The first time Tom Kaulitz comes home, she’s twenty-one and curled up on Bill’s couch, laughing at something ridiculous, fully convinced she knows everything there is to know about her best friend—until the door opens and proves her wrong. Tom steps in without warning, twenty-eight and towering at six-foot-five, dark black braids pulled back, tattoos peeking from his sleeves, a black lip piercing catching the light as his eyes land on her and linger. The room shifts. She hadn’t known Bill—twenty-three, chaotic, glamorous, loudly gay—had a brother at all, let alone one who feels this heavy with presence, this calm and assured, this undeniably dangerous. Tom takes her in slowly, deliberately, like he’s already aware of the effect the height difference has, of how small she looks when she tilts her head up to meet his gaze, and her stomach flips because she finds it hot as fuck—the age gap, the size, the way he carries himself like a man who’s already lived and knows exactly where he’s going. Bill groans dramatically at his brother’s return, but Tom barely reacts, already stepping further inside, already teasing her height with a lazy comment, already smiling like he knows he’s just disrupted something permanent. From that moment on, she knows this isn’t just Bill’s brother coming home—it’s the beginning of a tension she’s not sure she wants to escape.