him, or one of our friends, I guess.

He finally let out a noise of victory and pulled it out. I looked at it and smirked. “Metallica? Bill, you don’t listen to Metallica!”

“I don’t, but Gustav does!”

“Bill, today isn’t about Gustav, Georg, or even me. Today is all about you.” I kissed his cheek lightly.

He blushed, then looked back at the record. “But, we can get it for his birthday, and-”

I placed a hand over his mouth. “Put it back, and we’ll worry about his birthday when it gets here. Go find a CD you want, and it’s yours.”

“Really now.”

“Yes, really! Now go, find one.”

He smiled at me and walked around, sifting through the CDs randomly. I put the record back and went to the hip-hop section, scanning to see if they had the new Sammy Deluxe CD. Upon a successful search, I went over to Bill, who had started to use his huge puppy-dog eyes. I rolled my eyes. “What’s with the face?”

He held up a CD. I looked at it and scoffed. “Okay, this will be the third time that you’ve gotten this Nena CD!”

He pouted. “But it keeps getting scratched! And this will ensure perfection of the songs when I put it on my mp3 player.”

I sighed. “Fine, give it here.”

We walked up the counter. As I paid for them, Bill kept looking at the poster of us. “Excuse me, do you have a silver Sharpie I might use?”

The women behind the counter nodded and handed him one. “Knock yourself out.”

“Danke!” he said happily. He walked over to the poster and stood on his knees on the rack of CDs, stretching as far as he could go up to the poster. He scribbled out his signature on his image and hopped back down. The lady stared at it.

“Oh, hell no, I want to do that too, give me the pen!” I said, doing what he did. I wrote my name out just the same as he did and gave the pen back to the lady. She looked at us.

“Any chance you could get Georg and Gustav in here too?”

I laughed. “We’ll try. You can auction it off and make a fortune.”

“With just our names,” Bill said, nodding. The lady laughed and handed us the bag with our CDs in it.

“Come again,” she said as we left. Bill waved as the door closed, then slipped his hand in mine.

“Ich möchte Eins,” Bill said, leaning his head on my shoulder.

“Come on, then, if my Bill wants ice cream, he’ll get it.”

Bill squeezed my hand affectionately. He started skipping forward, pulling me along with him. “Going to get some ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, going to get some ice cream, ‘cause it tastes good!”

He literally yelled out the last words. I laughed and joined in his song, which went with the tune of ‘Following the leader.’

We finally got to the ice cream parlor. Bill skipped inside and jumped on the mat in front of the counter, leaning over onto the counter, his ass sticking out like a diva. “Well, hello there, cutie, how are you today?” he asked to the girl behind the counter. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

She must have recognized him, too, because she blushed seven shades of red and looked down. “I’m doing well, how are you?”

“I’m doing absolutely amazing, just hanging out with my brother, and we decided to come in here and get some ice cream! Do you think we could get some please?”

I sighed and smacked Bill on the back of the head lightly. “Don’t be sappy, you’re going to make the poor girl melt.”

“Well, fine, then. I would love it if I could have a big, huge, hot fudge sundae. And Tomi will have…” he gestured towards me.

“The same thing, but with strawberry sauce on top.”

She nodded and told us the price. I paid for it, and we sat down in a booth in the back while we waited.

Bill scooted close to me and swung a leg over mine. “This is turning out to be a pretty awesome day, so, thank you Tomi,” he said, kissing my cheek lovingly.

My god I was so happy that these booths had high backs to them. “It is an awesome day, isn’t it?”

He turned my face so that I was looking at him full on and gave me a soft look. “And spending it all with you is just making it the best.” He brought his lips to mine and kissed me slowly, sensually.

I kissed him back but eventually pushed him away. “Okay, I don’t want to get seen and have a million fangirls find out that their sick fantasies are real.”

He laughed and hugged me.

Our ice cream came and Bill immediately stole the cherry off the top of mine. “Um, hello! I was going to eat that!”

He smiled and put it in front of my face. I smiled back and bit it off the stem. He kissed me before I could start to chew it, snaking his tongue in my mouth and stealing it out.

“Aw, you owe me yours now!” I said, stealing the cherry off the top of his.

The next few minutes went by pretty much the same way, Bill being Bill, putting whipped cream on my nose and licking it off, he and I feeding each other, the whole nine yards.

Okay, I don’t care if this makes me horrible, I am a damn good actor.

I was currently wiping his spit off my nose as he laughed when I heard a voice next to us. “Hey Tom, Bill, I didn’t expect to see you here!”

I looked up and felt my stomach clench as Alice and a girl I didn’t know but immediately identified as her roommate stood above us, waffle cones in their hands.

“Hi Alice, it’s good to see you. You two need to meet officially, Alice, this is Bill, Bill, this is Alice.”

They shook hands, exchanging a greeting. Bill’s words were covered in frost, and I immediately felt like this wasn’t going to go well. I knew when Bill got jealous and how he sounded when he did.

And this was one of those times.

“And this is my roomy Giselle, Gee for short.”

“Hallo,” I said. She smiled at me and then diverted her attention to Bill.

“Hallo,” he said as well, trying to remain pleasant. He had no reason to be jealous of her.

“Why don’t you guys sit down?” I offered feeling Bill’s death glares burning my skin.

“Sure, we’ve got time,” Alice said. Giselle scooted in so she could be across from Bill. I wasn’t blind, I could see those shiny little hearts in her eyes. She liked Bill, and I thought that was hilarious.

We talked pleasantly for a while. Well, the girls and I did. Bill sat against the wall, picking at his ice cream moodily and sending random evil glances towards Alice every once in a while. I rolled my eyes and ignored it for the most part, but knew I had to do something or he’d go nuclear on me at home.

So, I discreetly slid my hand onto his thigh and started rubbing it lightly, an international gesture of affection. He got a lot more pleasant after that, joining in the conversation and even flirting with Giselle a bit.

Alice then grabbed my hand over the table and started stroking it with her thumb. “So, do you guys have any plans after you finish your ice cream?”

“Yes, actually, Tomi promised to take me shopping, just me and him,” Bill said fiercely, inching closer to me.

“Oh, that’s not a problem, we wouldn’t want to intrude on any brother bonding time you guys have,” Giselle said warmly, nodding. Bill smiled at her, but Alice looked a little pissed, like Bill had slapped her across the face and called her a sick, boyfriend-stealing whore, which I half expected him to do.

There were four different emotions at the table right now. Bill’s jealousy, Alice’s anger, my confusion, and Giselle’s affection.

I couldn’t take much more of this. “Well, I’m done, Bill, I don’t know if you are-”

“Oh, no, I’m done too. We should get going.”

Giselle nodded and said a goodbye, as did Alice. We got up to leave, but Alice held onto my hand for a second longer.

“Call me soon, okay Tomi?”

“Of course I will,” I said back, my mood light.

She smiled and pulled me down for a short, sweet kiss. She let me go and I walked out with Bill, who didn’t speak to me for thirty seconds.

“You’re lucky I didn’t hit you,” he said, crossing his arms and pouting.

“I’ve been dating her, what do you think would have happened if I didn’t kiss her?”

He didn’t say anything. I threw an arm around his shoulder. “You’re too moody for your own good. What am I going to do with you?”

He smiled. “Are you open to suggestions?”

I laughed and slid my hand into his.

He didn’t see through my façade for a second.