FIC: Angelsitting (Mythklok/BDP crossover thingie) (Part 2 of 2)
Title: Angelsitting (Mythklok/BDP crossover thingie)
Author: tikistitch & wikdsushi, Fangirls At Large
Rating: R
Summary: Sariel and his crew watch the Ofdensen-Wartooth offspring whilst the dads get some much needed R&R. At a zombie-infested voodoo castle.
Warnings: Slash, AU, another AU, OCs, undead, undead OCs, swearing.
Notes: Mythklok is a Metalocalypse AU. After that, even I don’t understand what’s going on any more. (The BDP is rather more mundane, but only when the girls are asleep.)
Angelsitting, Part 2 of 2
( This ams Part 1.)
Charles moped and tried not to look over his novel at his middle regions.
As his and Toki’s luggage had evidently been lost somewhere between universes (Orula’s best guess was Newark airport, as “things always seem to end up there”), the proprietors had offered the conspicuously naked couple a change of clothes. Toki had done decently for himself, with one of Orula’s outfits (complete with awesome cape). Charles, however and despite considerable protestation, was now suited up in one of Chango’s spandex numbers. “Spandex,” Orula had counseled. “It stretches right over the regrettable bits. Shrinks well, too.”
Unfortunately, Toki was evidently still nursing a grudge, which rankled in and of itself. NO ONE coddled a burbling grudge like Charles Ofdensen! So Charles had thought it the better part of valor to don the fuchsia catsuit with minimal comment. (He had however refused the dyed-to-match mink stole.) But now as he sat trying to distract himself with a third-rate romance novel, his thoughts drifted up over the pages and to his fit but frankly middle aged midsection. Was Orula right? Did Toki regard him as, well, a bit dumpy?
“CHA-ARLES!”
Charles flinched. People shouldn’t just suddenly appear! It was fucking unnatural. Yeah, just watch him turn down the Dethklok Mothers' next offer to babysit while the guys were lost in Vegas!
“Tell me you’ve found our fucking luggage, Orula?”
“We have some business!”
“What?”
“We are given to understand that you are not only the lovely and talented Toki Wartooth’s very lucky husband, but in addition, his BUSINESS MANAGER.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Conflictofinterest,” coughed Chango, who had inevitably shown up as well. Charles’ eyes blazed like two hot fireplace pokers ready to stab right through the bastard's runway-perfect abs.
“We have some interest regarding Mr. Wartooth in relation to our newest venture, the 1-900-ZOMBIE line." And then he sang,
For all your many
undead needs
Call 1-900
Zed-O-M
B-I-E!
“Look, first off, you guys are aware that “ZOMBIE” is only six letters? Not seven? Like, you know, a fucking working phone number?”
“Ah, already with the important business advice! So I gather you are as excited by this venture as we are?”
“You gather wrong. And what the fuck does my husband have to do with this?”
“Sometimes people call the line and can only speak a foreign language!” Orula explained. “That’s because THEY’RE FOREIGNERS,” he muttered darkly.
“Oi!” said Chango. “Now, Mahster, they can’t help it, you know, being foreigners and all that.”
“It’s UNSEEMLY,” Orula protested.
“I thought you liked it a little seamy,” nudged Chango.
“Well, yes, of course, doesn’t any man?”
“Toki-“Charles began.
“Is a foreigner!” Orula supplied.
“But we like him all right,” Chango interjected.
“Oh, yes, we like him awfully much, despite the misfortune of being a foreigner; he is so adept at talking to foreigners.”
“But, uh, Toki only speaks Norwegian,” Charles objected.
“Yes, you know, that IS a foreign language,” Orula advised.
“You want Toki … to speak Norwegian … to foreign people who call in your nonexistent phone line?” Charles summarized. He was a manager, after all.
“Yes, exactly! In fact, we’d rather like to sign him to a long term contract!” Orula announced, unfurling what indeed looked like a long term contract. It was, in fact, exceptionally long, rolling down and over Charles’s actually not terribly fat at all belly and thence onto the floor for some yards.
“You don’t mind signing off in blood, I hope? Just a teeny tiny technicality!” Orula assured, proffering a quill pen.
“Teeny tiny,” echoed Chango.
“What the fuck?” said Charles. “I’m not signing Toki up for some fucking undead chat line! He’s a famous fucking musician! He’d never do a job that ridiculous.”
“What can you mean?” laughed Orula. “He’s ALREADY DOING THE JOB! BWA-HA-HA! BWA-HA-“ But then Orula began to cough and knocked his own glasses off. “Sorry,” he said. “Cat allergies.”
Charles sat up. Something was not right--completely beyond the possible presence of an unseen feline ball of death. “Wait, where is Toki?”
“He’s going to be manning the undead line. For the next CENTURY!” laughed Orula, who flourished his cape and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Ooo, fancy. That was a fancy one,” explained Chango, suddenly aware of Charles leaping out of the chair to strangle him. “Uh, ooo, gotta go!” And with that he disappeared, followed by a thunder crash.
Charles looked around the suite. Despite Toki’s present state of perturbed pouting, he strode over to the bedroom. “Toki, what is this about-?” But Toki wasn’t there. Nor was he in the kitchen, the conservatory, or the billiards room. (Or the cats' room. As it turned out, white tigers only gave him a little tickle in the back of his throat, rather than full-on anaphylactic shock. However, they sat up as soon as they saw him, and one appeared to be drooling, which seemed a good time to back from the room and hope like hell Toki hadn't tried to pet the kitties.)
“Toki…. What….?” Charles said as he rushed into their suite. No Toki.
Damn those two. They might be freaky-ass Voodoo guys with fucked-up fashion sense and a sense of humor worthy of the death penalty, but they were no match for Charles Foster fucking Ofdensen. They wanted his husband for a wage slave?
This meant war.
He looked up the wall, and grabbed down a broadsword.
And then he was out the door of their suite, running with all the fury his life of matrimony could give.
“Not like that, like this! Oh, gods, how have you ever done anything? Ever?”
“RAZIEL!” squeaked Sariel, his voice suddenly jumping an octave. “Watch where you’re putting your hands!”
The little angel in fact had her hands tightly wrapped around one of Sariel’s thighs, where she, in violation of all considerations of personal space, had been pushing and pulling him for what seemed to him like the last hour, in dim hopes of somehow improving his swordfighting technique. In the spot where Jacque had finally gotten anxious to play Grandpère, there now stood a straw and canvas training dummy pilfered from Asgard. Its blank face mocked Sariel, and the wooden sword strapped to its arm looked more like an enormous middle finger.
“Your stance is impossible!” Raziel fussed, taking a handful of Sariel's posterior and giving it a good shove.
“RAZIEL! Ganesh, help me!” wailed Sariel, who was in fact not entirely certain when the machete training session had turned into being felt up by a half-Seraph madwoman.
“Are you being molested, dearest?” Ganesh inquired from his comfortable seat on the couch amid many martini glasses and almost as many tiny children (only one of whom was tipsy, that being Alexis, who seemed quite content to doze, sucking her thumb as she cuddled her itty-bitty machete).
“She’s just trying to help you along, boy!” Jacque told him, sitting on the floor with Elias in his lap. “Quit your bitching!”
“Where did he get so hardheaded?” Raziel asked, now pulling on Sariel’s hips.
“Not from my side!” Jacque vowed. “That’s Seraphim! Pretty clear!”
“And why is he so damned stiff, Ganesh?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, I rather prefer him that way,” giggled the terribly sloppy elephant god over a sip of cocktail.
“You’re not reading them Babar again, are you?” Sariel asked.
“It’s a literary classic!”
“Not your version!” said Sariel, trying to hold onto his blade while Raziel groped his inner thighs.
“Why not?”
“Ganesh, Babar was NOT a character in the Kama Sutra!”
“It’s a beautiful and natural expression of bonding!” Ganesh protested. Rigyn, in his lap, sat absolutely spellbound over the many interesting illustrations in Unky Ganesh’s story book. She was trying to commit the various interesting and sometimes improbable-looking acts depicted by the friendly and colorful elephant characters to memory.
“There you go,” said Raziel.
“Are you done yet?” Sariel sighed.
“I just said so. Try a lunge.”
“This was pointless,” sighed Sariel, suddenly lunging, the machete blade flashing. And then he stood, stock still. “Holy fuck,” he said as his training dummy slowly slid in two and the top half thudded to the floor. “That was great. WHY DIDN’T YOU FUCKING SHOW ME THIS BEFORE, RAZIEL?”
Charles was getting frantic. He hadn’t been able to locate the former-vodouisants-soon-to-be-shishkabob, Orula and Chango, but more worryingly, Toki seemed to be nowhere around the castle.
Then suddenly, he heard some very familiar AutoTune singing.
“Ja, ja, for alle dine mange undead behov….”
Charles burst into the room, to find Toki sitting in a small cubicle, wearing a headset.
It was a veritable cube forest. It could have been any ordinary, boring soulless office building, but for one thing: Toki appeared to be the only boiler room resident who wasn’t currently literally rotting away. As Charles passed, one denizen was dumbly trying to reaffix her left ear with Scotch tape.
“Toki!” said Charles.
“Ja, Charles. I ams worksings,” Toki sniffed. “You knows, the JOBS.”
“Toki, what the fuck are you doing? You’re a rock star! Hell, bump me off, and you'll be the richest person the world has ever seen! You don’t need a job in a fucking zombie boiler room!”
“Hmpf,” humpfed Toki. “Maybe I ams takings for granted ins the band. Ands the marriage! Orula say this ams the respecmables entries levels positions!”
“Orula can suck my cock!”
“Ja, maybe hims gonna be the onlies ones.”
“Toki…. OK. All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t wanna make you mad. I love you, remember? I arranged this vacation so I could spend the whole fucking weekend with you. With you!"
Toki gave him the “maybe one really good blow job away from being mollified” glance. “Maybes. Maybes we talks. I gots da calls comings in now.”
“Yeah, OK. OK. We’ll talk a little later?”
Toki nodded, a bit - but just a bit - sullenly. Charles sort of wanted to gather the surly guitarist in his arms and carry him off for some quite nasty clothes re-ripping to see if THAT could change his expression, but decided at this juncture perhaps a strategic retreat was called for (no matter how much he wanted to shred Orula's goddamn catsuit, which was giving him a wedgie). He nodded and, hiking the sword over his shoulder, made his way out.
Toki watched him go, halfway hoping the asshole would take the hint and hike him over his shoulder for some nasty make-up sex. He sighed and went back to the beeping phone line.
'I ams sorries, I ams not hears you?"
"I jolly wanted to call into 1-900-ZOMBIE for all my undead needs! Where have you been?"
Toki blinked. The voice sounded an awfully familiar, but he couldn't be sure. English accents always screwed him up. "I saids I ams sorries."
"This is the WORST zombie 900 line in existence! I demand to speak to your immediate supervisor, or failing that, a person of some authority, or at least with better fashion sense!"
"Huh?"
"I want to speak to your manger!"
"I ams sorries, the managers ams nots here." He looked around to see if Charles were lurking in the wings somewhere. "Neither ofs them!"
"Where is your BRAIN?"
"My brain? It ams ins my head!"
"No, rather, you demonstrate no hint of having a BRAIN!"
"I has da goods brain! I has da giants brains!" Toki protested.
"Braaaaaaains."
Toki looked up. That last hadn't come from the obnoxious caller.
"Your brain, is it nice and juicy?" inquired the aforesaid caller.
"Ja, Toki has da nicest, biggest, juciestest brains!" Toki insisted.
"BRAAAAAAAIIIIINS!"
He looked up again, to the sound, and also to the zombie drool that was now dropping on him from one of his coworkers. Evidently enticed by the mention of Toki's delicious central nervous system, they had one by one put down their headsets and started to drift over to his workstation in search of a tasty, tasty snack of basal ganglia, or perhaps a crunchy hippocampus. Toki looked at the numerous calls starting to light up his phone as his coworkers set their phones to "LUUUUUUUUUUUNCH." He gulped, and wished Charles were still there.
Come bedtime, Abby and Alexis started screaming every time Raziel tried to separate them. Finally, she gave in and tucked them both into the same crib with some educational materials: a set of Greta Garbo paper dolls. They started arguing fashion.
"Pink!"
"Tendaw Bwush!"
"Pink!"
"Fwensh Wose!"
Alexis stood up and jumped up and down a couple of times. "PINK! PINK PINK PINK!"
"SAWMON!" Abby pointed at Raziel.
"Salmon, sweetie?" Raziel tickled Abby's tummy. "I think the gown from The Torrent is more fuschia, actually," she informed them.
"Foo-sha," repeated Abby.
"Pink," grumbled Alexis.
"MGM was limited in the film color palette."
"Pawette," said Abby.
Alexis scrunched up her face in a way that made her look even more like Sariel and plopped down on her couture-diapered little butt. "Pink," she muttered, with a sulk that forewarned, in Raziel's opinion, a miserable adolescence accompanied by the kind of clothing Nephthys preferred in her more sullen moments. She only hoped to the gods that the poor kid outgrew her obsession with a color as pedestrian as pink.
She handed the girls their sleep snugglies--for Alexis, a hand-knitted stuffed rabbit with a tag on its ass reading, "Fra Besta, til min lille Anja"; and for Abby, her Pretty Pretty Princess. Alexis poked PPP's ballerina outfit.
"Pink."
"No, sweetie." Raziel stroked Alexis's curly hair. "That's Spring Peony."
"Spwing Pee-knee," Abby said, which prompted Raziel to grin and Alexis to stick out her tongue.
"All right, sweetie." Raziel kissed Alexis's forehead. "For tonight, it's pink."
Alexis, who looked even more like Sariel than Sariel's own child did, narrowed her eyes. "Pink?"
"Pink!" Abby said with a giggle like she was doing something naughty.
Raziel laughed. She left the two of them to their girl talk (which, if her Toddler Babble were reliable, had veered onto the topic of the lovely machetes Jacque had given them, and how the Great Garbo was now off on a demon hunt), and went to check on Rigyn.
Instead of an adorable eight-year-old in footie pajamas, though, she found a glowing lump in the blankets. Raziel pulled the blankets back. Rigyn gasped and hugged her flashlight and book to her chest.
"You can stay up and read if you want," Raziel said. "What are you reading? I'm reading a biography of Edith Head that's just--Is that Ganesha's Babar book?"
Rigyn squeaked and shoved the book under the covers. "I amn't does de not'insks!"
Her eyes widened when Raziel patted her on the head. "It's okay, sweetheart. You know, if you ever have any questions about anything in that book, you can come to Unky Ganesha or Auntie Raziel."
Rigyn narrowed her eyes. Raziel sat on the end of the enormous guest bed--
She managed not to fall over when Rigyn shot into her lap, clutching a toy bear with a demonic tail. "What ams dis?" Rigyn said, pointing to a picture of Babar, Celeste, and Arthur in a position Raziel had enjoyed quite a lot before she settled down with Wotan.
Raziel chuckled and pulled out her phone to text Ganesh that his assistance was urgently needed.
Charles walked moodily down the drafty corridors of Orula’s dark and scary castle, sword carelessly slung over his shoulder.
Just then, the second-to-last person in the universe he wanted to see popped up in front of him.
“LUNCHTIME,” sang Chango. “Won’t you try some light bites?” he urged, holding up a tray of tempting appetizers.
“Not hungry,” muttered Charles, who considered how his sword would look stuck through the vodouisant’s forehead.
“Oh, it must be LUNCHTIME!” sang Orula, who was, in fact, the last person in the universe Charles wanted to see right now. “You’re not taking lunch in your room with your young gumdrop?”
“His spring chicken,” said Chango.
“His babe in the woods,” said Orula.
“No, Toki and I are NOT eating in the room because, AS YOU FUCKING KNOW, he’s working your fucking zombie line.”
“Oh, zombie lunchtime. Light bites won’t do,” said Chango.
“You DO know what zombies eat for lunch, don’t you?” asked Orula.
“I dunno. Brains?” sighed Charles.
“Why, yes, brains! But, they must be fresh brains,” counseled Orula.
“Like in a fresh young man,” said Chango.
“A fresh, vital young man.”
“A fresh, vital, young man with rather tight and tawny abdominal muscles.”
“If a rather silly moustache.”
“I find I rather like the moustache.”
“Wait. Wait,” said Charles. “Are you saying the zombies working in the boiler room….”
“Whoops! Gotta go,” said Orula.
“Huh?” asked Chango, who had been sampling some shrimp puffs. “Oi. Yeah, gotta go.”
And Charles was alone.
“Toki?” he said to no one in particular. “Oh, fuck…..”
“Oh, so this is why he isn’t answering my texts,” Raziel commented, seeing Ganesh sprawled over the couch, snoring contented elephant snores. She adjusted her grip on Rigyn's hand and regarded the men gathered around the table: Sariel, Jacque, various and sundry members of a certain death metal band, plus (staying up well past any reasonable bedtime) Elias and Liam.
“I may’ve put somethin’ in one o’ his martinis,” Pickles reflected. “Maybe jest a little splash.”
“He seemed overwrought,” Sariel commented.
“I thought you were putting these two to bed?” Raziel commented, indicating the under 18 members of the party.
“We gotta teach this little cocksucker to GAMBLE!” Jacque insisted, indicating Elias. He stuck his cigar in the toddler’s mouth, and Elias fluttered his tiny wings and blew a perfect little smoke ring. “It’s about time!”
“Wait, a card game, and you guys didn’t invite MEEEEE?” Raziel whined.
“Invite Lady Raz to play cards?” Nathan chuckled.
“Eh, yoo ain’t missin’ much Lady Raz,” Pickles grumbled. “Dat dood is winnin’ every hand,” Pickles sighed, nodding towards Jacque, who grinned over a rather piratical pile of Dethklok's money. Pickles and Nathan quite suddenly exchanged a meaningful glance. “Hey, Toks, give up yer seat!” Pickles told the guitarist.
“Whats?” asked a baffled Toki.
“Yeah, Toki, you gotta get up. LADY RAZ wants to PLAY CARDS," Nathan rumbled.
Toki shrugged and, repositioning various Ganesh limbs, sat down on the couch next to the snoring god and took up his knitting. Raziel quickly grabbed his seat at the table.
“What are you playing?” she asked.
“Jest five card draw,” Pickles told her.
“And we’re playing a KILL GAME,” Nathan said. “Because we always play a KILL GAME.”
“Cool,” said Raziel, grabbing the card deck. “I always feel more comfortable playing strip poker. You guys in?”
“Motherfucking A,” said Jacque. “You mind watching my cigar?” he asked Rigyn, who took the item with much interest.
“You don’t mind my dealing?” Raziel asked.
“Ladies first,” Jacque said politely. Raziel started to shuffle, fanning out the cards in an amazing show of dexterity.
“Oh. Shit,” said Jacque.
Toki, who had been finding his personal space a bit invaded by the undead, had first leapt up on his desk, and, finding that inadequate, had then jumped onto the top of the cubicle forest wall, where he was quickly learning why he had chosen a career as a death metal musician and not a circus performer. As he slowly backed away from the zombie horde, he had tripped and nearly fallen already at least a half dozen heart-stopping times.
“Please, my brains ain'ts that bigs. They ams small and puny. Just asks Skwisgaar.” But the snotty Swede was nowhere near to plead his case, so Toki slowly backed up, until at last he inevitably caught his foot on Orula’s rather extravagant (but highly impractical) cape and down he went, with a scream and flailing arms, into the waiting arms….
Of his husband.
“CHARLES!” Toki squealed.
Charles gently placed Toki safely on his feet while the undead looked on in confusion.
He held up his index finger in a “wait” gesture.
And then he went to make an unholy hash of the zombie horde. Limbs and heads and gore flew everywhere as his metal blade sliced through rotten flesh.
Toki stood to the side, trying to still his beating heart.
Finally, when every last zombie had been stilled, due to the fact that none of them had central nervous systems still in any way connected to any limbs, Charles emerged from the horde, soaked in blood and gore, his ridiculous spandex outfit halfway torn off.
“Charles, you rescues me! How ams you knows I ams in the dangers?” Toki asked, his eyes wide.
“I just know,” Charles assured him.
“Ams you hurts?” Toki worried, regarding a small scratch on Charles’s chest.
“It’s just a scratch,” Charles scoffed. Because, really, it was.
“Aw, you beens hurt for me,” said Toki, moving to kiss Charles’s chest. And quite soon after, bite Charles’s chest. Charles wasn’t precisely certain how this was supposed to aid in the healing process, but found he didn’t care. Not until Toki went a bit berserker and, pushing just a bit too hard to take into account the now slippery, gore-covered floor, managed to topple them both over.
Charles found himself on the floor, half naked, surrounded by dismembered body parts and pinned underneath 180 pounds of Norwegian.
“For fuck’s sake,” he told Toki, “Keep going!”
Toki cheerily complied, slowly kissing and biting his way down Charles’s chest, and then his not fat at all abs, and then further still, causing Charles to suddenly reach over his head for something - anything - to grip onto to prevent himself getting total body whiplash from the truly spectacular nibbling. He halfway wondered if perhaps Toki had suffered a nip from one of the zombie horde, as the chewing was getting somewhat enthusiastic, even for Toki. But then he found he really didn't care: if his nether regions were going to be gnawed off, then let them go in spectacular fashion.
His hands found something above his head and latched on just in time, as his body now spasmed and jerked like an undead fiend run through with a broadsword. And then there was a distinct ripping sound, and Charles found his really rather spectacularly toned abs had brought his body up to a ninety degree angle from the floor, his arms still stretched out over his head, holding whatever the hell it was he had gripped to steel himself for his orgasm.
Toki looked up, grinning and wiping his mouth.
Charles gave a gore-covered grin back and saw for the first time the object he had been clinging to: the now dismembered arm of an ex-zombie, the hand marvelously still clenched into a meaty undead fist. He looked in wonder at the object.
"Ams that good for you?" asked Toki.
"That was amazing," mused Charles, hefting the thick arm (which came quite nicely, if disgustingly, pre-lubricated). "Ah, Toki, I just had an idea."
"Ams it the naughties ideas?" asked Toki, batting those eyes.
And that, right there, was why Charles loved him.
"So I says to Poseidon, I says, 'Fuck you, asshole!'" Wotan laughed, sitting back in Sariel’s office chair and taking a long drag on his cigar.
Jacque, sprawled out with his feet up on Sariel’s desk, roared with laughter. "He's such an asshole!" he said, downing his rum.
"Poseidon is such an asshole," agreed Wotan.
"He's a great guy!" said Jacque, puffing a cigar.
"Oh, yeah, a great guy!" said Wotan.
"But what an asshole," said Jacque.
"Uh, hello," said Charles, who was still a bit disoriented by being dragged halfway across the universe by a now visibly drunk and stoned Other Pickles.
"Good morning, Charles! You boys been off making a music video?" Wotan inquired with a laugh. Charles still wore the remains of his bloodstained spandex jumpsuit held together at the crotch with safety pins, though he had now tied his red tie around his forehead like a headband.
"I think David Bowie wants his cocksucking costume back, boy," Jacque put in.
"Uh, yeah," said Charles. "And, if we're discussion fashion, is there any particular reason why you're in your undershorts?" he asked Jacque, who indeed was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts with little mermaids on them.
"Ask my wife about that," roared Wotan.
Charles raised an eyebrow, but decided not to probe further.
"So this is the other motherfucking Charles?" Jacque asked.
"Yes indeed. Charles, this is Sariel's Papa, Jacque," Wotan said, whacking Jacque on his bare back, causing Jacque to choke up his cigar. So that's where his unholy spawn learned to clobber innocent victims, Charles thought.
"Meetcha," mumbled Charles. "You seen our kids?" he asked. But suddenly Rigyn burst into the room and made a rather good stab at a game of Daddy Bowling Pins. "Hey, Bee!" Charles said.
"I GOTS DE 'CHETE!" she called.
"What? You had a shitty time?"
"NEI! 'CHETE!" Rigyn waved something shiny in Charles's face. Charles jerked back, then picked up his daughter and shot Wotan and Jacque a look guaranteed with a 98% probability to make courtroom opponents hide under the table and plead for a change of venue, preferably to a state institution for the mildly nervous.
"Which one," Charles said, his voice low and calm, "of you motherfuckers gave my kid a machete?"
Jacque grinned and lifted his rum. "You got a couple'a fine cocksucking Erzulie's comin' up, my boy!"
Rigyn waved her machete once again, and strained for Jacque's rum. "COCKSUCKS MOT'ERFUSKER!"
Charles only fixed his gaze on Jacque. "We've just met, so I don't know you. But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and tell you that I've just been up to my dick in blood, trying to save the other goddamn father of my children from the Undead Hordes of Corporate Hell, when I should have been getting laid like the world's about to end. So listen to me when I give you advice. And that advice is to run."
Jacque chuckled. Wotan poured Charles a single malt (and poured Rigyn just a tiny splash so she wouldn't feel left out). Charles stared in shock, though he seemed to be drooling a little at the sight of top-shelf booze.
"Sorry, m'boy," Wotan said, gesturing to an oversized chair just right for a grown man and his eight-year-old daughter. "Sariel's innoculated us. Sit down. Have a drink. Did you save your Toki from old Orula's wild ideas?"
"Orula?" asked Jacques. "He's an asshole!"
"He's such an asshole," agreed Wotan.
"But he's a great guy," said Jacques.
“But a great guy!” Wotan merrily agreed.
"Why does my kid smell like a cigar?" asked Charles.
"HERE AMS ALEXIS!" called Toki. He carried the drowsing girl in his arms. He was followed in turn by Sariel, Raziel (who appeared to have donned about sixteen extra layers of clothing for some odd reason, perhaps upon the command of Isaac Mizrahi?) and a scratching, yawning, blinking Ganesh.
"What the fuck is that?" demanded Charles. "DOES MY BABY HAVE A KNIFE?"
"Naw, we wouldn't give your sweetie a knife," Raziel assured him.
"That's a motherfucking machete!" said Jacque.
"Demnity," yawned Alexis.
"Ooo, wowee, theys matches!" squealed Toki, hefting Rigyn and her deadly cutlery.
Suddenly, there was the terrible scream of "SAAAAAR!" and Charles was down, chair and all, under then bombardment of three tiny winged monstrosities.
"I thought I told you kids to go to bed," Raziel grumbled. She suddenly whistled, and the tiny mutants retreated from their assault.
"Apologies. They do tend to get active around strangers," Ganesh yawned. He had pulled out about eleventeen extra arms, and was simultaneously yanking Charles to his feet, patting him off, righting the chair, and shooing away his own horrible offspring, who were buzzing about like vultures over a dying cow.
“C’mon, let’s get some pictures of them with their little machetes before they leave!” Raziel urged. “You too, Jacque!”
“Can I have my motherfucking pants back first?” the god grumbled.
“No!”
“Last time I play cards with a cocksucking angel,” he said.
Various parties were herded out of the office until only Sariel and his counterpart, Charles, remained.
Sariel hopped up on his recently vacated desk.
“NOW YOU’RE SITTING ON YOUR OWN GODDAMN DESK!?” Charles demanded, but nodded when Sariel waved the Scotch bottle his way.
Sariel ignored the jibe and instead asked, “So. How was it?”
“You didn’t warn me about the motherfucking zombies!”
“Like I said,” grinned Sariel, raising an eyebrow, “How was it?”
Charles looked around carefully. Then he leaned forward. “Fucking mind-blowing,” he confessed.
“Nothing like an attack of the undead to get the juices flowing.” He looked Charles up and down. “You, uh, wanna borrow a pair of pants? I think Raziel has some extra.”
“So, your dad, uh,” Charles ventured. “He’s not an angel?” He wasn’t sure how he knew, and he was a little freaked out that he did know.
“Naw.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s a pirate!” said Sariel proudly.
“A pirate with no pants?”
“A pirate with no pants!” grinned Sariel, refilling Charles’ glass.
"Ahhhhh." Orula sank into his favorite Argentine fox-upholstered chair. "Another fine day's work."
"Oi! Another lovely couple brought closer together," Chango said, perching on the thylacine chaise longue as thunder crashed cheerily in the background.
"Another pair of hearts forever entwined."
"Beating as one."
"And another set of new hires to raise from the dead." Orula settled deeper into his chair and closed his eyes. "Well. We jolly well need a holiday first."
"A vacation."
"Some time away."
"A bit of R&R."
"Shopping in Knightsbridge?"
Chango grinned. "Topshop? Charles right ruined my best casual number." Orula beamed, and Chango did as well. "Delightful, Mahster."
After all, seeing to the happiness of couples, trios, and others was terribly trying. And there was indeed rest to be found for the wicked.
Some time later....
Charles placed the phone down on its cradle, happy and satisfied at loaves and loaves more metaphorical bread, as well as lovely pats of butter. He thought to ring his husband to see if he was in the mood for a quick congratulatory under-the-desk blow job when he heard his Dethphone’s ringtone.
He extracted the pointy object from its drawer and frowned at it. He didn’t recognize the return phone number, which contained numbers, letters, and some occult symbols he hadn't even known a phone could make. He answered anyway.
“Hello? Yes, this is Charles Ofdensen. You’re who? Lady…? Oh, Sariel’s sister? And you’re calling because…. Wait, you’re dropping WHAT off early? You’re dropping…. Wait. Wait, uh…. I don’t remember agreeing to… What, Toki did? He didn’t tell… Yeah, I understand it’s a vitally important … Milan shopping trip? Wait, I need to- Don’t hang up… DON’T-“ But there was no one else on the line.
He heard the office door open. “TOKI, WHAT-“ he began.
“Look, Ofdenschen!” said Murderface, who held a horrible little blond winged demon in his arms. “They have little handgunsch!”
He darted out of the doorway, and there was the sound of a tiny gunshot and unholy giggles. “HEY,” boomed Nathan’s voice, “WHO TOOK OFF THE SAFETY?”
Author: tikistitch & wikdsushi, Fangirls At Large
Rating: R
Summary: Sariel and his crew watch the Ofdensen-Wartooth offspring whilst the dads get some much needed R&R. At a zombie-infested voodoo castle.
Warnings: Slash, AU, another AU, OCs, undead, undead OCs, swearing.
Notes: Mythklok is a Metalocalypse AU. After that, even I don’t understand what’s going on any more. (The BDP is rather more mundane, but only when the girls are asleep.)
Angelsitting, Part 2 of 2
( This ams Part 1.)
Charles moped and tried not to look over his novel at his middle regions.
As his and Toki’s luggage had evidently been lost somewhere between universes (Orula’s best guess was Newark airport, as “things always seem to end up there”), the proprietors had offered the conspicuously naked couple a change of clothes. Toki had done decently for himself, with one of Orula’s outfits (complete with awesome cape). Charles, however and despite considerable protestation, was now suited up in one of Chango’s spandex numbers. “Spandex,” Orula had counseled. “It stretches right over the regrettable bits. Shrinks well, too.”
Unfortunately, Toki was evidently still nursing a grudge, which rankled in and of itself. NO ONE coddled a burbling grudge like Charles Ofdensen! So Charles had thought it the better part of valor to don the fuchsia catsuit with minimal comment. (He had however refused the dyed-to-match mink stole.) But now as he sat trying to distract himself with a third-rate romance novel, his thoughts drifted up over the pages and to his fit but frankly middle aged midsection. Was Orula right? Did Toki regard him as, well, a bit dumpy?
“CHA-ARLES!”
Charles flinched. People shouldn’t just suddenly appear! It was fucking unnatural. Yeah, just watch him turn down the Dethklok Mothers' next offer to babysit while the guys were lost in Vegas!
“Tell me you’ve found our fucking luggage, Orula?”
“We have some business!”
“What?”
“We are given to understand that you are not only the lovely and talented Toki Wartooth’s very lucky husband, but in addition, his BUSINESS MANAGER.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Conflictofinterest,” coughed Chango, who had inevitably shown up as well. Charles’ eyes blazed like two hot fireplace pokers ready to stab right through the bastard's runway-perfect abs.
“We have some interest regarding Mr. Wartooth in relation to our newest venture, the 1-900-ZOMBIE line." And then he sang,
For all your many
undead needs
Call 1-900
Zed-O-M
B-I-E!
“Look, first off, you guys are aware that “ZOMBIE” is only six letters? Not seven? Like, you know, a fucking working phone number?”
“Ah, already with the important business advice! So I gather you are as excited by this venture as we are?”
“You gather wrong. And what the fuck does my husband have to do with this?”
“Sometimes people call the line and can only speak a foreign language!” Orula explained. “That’s because THEY’RE FOREIGNERS,” he muttered darkly.
“Oi!” said Chango. “Now, Mahster, they can’t help it, you know, being foreigners and all that.”
“It’s UNSEEMLY,” Orula protested.
“I thought you liked it a little seamy,” nudged Chango.
“Well, yes, of course, doesn’t any man?”
“Toki-“Charles began.
“Is a foreigner!” Orula supplied.
“But we like him all right,” Chango interjected.
“Oh, yes, we like him awfully much, despite the misfortune of being a foreigner; he is so adept at talking to foreigners.”
“But, uh, Toki only speaks Norwegian,” Charles objected.
“Yes, you know, that IS a foreign language,” Orula advised.
“You want Toki … to speak Norwegian … to foreign people who call in your nonexistent phone line?” Charles summarized. He was a manager, after all.
“Yes, exactly! In fact, we’d rather like to sign him to a long term contract!” Orula announced, unfurling what indeed looked like a long term contract. It was, in fact, exceptionally long, rolling down and over Charles’s actually not terribly fat at all belly and thence onto the floor for some yards.
“You don’t mind signing off in blood, I hope? Just a teeny tiny technicality!” Orula assured, proffering a quill pen.
“Teeny tiny,” echoed Chango.
“What the fuck?” said Charles. “I’m not signing Toki up for some fucking undead chat line! He’s a famous fucking musician! He’d never do a job that ridiculous.”
“What can you mean?” laughed Orula. “He’s ALREADY DOING THE JOB! BWA-HA-HA! BWA-HA-“ But then Orula began to cough and knocked his own glasses off. “Sorry,” he said. “Cat allergies.”
Charles sat up. Something was not right--completely beyond the possible presence of an unseen feline ball of death. “Wait, where is Toki?”
“He’s going to be manning the undead line. For the next CENTURY!” laughed Orula, who flourished his cape and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Ooo, fancy. That was a fancy one,” explained Chango, suddenly aware of Charles leaping out of the chair to strangle him. “Uh, ooo, gotta go!” And with that he disappeared, followed by a thunder crash.
Charles looked around the suite. Despite Toki’s present state of perturbed pouting, he strode over to the bedroom. “Toki, what is this about-?” But Toki wasn’t there. Nor was he in the kitchen, the conservatory, or the billiards room. (Or the cats' room. As it turned out, white tigers only gave him a little tickle in the back of his throat, rather than full-on anaphylactic shock. However, they sat up as soon as they saw him, and one appeared to be drooling, which seemed a good time to back from the room and hope like hell Toki hadn't tried to pet the kitties.)
“Toki…. What….?” Charles said as he rushed into their suite. No Toki.
Damn those two. They might be freaky-ass Voodoo guys with fucked-up fashion sense and a sense of humor worthy of the death penalty, but they were no match for Charles Foster fucking Ofdensen. They wanted his husband for a wage slave?
This meant war.
He looked up the wall, and grabbed down a broadsword.
And then he was out the door of their suite, running with all the fury his life of matrimony could give.
“Not like that, like this! Oh, gods, how have you ever done anything? Ever?”
“RAZIEL!” squeaked Sariel, his voice suddenly jumping an octave. “Watch where you’re putting your hands!”
The little angel in fact had her hands tightly wrapped around one of Sariel’s thighs, where she, in violation of all considerations of personal space, had been pushing and pulling him for what seemed to him like the last hour, in dim hopes of somehow improving his swordfighting technique. In the spot where Jacque had finally gotten anxious to play Grandpère, there now stood a straw and canvas training dummy pilfered from Asgard. Its blank face mocked Sariel, and the wooden sword strapped to its arm looked more like an enormous middle finger.
“Your stance is impossible!” Raziel fussed, taking a handful of Sariel's posterior and giving it a good shove.
“RAZIEL! Ganesh, help me!” wailed Sariel, who was in fact not entirely certain when the machete training session had turned into being felt up by a half-Seraph madwoman.
“Are you being molested, dearest?” Ganesh inquired from his comfortable seat on the couch amid many martini glasses and almost as many tiny children (only one of whom was tipsy, that being Alexis, who seemed quite content to doze, sucking her thumb as she cuddled her itty-bitty machete).
“She’s just trying to help you along, boy!” Jacque told him, sitting on the floor with Elias in his lap. “Quit your bitching!”
“Where did he get so hardheaded?” Raziel asked, now pulling on Sariel’s hips.
“Not from my side!” Jacque vowed. “That’s Seraphim! Pretty clear!”
“And why is he so damned stiff, Ganesh?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, I rather prefer him that way,” giggled the terribly sloppy elephant god over a sip of cocktail.
“You’re not reading them Babar again, are you?” Sariel asked.
“It’s a literary classic!”
“Not your version!” said Sariel, trying to hold onto his blade while Raziel groped his inner thighs.
“Why not?”
“Ganesh, Babar was NOT a character in the Kama Sutra!”
“It’s a beautiful and natural expression of bonding!” Ganesh protested. Rigyn, in his lap, sat absolutely spellbound over the many interesting illustrations in Unky Ganesh’s story book. She was trying to commit the various interesting and sometimes improbable-looking acts depicted by the friendly and colorful elephant characters to memory.
“There you go,” said Raziel.
“Are you done yet?” Sariel sighed.
“I just said so. Try a lunge.”
“This was pointless,” sighed Sariel, suddenly lunging, the machete blade flashing. And then he stood, stock still. “Holy fuck,” he said as his training dummy slowly slid in two and the top half thudded to the floor. “That was great. WHY DIDN’T YOU FUCKING SHOW ME THIS BEFORE, RAZIEL?”
Charles was getting frantic. He hadn’t been able to locate the former-vodouisants-soon-to-be-shishkabob, Orula and Chango, but more worryingly, Toki seemed to be nowhere around the castle.
Then suddenly, he heard some very familiar AutoTune singing.
“Ja, ja, for alle dine mange undead behov….”
Charles burst into the room, to find Toki sitting in a small cubicle, wearing a headset.
It was a veritable cube forest. It could have been any ordinary, boring soulless office building, but for one thing: Toki appeared to be the only boiler room resident who wasn’t currently literally rotting away. As Charles passed, one denizen was dumbly trying to reaffix her left ear with Scotch tape.
“Toki!” said Charles.
“Ja, Charles. I ams worksings,” Toki sniffed. “You knows, the JOBS.”
“Toki, what the fuck are you doing? You’re a rock star! Hell, bump me off, and you'll be the richest person the world has ever seen! You don’t need a job in a fucking zombie boiler room!”
“Hmpf,” humpfed Toki. “Maybe I ams takings for granted ins the band. Ands the marriage! Orula say this ams the respecmables entries levels positions!”
“Orula can suck my cock!”
“Ja, maybe hims gonna be the onlies ones.”
“Toki…. OK. All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t wanna make you mad. I love you, remember? I arranged this vacation so I could spend the whole fucking weekend with you. With you!"
Toki gave him the “maybe one really good blow job away from being mollified” glance. “Maybes. Maybes we talks. I gots da calls comings in now.”
“Yeah, OK. OK. We’ll talk a little later?”
Toki nodded, a bit - but just a bit - sullenly. Charles sort of wanted to gather the surly guitarist in his arms and carry him off for some quite nasty clothes re-ripping to see if THAT could change his expression, but decided at this juncture perhaps a strategic retreat was called for (no matter how much he wanted to shred Orula's goddamn catsuit, which was giving him a wedgie). He nodded and, hiking the sword over his shoulder, made his way out.
Toki watched him go, halfway hoping the asshole would take the hint and hike him over his shoulder for some nasty make-up sex. He sighed and went back to the beeping phone line.
'I ams sorries, I ams not hears you?"
"I jolly wanted to call into 1-900-ZOMBIE for all my undead needs! Where have you been?"
Toki blinked. The voice sounded an awfully familiar, but he couldn't be sure. English accents always screwed him up. "I saids I ams sorries."
"This is the WORST zombie 900 line in existence! I demand to speak to your immediate supervisor, or failing that, a person of some authority, or at least with better fashion sense!"
"Huh?"
"I want to speak to your manger!"
"I ams sorries, the managers ams nots here." He looked around to see if Charles were lurking in the wings somewhere. "Neither ofs them!"
"Where is your BRAIN?"
"My brain? It ams ins my head!"
"No, rather, you demonstrate no hint of having a BRAIN!"
"I has da goods brain! I has da giants brains!" Toki protested.
"Braaaaaaains."
Toki looked up. That last hadn't come from the obnoxious caller.
"Your brain, is it nice and juicy?" inquired the aforesaid caller.
"Ja, Toki has da nicest, biggest, juciestest brains!" Toki insisted.
"BRAAAAAAAIIIIINS!"
He looked up again, to the sound, and also to the zombie drool that was now dropping on him from one of his coworkers. Evidently enticed by the mention of Toki's delicious central nervous system, they had one by one put down their headsets and started to drift over to his workstation in search of a tasty, tasty snack of basal ganglia, or perhaps a crunchy hippocampus. Toki looked at the numerous calls starting to light up his phone as his coworkers set their phones to "LUUUUUUUUUUUNCH." He gulped, and wished Charles were still there.
Come bedtime, Abby and Alexis started screaming every time Raziel tried to separate them. Finally, she gave in and tucked them both into the same crib with some educational materials: a set of Greta Garbo paper dolls. They started arguing fashion.
"Pink!"
"Tendaw Bwush!"
"Pink!"
"Fwensh Wose!"
Alexis stood up and jumped up and down a couple of times. "PINK! PINK PINK PINK!"
"SAWMON!" Abby pointed at Raziel.
"Salmon, sweetie?" Raziel tickled Abby's tummy. "I think the gown from The Torrent is more fuschia, actually," she informed them.
"Foo-sha," repeated Abby.
"Pink," grumbled Alexis.
"MGM was limited in the film color palette."
"Pawette," said Abby.
Alexis scrunched up her face in a way that made her look even more like Sariel and plopped down on her couture-diapered little butt. "Pink," she muttered, with a sulk that forewarned, in Raziel's opinion, a miserable adolescence accompanied by the kind of clothing Nephthys preferred in her more sullen moments. She only hoped to the gods that the poor kid outgrew her obsession with a color as pedestrian as pink.
She handed the girls their sleep snugglies--for Alexis, a hand-knitted stuffed rabbit with a tag on its ass reading, "Fra Besta, til min lille Anja"; and for Abby, her Pretty Pretty Princess. Alexis poked PPP's ballerina outfit.
"Pink."
"No, sweetie." Raziel stroked Alexis's curly hair. "That's Spring Peony."
"Spwing Pee-knee," Abby said, which prompted Raziel to grin and Alexis to stick out her tongue.
"All right, sweetie." Raziel kissed Alexis's forehead. "For tonight, it's pink."
Alexis, who looked even more like Sariel than Sariel's own child did, narrowed her eyes. "Pink?"
"Pink!" Abby said with a giggle like she was doing something naughty.
Raziel laughed. She left the two of them to their girl talk (which, if her Toddler Babble were reliable, had veered onto the topic of the lovely machetes Jacque had given them, and how the Great Garbo was now off on a demon hunt), and went to check on Rigyn.
Instead of an adorable eight-year-old in footie pajamas, though, she found a glowing lump in the blankets. Raziel pulled the blankets back. Rigyn gasped and hugged her flashlight and book to her chest.
"You can stay up and read if you want," Raziel said. "What are you reading? I'm reading a biography of Edith Head that's just--Is that Ganesha's Babar book?"
Rigyn squeaked and shoved the book under the covers. "I amn't does de not'insks!"
Her eyes widened when Raziel patted her on the head. "It's okay, sweetheart. You know, if you ever have any questions about anything in that book, you can come to Unky Ganesha or Auntie Raziel."
Rigyn narrowed her eyes. Raziel sat on the end of the enormous guest bed--
She managed not to fall over when Rigyn shot into her lap, clutching a toy bear with a demonic tail. "What ams dis?" Rigyn said, pointing to a picture of Babar, Celeste, and Arthur in a position Raziel had enjoyed quite a lot before she settled down with Wotan.
Raziel chuckled and pulled out her phone to text Ganesh that his assistance was urgently needed.
Charles walked moodily down the drafty corridors of Orula’s dark and scary castle, sword carelessly slung over his shoulder.
Just then, the second-to-last person in the universe he wanted to see popped up in front of him.
“LUNCHTIME,” sang Chango. “Won’t you try some light bites?” he urged, holding up a tray of tempting appetizers.
“Not hungry,” muttered Charles, who considered how his sword would look stuck through the vodouisant’s forehead.
“Oh, it must be LUNCHTIME!” sang Orula, who was, in fact, the last person in the universe Charles wanted to see right now. “You’re not taking lunch in your room with your young gumdrop?”
“His spring chicken,” said Chango.
“His babe in the woods,” said Orula.
“No, Toki and I are NOT eating in the room because, AS YOU FUCKING KNOW, he’s working your fucking zombie line.”
“Oh, zombie lunchtime. Light bites won’t do,” said Chango.
“You DO know what zombies eat for lunch, don’t you?” asked Orula.
“I dunno. Brains?” sighed Charles.
“Why, yes, brains! But, they must be fresh brains,” counseled Orula.
“Like in a fresh young man,” said Chango.
“A fresh, vital young man.”
“A fresh, vital, young man with rather tight and tawny abdominal muscles.”
“If a rather silly moustache.”
“I find I rather like the moustache.”
“Wait. Wait,” said Charles. “Are you saying the zombies working in the boiler room….”
“Whoops! Gotta go,” said Orula.
“Huh?” asked Chango, who had been sampling some shrimp puffs. “Oi. Yeah, gotta go.”
And Charles was alone.
“Toki?” he said to no one in particular. “Oh, fuck…..”
“Oh, so this is why he isn’t answering my texts,” Raziel commented, seeing Ganesh sprawled over the couch, snoring contented elephant snores. She adjusted her grip on Rigyn's hand and regarded the men gathered around the table: Sariel, Jacque, various and sundry members of a certain death metal band, plus (staying up well past any reasonable bedtime) Elias and Liam.
“I may’ve put somethin’ in one o’ his martinis,” Pickles reflected. “Maybe jest a little splash.”
“He seemed overwrought,” Sariel commented.
“I thought you were putting these two to bed?” Raziel commented, indicating the under 18 members of the party.
“We gotta teach this little cocksucker to GAMBLE!” Jacque insisted, indicating Elias. He stuck his cigar in the toddler’s mouth, and Elias fluttered his tiny wings and blew a perfect little smoke ring. “It’s about time!”
“Wait, a card game, and you guys didn’t invite MEEEEE?” Raziel whined.
“Invite Lady Raz to play cards?” Nathan chuckled.
“Eh, yoo ain’t missin’ much Lady Raz,” Pickles grumbled. “Dat dood is winnin’ every hand,” Pickles sighed, nodding towards Jacque, who grinned over a rather piratical pile of Dethklok's money. Pickles and Nathan quite suddenly exchanged a meaningful glance. “Hey, Toks, give up yer seat!” Pickles told the guitarist.
“Whats?” asked a baffled Toki.
“Yeah, Toki, you gotta get up. LADY RAZ wants to PLAY CARDS," Nathan rumbled.
Toki shrugged and, repositioning various Ganesh limbs, sat down on the couch next to the snoring god and took up his knitting. Raziel quickly grabbed his seat at the table.
“What are you playing?” she asked.
“Jest five card draw,” Pickles told her.
“And we’re playing a KILL GAME,” Nathan said. “Because we always play a KILL GAME.”
“Cool,” said Raziel, grabbing the card deck. “I always feel more comfortable playing strip poker. You guys in?”
“Motherfucking A,” said Jacque. “You mind watching my cigar?” he asked Rigyn, who took the item with much interest.
“You don’t mind my dealing?” Raziel asked.
“Ladies first,” Jacque said politely. Raziel started to shuffle, fanning out the cards in an amazing show of dexterity.
“Oh. Shit,” said Jacque.
Toki, who had been finding his personal space a bit invaded by the undead, had first leapt up on his desk, and, finding that inadequate, had then jumped onto the top of the cubicle forest wall, where he was quickly learning why he had chosen a career as a death metal musician and not a circus performer. As he slowly backed away from the zombie horde, he had tripped and nearly fallen already at least a half dozen heart-stopping times.
“Please, my brains ain'ts that bigs. They ams small and puny. Just asks Skwisgaar.” But the snotty Swede was nowhere near to plead his case, so Toki slowly backed up, until at last he inevitably caught his foot on Orula’s rather extravagant (but highly impractical) cape and down he went, with a scream and flailing arms, into the waiting arms….
Of his husband.
“CHARLES!” Toki squealed.
Charles gently placed Toki safely on his feet while the undead looked on in confusion.
He held up his index finger in a “wait” gesture.
And then he went to make an unholy hash of the zombie horde. Limbs and heads and gore flew everywhere as his metal blade sliced through rotten flesh.
Toki stood to the side, trying to still his beating heart.
Finally, when every last zombie had been stilled, due to the fact that none of them had central nervous systems still in any way connected to any limbs, Charles emerged from the horde, soaked in blood and gore, his ridiculous spandex outfit halfway torn off.
“Charles, you rescues me! How ams you knows I ams in the dangers?” Toki asked, his eyes wide.
“I just know,” Charles assured him.
“Ams you hurts?” Toki worried, regarding a small scratch on Charles’s chest.
“It’s just a scratch,” Charles scoffed. Because, really, it was.
“Aw, you beens hurt for me,” said Toki, moving to kiss Charles’s chest. And quite soon after, bite Charles’s chest. Charles wasn’t precisely certain how this was supposed to aid in the healing process, but found he didn’t care. Not until Toki went a bit berserker and, pushing just a bit too hard to take into account the now slippery, gore-covered floor, managed to topple them both over.
Charles found himself on the floor, half naked, surrounded by dismembered body parts and pinned underneath 180 pounds of Norwegian.
“For fuck’s sake,” he told Toki, “Keep going!”
Toki cheerily complied, slowly kissing and biting his way down Charles’s chest, and then his not fat at all abs, and then further still, causing Charles to suddenly reach over his head for something - anything - to grip onto to prevent himself getting total body whiplash from the truly spectacular nibbling. He halfway wondered if perhaps Toki had suffered a nip from one of the zombie horde, as the chewing was getting somewhat enthusiastic, even for Toki. But then he found he really didn't care: if his nether regions were going to be gnawed off, then let them go in spectacular fashion.
His hands found something above his head and latched on just in time, as his body now spasmed and jerked like an undead fiend run through with a broadsword. And then there was a distinct ripping sound, and Charles found his really rather spectacularly toned abs had brought his body up to a ninety degree angle from the floor, his arms still stretched out over his head, holding whatever the hell it was he had gripped to steel himself for his orgasm.
Toki looked up, grinning and wiping his mouth.
Charles gave a gore-covered grin back and saw for the first time the object he had been clinging to: the now dismembered arm of an ex-zombie, the hand marvelously still clenched into a meaty undead fist. He looked in wonder at the object.
"Ams that good for you?" asked Toki.
"That was amazing," mused Charles, hefting the thick arm (which came quite nicely, if disgustingly, pre-lubricated). "Ah, Toki, I just had an idea."
"Ams it the naughties ideas?" asked Toki, batting those eyes.
And that, right there, was why Charles loved him.
"So I says to Poseidon, I says, 'Fuck you, asshole!'" Wotan laughed, sitting back in Sariel’s office chair and taking a long drag on his cigar.
Jacque, sprawled out with his feet up on Sariel’s desk, roared with laughter. "He's such an asshole!" he said, downing his rum.
"Poseidon is such an asshole," agreed Wotan.
"He's a great guy!" said Jacque, puffing a cigar.
"Oh, yeah, a great guy!" said Wotan.
"But what an asshole," said Jacque.
"Uh, hello," said Charles, who was still a bit disoriented by being dragged halfway across the universe by a now visibly drunk and stoned Other Pickles.
"Good morning, Charles! You boys been off making a music video?" Wotan inquired with a laugh. Charles still wore the remains of his bloodstained spandex jumpsuit held together at the crotch with safety pins, though he had now tied his red tie around his forehead like a headband.
"I think David Bowie wants his cocksucking costume back, boy," Jacque put in.
"Uh, yeah," said Charles. "And, if we're discussion fashion, is there any particular reason why you're in your undershorts?" he asked Jacque, who indeed was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts with little mermaids on them.
"Ask my wife about that," roared Wotan.
Charles raised an eyebrow, but decided not to probe further.
"So this is the other motherfucking Charles?" Jacque asked.
"Yes indeed. Charles, this is Sariel's Papa, Jacque," Wotan said, whacking Jacque on his bare back, causing Jacque to choke up his cigar. So that's where his unholy spawn learned to clobber innocent victims, Charles thought.
"Meetcha," mumbled Charles. "You seen our kids?" he asked. But suddenly Rigyn burst into the room and made a rather good stab at a game of Daddy Bowling Pins. "Hey, Bee!" Charles said.
"I GOTS DE 'CHETE!" she called.
"What? You had a shitty time?"
"NEI! 'CHETE!" Rigyn waved something shiny in Charles's face. Charles jerked back, then picked up his daughter and shot Wotan and Jacque a look guaranteed with a 98% probability to make courtroom opponents hide under the table and plead for a change of venue, preferably to a state institution for the mildly nervous.
"Which one," Charles said, his voice low and calm, "of you motherfuckers gave my kid a machete?"
Jacque grinned and lifted his rum. "You got a couple'a fine cocksucking Erzulie's comin' up, my boy!"
Rigyn waved her machete once again, and strained for Jacque's rum. "COCKSUCKS MOT'ERFUSKER!"
Charles only fixed his gaze on Jacque. "We've just met, so I don't know you. But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and tell you that I've just been up to my dick in blood, trying to save the other goddamn father of my children from the Undead Hordes of Corporate Hell, when I should have been getting laid like the world's about to end. So listen to me when I give you advice. And that advice is to run."
Jacque chuckled. Wotan poured Charles a single malt (and poured Rigyn just a tiny splash so she wouldn't feel left out). Charles stared in shock, though he seemed to be drooling a little at the sight of top-shelf booze.
"Sorry, m'boy," Wotan said, gesturing to an oversized chair just right for a grown man and his eight-year-old daughter. "Sariel's innoculated us. Sit down. Have a drink. Did you save your Toki from old Orula's wild ideas?"
"Orula?" asked Jacques. "He's an asshole!"
"He's such an asshole," agreed Wotan.
"But he's a great guy," said Jacques.
“But a great guy!” Wotan merrily agreed.
"Why does my kid smell like a cigar?" asked Charles.
"HERE AMS ALEXIS!" called Toki. He carried the drowsing girl in his arms. He was followed in turn by Sariel, Raziel (who appeared to have donned about sixteen extra layers of clothing for some odd reason, perhaps upon the command of Isaac Mizrahi?) and a scratching, yawning, blinking Ganesh.
"What the fuck is that?" demanded Charles. "DOES MY BABY HAVE A KNIFE?"
"Naw, we wouldn't give your sweetie a knife," Raziel assured him.
"That's a motherfucking machete!" said Jacque.
"Demnity," yawned Alexis.
"Ooo, wowee, theys matches!" squealed Toki, hefting Rigyn and her deadly cutlery.
Suddenly, there was the terrible scream of "SAAAAAR!" and Charles was down, chair and all, under then bombardment of three tiny winged monstrosities.
"I thought I told you kids to go to bed," Raziel grumbled. She suddenly whistled, and the tiny mutants retreated from their assault.
"Apologies. They do tend to get active around strangers," Ganesh yawned. He had pulled out about eleventeen extra arms, and was simultaneously yanking Charles to his feet, patting him off, righting the chair, and shooing away his own horrible offspring, who were buzzing about like vultures over a dying cow.
“C’mon, let’s get some pictures of them with their little machetes before they leave!” Raziel urged. “You too, Jacque!”
“Can I have my motherfucking pants back first?” the god grumbled.
“No!”
“Last time I play cards with a cocksucking angel,” he said.
Various parties were herded out of the office until only Sariel and his counterpart, Charles, remained.
Sariel hopped up on his recently vacated desk.
“NOW YOU’RE SITTING ON YOUR OWN GODDAMN DESK!?” Charles demanded, but nodded when Sariel waved the Scotch bottle his way.
Sariel ignored the jibe and instead asked, “So. How was it?”
“You didn’t warn me about the motherfucking zombies!”
“Like I said,” grinned Sariel, raising an eyebrow, “How was it?”
Charles looked around carefully. Then he leaned forward. “Fucking mind-blowing,” he confessed.
“Nothing like an attack of the undead to get the juices flowing.” He looked Charles up and down. “You, uh, wanna borrow a pair of pants? I think Raziel has some extra.”
“So, your dad, uh,” Charles ventured. “He’s not an angel?” He wasn’t sure how he knew, and he was a little freaked out that he did know.
“Naw.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s a pirate!” said Sariel proudly.
“A pirate with no pants?”
“A pirate with no pants!” grinned Sariel, refilling Charles’ glass.
"Ahhhhh." Orula sank into his favorite Argentine fox-upholstered chair. "Another fine day's work."
"Oi! Another lovely couple brought closer together," Chango said, perching on the thylacine chaise longue as thunder crashed cheerily in the background.
"Another pair of hearts forever entwined."
"Beating as one."
"And another set of new hires to raise from the dead." Orula settled deeper into his chair and closed his eyes. "Well. We jolly well need a holiday first."
"A vacation."
"Some time away."
"A bit of R&R."
"Shopping in Knightsbridge?"
Chango grinned. "Topshop? Charles right ruined my best casual number." Orula beamed, and Chango did as well. "Delightful, Mahster."
After all, seeing to the happiness of couples, trios, and others was terribly trying. And there was indeed rest to be found for the wicked.
Some time later....
Charles placed the phone down on its cradle, happy and satisfied at loaves and loaves more metaphorical bread, as well as lovely pats of butter. He thought to ring his husband to see if he was in the mood for a quick congratulatory under-the-desk blow job when he heard his Dethphone’s ringtone.
He extracted the pointy object from its drawer and frowned at it. He didn’t recognize the return phone number, which contained numbers, letters, and some occult symbols he hadn't even known a phone could make. He answered anyway.
“Hello? Yes, this is Charles Ofdensen. You’re who? Lady…? Oh, Sariel’s sister? And you’re calling because…. Wait, you’re dropping WHAT off early? You’re dropping…. Wait. Wait, uh…. I don’t remember agreeing to… What, Toki did? He didn’t tell… Yeah, I understand it’s a vitally important … Milan shopping trip? Wait, I need to- Don’t hang up… DON’T-“ But there was no one else on the line.
He heard the office door open. “TOKI, WHAT-“ he began.
“Look, Ofdenschen!” said Murderface, who held a horrible little blond winged demon in his arms. “They have little handgunsch!”
He darted out of the doorway, and there was the sound of a tiny gunshot and unholy giggles. “HEY,” boomed Nathan’s voice, “WHO TOOK OFF THE SAFETY?”