Welcome! It appears that you have stumbled across one of my stories. A series of one shots and small arcs, Small Hours is completely compatible with cannon, but it does take some rather odd turns while navigating the wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey mess that is, well, time. A good introduction to some of the assumptions I make about time, time travel and the Robinson Clan can be found in 'The Business Trip', available through my profile page. Be warned, crossovers are frequent and generally NOT cannon with /their/ source material. Otherwise, feel free to send me a PM or leave me a review with any questions, concerns, critiques (maybe even complements :P) that you may have. Other stories in this continuum are also in-progress. Keep a look out for 'Waiting for Wilbur' and 'Looking for Lewis'.
Note: Obviously MTR does not even remotely match up with our timeline. I did some research, rolled the dice and settled on 2007 as the year Lewis turned 12 and had a remarkable adventure with Wilbur in the year 2037.
Enjoy.
Title::Dead Giveaway
Year::2035
Teaser/Summery::Wilbur's hair has always been a black copy of his father's. So where does the cowlick come in? It's hard to say whether Wil's anger or his hair gel plays the bigger part in keeping it there.
OoO
When eleven-year-old Wilbur Robinson sits down at the breakfast table that morning and politely asks his mother to pass the toast everyone knows he's won.
It's not that he has any allies. No one, including the object of his ire, his father, can figure out precisely why the precocious youngest of the Robinson Clan had barreled into his mother's arms a year ago panicking about evil prototypes and telling everyone who'd listen how Daddy had saved him and then, that very evening, accused his Daddy of stealing 'it', lying about 'it' and 'having the gall to pretend you still love me!' Tallulah, the only other family member present at the time of the outburst had been rather reluctantly impressed that the ten year old knew the word 'gall' but his parents had been much to horrified to notice.
Perhaps if Cornelius had be able to figure out what 'it' was they wouldn't have gotten to this point, but all attempts to ask had ended in angry tears and shouts of "YOU KNOW!"
Well Cornelius did not know. He did not know what 'it' was. He did not know what Wilbur meant by 'the big bad prototype' either. The one drawing Lazlo had been able to procure from the boy, a black spider-like hat, couldn't possible have a real counterpart. He'd never invented Doris, not in this time stream. But the very idea that Wilbur, Wilbur his son not Wilbur his friend, somehow knows what she looks like is enough to keep his anger directed towards circumstance at large. There's something going on here that he doesn't understand, but it's not Wilbur's fault. If he can just get his son to open up-
And thus began the war between a father who was determined to fix things and a son who was equally sure that they were irreparably broken, a war that, as of this morning, it is clear that the son has won.
"Wilbur?" Franny is hesitant to draw attention to the change but – she's mom and it must be addressed.
"Yeah Mom?" Wilbur nonchalantly spreads a thick smear of jelly on his toast and begins to pile on the eggs.
"That's an interesting- hairstyle you've got there."
Wilbur beams. "Do you like it? I've been thinking. Everyone else in the family has a cowlick. It's really alie-, aleinet- alieno-"
"Alienating?"
"Thanks Uncle Fritz. It's really alienating of me to not have it you know? So I figured, 'it's nothing a little hair get can't fix', and here I am."
Jumping up on his chair he proudly shows off his new do, arms spread out in classic 'ta-da!' pose.
It's then, as if Wilbur had timed it this way, that Cornelius shuffles in sleepily, pecks Franny on the cheek, raises his eyes to the table, and freezes.
His first rational thought is, why is Wil messing around with time again? Not surprising considering the drastic change that had come over the boy in question somewhere north of his eyebrows.
When Cornelius had first laid eyes upon his newborn son he'd immediately recognized the unruly tuffs of fine baby hair flopping over sleepy blue eyes as nigh on identical to his own. Raven black, to be sure, like his mother's, but the springiness, the look of constant electrocution… that was all from him. And as Wilbur had gained first inches and then feet his hair had grown with him into a spiky black crown 'just like Daddy's!' and therefore beloved of the tiny troublemaker.
All that was gone. Of course he'd wondered on occasion if and when Wilbur might finally achieve the trademark upsweep he remembered from his adventures in time but he'd never imagined it like this; as an act of defiance and rejection.
Hair by hair he examines the new do. Most of it is plastered to Wil's head in uneven ripples. The scientist in him wonders if that feat been achieved with mere superglue or if one of his industrial proxies had been mustered into service. The imitation cowlick is similarly scruffy. With something less like glue and more like an actual hair product holding it in place it looks ready to spring apart at any moment.
Inspection done, Cornelius sighs and finds his seat without saying a word. Teenage acts of rebellion are really supposed to wait until the teenage years, but if Wilbur is going to experiment he'd much rather it be with hair gel and cowlicks than drugs or sex. Though he should look into locking up his more flammable or poisonous proxies just in case.
For his part Wilbur waits expectantly for his Dad's outburst. He's ready with the whole range of ammunition from barbed quips to irrefutable arguments, so when Dad merely sighs and sits down without a word his first emotion is anger.
How dare he not be mad at me! He's supposed to be mad! He's supposed to yell and make me shave it off and ground me for a month so that I can ignore him and sneak out anyways and show him a taste of his own medicine!
His thoughts continue in this vein as he too sits down silently, eats his asked for toast and eggs and leaves the table without another word to anyone.
This was supposed to be his ultimate victory. So why doesn't it feel like one?
TBC