LOVE IS BRUTAL IX.
“What do you mean missing?” Nathan thundered as he sprung upward from the couch, his big hands clenched into heavy fists.
The manager pinched the bridge of his nose, motioning with his other hand for Nathan to sit back down. Nathan didn’t.
“He’s missing, Nathan,” Charles said at length, after it became evident that Nathan was not to be calmed. “No one knows where he is. No one has seen him, no one has heard from him. He’s…he’s essentially disappeared.” The manager swiped his thumb and forefinger beneath his eyes as he spoke. The trick was lost on everyone but Skwisgaar, who was the only one that seemed to realize that Charles Foster Ofdensen was inches away from breaking.
A few tense minutes passed, with Nathan curling and uncurling his hands and Charles unable to meet any of their eyes. Murderface was the one that broke the silence, his voice hesitant and flat, as if he still believed that this early-morning fiasco was all a very bad dream.
“Scho…what are we schupposched to do now?” Murderface shifted position on the couch, his dark, scarred forearms crossed tightly across his chest. He was looking at his feet.
“I am pressing every charge imaginable against the rehabilitation center where Pickles was sent,” Charles assured them. “I have also notified the authorities of Pickles’ disappearance, and he is officially a Missing Person. If any of you have any idea whatsoever as to where he may have gone, what he may be doing…please, let me know now, so that I can pass that information along.”
Did anyone else notice the way his voice trembled on ‘please?’ Skwisgaar thought to himself, moments before Nathan’s booming voice redirected all focus toward himself.
“No,” he growled sharply, and everyone, even the manager, shivered. Nathan angry was a frightening experience, even for the manager.
“No,” he said again, a little more quietly and calmly, as if he sensed his outburst had unnerved those around him. “Those…authority people can’t be telling everyone in the whole fucking world that Pickles is gone.”
The manager swallowed once to compose himself, then said, “Nathan, how else do you propose we find Pickles if we don’t enlist the help of outside authorities?”
Nathan was pacing up and down in front of his bandmates. “Fuck if I know,” he mumbled, and began chewing on his black-painted fingernails. “But…if the whole fuckin’ world knows that Pickles is, uh…gone, then…then, well, we like…we might not be the first ones to find him. And we, well, we gotta find him first. I figured you of all people woulda understood that, Robot,” he added, pausing in his pacing to glance at the manager.
Charles was silent for a long moment, gazing into Nathan’s hectic green eyes as if he thought he could find the answer for the whole ridiculous mess somewhere within their depths. He found none. At length, he nodded his consent, and Nathan flopped back onto the couch between Murderface and Skwisgaar.
“I understand your concern, Nathan, and I apologize if I…if I didn’t seem to be considering Pickles’ well-being as fully as I should have.” His hand snaked upward to fiddle with the tie that wasn’t there before Charles jerked it back down into his pocket. “I will take all necessary precautions to ensure that the public has no inkling whatsoever that Dethklok’s drummer has gone missing. Only people most pertinent to the investigation will be notified.”
Skwisgaar felt Toki move slightly next to him as the younger man cocked his head to the side and asked, “Whats ‘pertsnet’ means?”
Skwisgaar-who was wondering that himself-glanced toward Toki despite the near-suffocating weight of guilt inside his chest. The younger man was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, arms locked around his shins and the lower part of his face pressed against the tops of his knees. His bright blue eyes never once strayed in Skwisgaar’s direction.
“It means ‘important,’ Toki,” Nathan answered. Toki nodded. Skwisgaar looked away and tried to ignore the tempest his nerves seemed to insist upon stirring up in his stomach.
“So,” Charles continued, pushing his glassed up on his nose with one finger, “Perhaps we can now get to work.”
A Klokateer appeared out of the shadows so quickly and quietly that the four remaining members of -Dethklok had to do a double take-she seemed to have materialized out of thin air.
“My Lords,” she murmured, and bowed slightly before producing a yellow legal pad and ballpoint pen from the bag she carried at her side.
“Sit,” Charles instructed, waving vaguely to one of the armchairs nearby. The woman obeyed, crossing her legs and propping the legal pad against one knee.
Once she was seated and ready, Charles promptly ignored her and addressed himself to the four men on the sofa-the sofa that looked just a little too big without Pickles to take up his small amount of space.
“Boys, we are going to brainstorm,” he told them, and explained what the word meant before Toki or Skwisgaar could even ask. “We are going to sit and think of every possible place Pickles could have gone, every possible person he could have contacted, until we have something at least resembling a clue of his whereabouts.”
“Why usch?” asked Murderface, whose voice suggested that he still hoped to wake up at any moment.
“Because we know Pickles,” the manager replied. “Now, who wants to make the first suggestion?”
Skwisgaar felt himself wincing as Nathan and Murderface looked toward him, eyebrows raised. He met their glance with a shrug, then a nod, although he dreaded the manager’s reaction to the one little secret the band had managed to keep from him over the years.
“Uh…” Nathan chewed on another fingernail for a moment before continuing, “We should, uh…probably talk to Derek.”
Charles raised his eyebrows. Skwisgaar felt Toki turn toward him as well, and knew without looking that Toki was as confused as the manager.
“And who, pray tell, is Derek?” Charles asked, and Skwisgaar recognized the icy timbre of his voice almost immediately.
“Nej, Robots, no,” he said quickly, catching Ofdensen’s eye so that he would know what Skwisgaar was trying to say. “Derek….Dereks was beingks de drugs dealers. Dat’s alls.”
“He was, uh…ours too,” Nathan muttered. “Not just Pickles’.”
“How come I didn’ts know abouts this guy?” Toki asked, before Skwisgaar realized it, Nathan’s nerves snapped a little.
“Because you wouldn’t have been able to keep your fucking mouth shut about him,” the frontman snapped, “And giving you a way to get at whatever drugs you wanted would asking for a fucking lawsuit and God only knows what other kind of fucking disasters.”
Toki’s body hardened beside him, hardened until it was trembling. Skwisgaar watched in trepidation out of the corner of his eye as Toki unfolded his legs and rose to his feet, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He’s closer to the edge than they think, Skwisgaar said to himself
“And whats,” he muttered through gritted teeth, “Does you mean by thats?”
Skwisgaar knew that tone of voice and hoped that Nathan would know it too, that Nathan would give up, because he wasn’t sure he could calm Toki now…wasn’t even sure that Toki would listen to him at all.
“He meansch you’d halluschinate schome crazy schit and kill schomebody,” Murderface answered. His voice was flat, devoid of any meanness, of any emotion whatsoever.
“I woulds not-“
“Oh, yes you would, you fucking flip out when you drink too much, who the fuck knows what you’d do with LSD or some shit in your system-“
Skwisgaar could feel the heat coming off Toki’s body in waves, could sense the tensing of his many muscles, and he grabbed Toki’s wrist just as he was shifting his body to spring at Nathan.
“Toki,” Skwisgaar mumbled, pulling him back down next to him and doing his best not to look at him, not to see whatever it was would be in Toki’s face-accusation, hope, hatred. “Toki, nots now.”
Toki wrenched his wrist out of Skwisgaar’s grip and laughed-it was brief, bitter, and felt to Skwisgaar like a whiplash, but Toki sat down.
The manager cleared his throat, and Skwisgaar looked up at him. Charles gave him a tight, disapproving glare before glancing sympathetically at Toki-still so tightly wound that he was shaking-and getting back to the topic at hand.
“Derek the drug dealer will be contacted,” he said. “Someone please state his phone number, or numbers.”
Nathan rattled it off from memory, and the silent Klokateer took it down.
“Anything else?” the manager prompted.
“His family, maybe?” Nathan said. “I know they’re not, uh…Pickles’ most favorite people, but, uh…” he shrugged his big shoulders.
“Check with his family, yes, that will be done,” Charles said.
Next to Skwisgaar, Toki sneered, “Seth.”
They eyes of everyone in the room narrowed at the mention of Pickles’ brother.
“Yes…yes, Seth must be interrogated…” the expression on Charles’ face suggested that he would dearly love to be the one performing such an interrogation.
“Bulletsch, Schammy and Tony,” Murderface sighed. He had evidently given up the idea that he was dreaming.
“His former band-good idea, William,” Charles said.
Murderface took no pleasure in the praise, as he usually would. He leaned back into the cushions and stared forward, brooding.
And there they sat for the next several hours as invisible Klokateers readied the Hatredcopter for the trip back to Mordhaus. Outside, the day wore on. The news that Dethklok was leaving the festival well before schedule resulted in rampant rioting. Several were injured and many died, but the roiling crowd never came close to the ‘Copter-patrols of armed Klokateers and a hastily erected, high-voltage electric fence saw to that.
The hours passed, as hours will do, but each tick of the clock was like an hour in and of itself. Hours within hours-it wasn’t a bad description of the way time passed for the remaining members of Dethklok and their manager as the hunt for Pickles was put into action.
It also wasn’t a bad description for the way time passed for Skwisgaar and Toki, whose private, two-personed world had been suddenly and-for Toki, at least-inexplicably upset. With the news of Pickles’ disappearance coming right on the heels of Skwisgaar’s bizarre behavior, Toki’s nerves were more on edge than ever. Not that he was the only one, of course-Nathan, for awhile, was more grumpy and short tempered than ever before. Charles with an unbuttoned collar and loosened or missing tie became the norm. Murderface was quiet, devoid of petty viciousness. Skwisgaar’s fingers hadn’t touched real guitar strings in days, although they got quite a workout with imaginary ones thanks to all the stress.
No, Toki’s not the only one who’s stressed the fuck out, Skwisgaar thought to himself, a week or so after their return to Mordhaus. But he’s the one least likely to be able to handle it.
Skwisgaar was standing in the middle of the corridor, halfway between his room and Toki’s, leaning back against the cold stone wall with his thin arms crossed over his sunken, sick stomach. He was dizzy again. He knew what a ticking time bomb Toki had become, knew he was the only one that could defuse him, calm him, help him, but every time he found the balls to walk up to Toki’s door and raise his knuckles to knock, he saw himself sprawled on the bathroom floor, screaming, Toki holding him in his big arms…and he saw what he couldn’t tell Toki. He saw it more than he had in years, and he’d turn his back on Toki’s door, his empty stomach revolting weakly, and walk away.
At least I didn’t meet the manager this time, Skwisgaar thought, moving away from the wall and beginning to make his slow way back down the corridor to his own room. Despite the dark circles under Charles’ eyes and the slump in his shoulders, he still found the energy to glare at Skwisgaar every time they crossed paths near Toki’s bedroom door-and they had crossed paths there often.
Skwisgaar walked with his eyes on the floor, but for all the blond was actually seeing, he might as well have been walking around blindfolded. He was so preoccupied that when he rammed shoulders with someone in the hall, he mumbled his apologies without even looking up.
When the sharp odor of vodka reached his nose, his first thought was Has Pickles come home? His second thought, when he felt the force with which he hit the wall when he was shoved, was The manager is way more pissed than I thought.
Except that when he actually looked, he saw Toki’s bare, scarcrossed back retreating down the hallway. The younger man’s broad shoulders were bunched in tension, and there was a suspicious red Solo cup held loosely in his left hand.
Skwisgaar opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again when he realized that there was not a damn thing he could say…and yet not saying anything seemed more inadequate than saying something stupid.
Skwisgaar was just about to speak when Toki stopped moving. He turned around, and Skwisgaar lost all ability to think, let alone speak.
Skwisgaar couldn’t see Toki’s eyes; his long, lank hair was hanging in two thick curtains by the sides of his face, casting it into shadow. Despite the Swede’s height, Toki seemed to be towering over him; his broad shoulders were drawn back, his big arms swinging heavily at his sides. The hand holding the Solo cup clenched, and the jagged, harsh sound of crushed plastic echoed down the stone corridor. Skwisgaar watched him; watched the veins in Toki’s thick forearms pop out as he squeezed the cup until his hand shook. Clear liquid was dripping from his fist and the reek of vodka wafted its lazy way toward Skwisgaar, who was poised to sidestep if Toki directed his drunken, pent-up fury in his direction.
Unfortunately, the Swede never saw it coming. He could have handled a thrown fist, could have dealt with an attempted tackle. He had honestly started to think of letting Toki have at him-he deserved it, and how many times had he beaten the shit out of Toki, anyway?-but then the weird, high-pitched sound of plastic hitting stone floor brought him back to reality, and reality was Toki’s raised head and bright blue gaze locking with his, burning into him like a flame until Skwisgaar felt less than the meanest organism that had ever crawled from the muck of primordial oceans. He felt sickened by his own existence; Toki’s perfectly dry eyes were hurting him worse than any tears he’d even seen fall from them.
“Toki…” Skwisgaar said, and took a step in his direction. The moment Skwisgaar moved, Toki’s eyes narrowed to slits, as if having the blond come any nearer to him was the most undesirable thing he could imagine. Skwisgaar stopped, standing helpless beneath his lover’s harsh stare.
“I trusted you,” Toki said, and Skwisgaar felt his mind and heart reeling in painful tandem as he continued, “Never again.”
Toki turned and made his weaving way down the corridor; Skwisgaar curled his arms around his stomach and sank to the floor, swallowing everything he wanted to say, swallowing the pain, swallowing his sickness.
The manager pinched the bridge of his nose, motioning with his other hand for Nathan to sit back down. Nathan didn’t.
“He’s missing, Nathan,” Charles said at length, after it became evident that Nathan was not to be calmed. “No one knows where he is. No one has seen him, no one has heard from him. He’s…he’s essentially disappeared.” The manager swiped his thumb and forefinger beneath his eyes as he spoke. The trick was lost on everyone but Skwisgaar, who was the only one that seemed to realize that Charles Foster Ofdensen was inches away from breaking.
A few tense minutes passed, with Nathan curling and uncurling his hands and Charles unable to meet any of their eyes. Murderface was the one that broke the silence, his voice hesitant and flat, as if he still believed that this early-morning fiasco was all a very bad dream.
“Scho…what are we schupposched to do now?” Murderface shifted position on the couch, his dark, scarred forearms crossed tightly across his chest. He was looking at his feet.
“I am pressing every charge imaginable against the rehabilitation center where Pickles was sent,” Charles assured them. “I have also notified the authorities of Pickles’ disappearance, and he is officially a Missing Person. If any of you have any idea whatsoever as to where he may have gone, what he may be doing…please, let me know now, so that I can pass that information along.”
Did anyone else notice the way his voice trembled on ‘please?’ Skwisgaar thought to himself, moments before Nathan’s booming voice redirected all focus toward himself.
“No,” he growled sharply, and everyone, even the manager, shivered. Nathan angry was a frightening experience, even for the manager.
“No,” he said again, a little more quietly and calmly, as if he sensed his outburst had unnerved those around him. “Those…authority people can’t be telling everyone in the whole fucking world that Pickles is gone.”
The manager swallowed once to compose himself, then said, “Nathan, how else do you propose we find Pickles if we don’t enlist the help of outside authorities?”
Nathan was pacing up and down in front of his bandmates. “Fuck if I know,” he mumbled, and began chewing on his black-painted fingernails. “But…if the whole fuckin’ world knows that Pickles is, uh…gone, then…then, well, we like…we might not be the first ones to find him. And we, well, we gotta find him first. I figured you of all people woulda understood that, Robot,” he added, pausing in his pacing to glance at the manager.
Charles was silent for a long moment, gazing into Nathan’s hectic green eyes as if he thought he could find the answer for the whole ridiculous mess somewhere within their depths. He found none. At length, he nodded his consent, and Nathan flopped back onto the couch between Murderface and Skwisgaar.
“I understand your concern, Nathan, and I apologize if I…if I didn’t seem to be considering Pickles’ well-being as fully as I should have.” His hand snaked upward to fiddle with the tie that wasn’t there before Charles jerked it back down into his pocket. “I will take all necessary precautions to ensure that the public has no inkling whatsoever that Dethklok’s drummer has gone missing. Only people most pertinent to the investigation will be notified.”
Skwisgaar felt Toki move slightly next to him as the younger man cocked his head to the side and asked, “Whats ‘pertsnet’ means?”
Skwisgaar-who was wondering that himself-glanced toward Toki despite the near-suffocating weight of guilt inside his chest. The younger man was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, arms locked around his shins and the lower part of his face pressed against the tops of his knees. His bright blue eyes never once strayed in Skwisgaar’s direction.
“It means ‘important,’ Toki,” Nathan answered. Toki nodded. Skwisgaar looked away and tried to ignore the tempest his nerves seemed to insist upon stirring up in his stomach.
“So,” Charles continued, pushing his glassed up on his nose with one finger, “Perhaps we can now get to work.”
A Klokateer appeared out of the shadows so quickly and quietly that the four remaining members of -Dethklok had to do a double take-she seemed to have materialized out of thin air.
“My Lords,” she murmured, and bowed slightly before producing a yellow legal pad and ballpoint pen from the bag she carried at her side.
“Sit,” Charles instructed, waving vaguely to one of the armchairs nearby. The woman obeyed, crossing her legs and propping the legal pad against one knee.
Once she was seated and ready, Charles promptly ignored her and addressed himself to the four men on the sofa-the sofa that looked just a little too big without Pickles to take up his small amount of space.
“Boys, we are going to brainstorm,” he told them, and explained what the word meant before Toki or Skwisgaar could even ask. “We are going to sit and think of every possible place Pickles could have gone, every possible person he could have contacted, until we have something at least resembling a clue of his whereabouts.”
“Why usch?” asked Murderface, whose voice suggested that he still hoped to wake up at any moment.
“Because we know Pickles,” the manager replied. “Now, who wants to make the first suggestion?”
Skwisgaar felt himself wincing as Nathan and Murderface looked toward him, eyebrows raised. He met their glance with a shrug, then a nod, although he dreaded the manager’s reaction to the one little secret the band had managed to keep from him over the years.
“Uh…” Nathan chewed on another fingernail for a moment before continuing, “We should, uh…probably talk to Derek.”
Charles raised his eyebrows. Skwisgaar felt Toki turn toward him as well, and knew without looking that Toki was as confused as the manager.
“And who, pray tell, is Derek?” Charles asked, and Skwisgaar recognized the icy timbre of his voice almost immediately.
“Nej, Robots, no,” he said quickly, catching Ofdensen’s eye so that he would know what Skwisgaar was trying to say. “Derek….Dereks was beingks de drugs dealers. Dat’s alls.”
“He was, uh…ours too,” Nathan muttered. “Not just Pickles’.”
“How come I didn’ts know abouts this guy?” Toki asked, before Skwisgaar realized it, Nathan’s nerves snapped a little.
“Because you wouldn’t have been able to keep your fucking mouth shut about him,” the frontman snapped, “And giving you a way to get at whatever drugs you wanted would asking for a fucking lawsuit and God only knows what other kind of fucking disasters.”
Toki’s body hardened beside him, hardened until it was trembling. Skwisgaar watched in trepidation out of the corner of his eye as Toki unfolded his legs and rose to his feet, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He’s closer to the edge than they think, Skwisgaar said to himself
“And whats,” he muttered through gritted teeth, “Does you mean by thats?”
Skwisgaar knew that tone of voice and hoped that Nathan would know it too, that Nathan would give up, because he wasn’t sure he could calm Toki now…wasn’t even sure that Toki would listen to him at all.
“He meansch you’d halluschinate schome crazy schit and kill schomebody,” Murderface answered. His voice was flat, devoid of any meanness, of any emotion whatsoever.
“I woulds not-“
“Oh, yes you would, you fucking flip out when you drink too much, who the fuck knows what you’d do with LSD or some shit in your system-“
Skwisgaar could feel the heat coming off Toki’s body in waves, could sense the tensing of his many muscles, and he grabbed Toki’s wrist just as he was shifting his body to spring at Nathan.
“Toki,” Skwisgaar mumbled, pulling him back down next to him and doing his best not to look at him, not to see whatever it was would be in Toki’s face-accusation, hope, hatred. “Toki, nots now.”
Toki wrenched his wrist out of Skwisgaar’s grip and laughed-it was brief, bitter, and felt to Skwisgaar like a whiplash, but Toki sat down.
The manager cleared his throat, and Skwisgaar looked up at him. Charles gave him a tight, disapproving glare before glancing sympathetically at Toki-still so tightly wound that he was shaking-and getting back to the topic at hand.
“Derek the drug dealer will be contacted,” he said. “Someone please state his phone number, or numbers.”
Nathan rattled it off from memory, and the silent Klokateer took it down.
“Anything else?” the manager prompted.
“His family, maybe?” Nathan said. “I know they’re not, uh…Pickles’ most favorite people, but, uh…” he shrugged his big shoulders.
“Check with his family, yes, that will be done,” Charles said.
Next to Skwisgaar, Toki sneered, “Seth.”
They eyes of everyone in the room narrowed at the mention of Pickles’ brother.
“Yes…yes, Seth must be interrogated…” the expression on Charles’ face suggested that he would dearly love to be the one performing such an interrogation.
“Bulletsch, Schammy and Tony,” Murderface sighed. He had evidently given up the idea that he was dreaming.
“His former band-good idea, William,” Charles said.
Murderface took no pleasure in the praise, as he usually would. He leaned back into the cushions and stared forward, brooding.
And there they sat for the next several hours as invisible Klokateers readied the Hatredcopter for the trip back to Mordhaus. Outside, the day wore on. The news that Dethklok was leaving the festival well before schedule resulted in rampant rioting. Several were injured and many died, but the roiling crowd never came close to the ‘Copter-patrols of armed Klokateers and a hastily erected, high-voltage electric fence saw to that.
The hours passed, as hours will do, but each tick of the clock was like an hour in and of itself. Hours within hours-it wasn’t a bad description of the way time passed for the remaining members of Dethklok and their manager as the hunt for Pickles was put into action.
It also wasn’t a bad description for the way time passed for Skwisgaar and Toki, whose private, two-personed world had been suddenly and-for Toki, at least-inexplicably upset. With the news of Pickles’ disappearance coming right on the heels of Skwisgaar’s bizarre behavior, Toki’s nerves were more on edge than ever. Not that he was the only one, of course-Nathan, for awhile, was more grumpy and short tempered than ever before. Charles with an unbuttoned collar and loosened or missing tie became the norm. Murderface was quiet, devoid of petty viciousness. Skwisgaar’s fingers hadn’t touched real guitar strings in days, although they got quite a workout with imaginary ones thanks to all the stress.
No, Toki’s not the only one who’s stressed the fuck out, Skwisgaar thought to himself, a week or so after their return to Mordhaus. But he’s the one least likely to be able to handle it.
Skwisgaar was standing in the middle of the corridor, halfway between his room and Toki’s, leaning back against the cold stone wall with his thin arms crossed over his sunken, sick stomach. He was dizzy again. He knew what a ticking time bomb Toki had become, knew he was the only one that could defuse him, calm him, help him, but every time he found the balls to walk up to Toki’s door and raise his knuckles to knock, he saw himself sprawled on the bathroom floor, screaming, Toki holding him in his big arms…and he saw what he couldn’t tell Toki. He saw it more than he had in years, and he’d turn his back on Toki’s door, his empty stomach revolting weakly, and walk away.
At least I didn’t meet the manager this time, Skwisgaar thought, moving away from the wall and beginning to make his slow way back down the corridor to his own room. Despite the dark circles under Charles’ eyes and the slump in his shoulders, he still found the energy to glare at Skwisgaar every time they crossed paths near Toki’s bedroom door-and they had crossed paths there often.
Skwisgaar walked with his eyes on the floor, but for all the blond was actually seeing, he might as well have been walking around blindfolded. He was so preoccupied that when he rammed shoulders with someone in the hall, he mumbled his apologies without even looking up.
When the sharp odor of vodka reached his nose, his first thought was Has Pickles come home? His second thought, when he felt the force with which he hit the wall when he was shoved, was The manager is way more pissed than I thought.
Except that when he actually looked, he saw Toki’s bare, scarcrossed back retreating down the hallway. The younger man’s broad shoulders were bunched in tension, and there was a suspicious red Solo cup held loosely in his left hand.
Skwisgaar opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again when he realized that there was not a damn thing he could say…and yet not saying anything seemed more inadequate than saying something stupid.
Skwisgaar was just about to speak when Toki stopped moving. He turned around, and Skwisgaar lost all ability to think, let alone speak.
Skwisgaar couldn’t see Toki’s eyes; his long, lank hair was hanging in two thick curtains by the sides of his face, casting it into shadow. Despite the Swede’s height, Toki seemed to be towering over him; his broad shoulders were drawn back, his big arms swinging heavily at his sides. The hand holding the Solo cup clenched, and the jagged, harsh sound of crushed plastic echoed down the stone corridor. Skwisgaar watched him; watched the veins in Toki’s thick forearms pop out as he squeezed the cup until his hand shook. Clear liquid was dripping from his fist and the reek of vodka wafted its lazy way toward Skwisgaar, who was poised to sidestep if Toki directed his drunken, pent-up fury in his direction.
Unfortunately, the Swede never saw it coming. He could have handled a thrown fist, could have dealt with an attempted tackle. He had honestly started to think of letting Toki have at him-he deserved it, and how many times had he beaten the shit out of Toki, anyway?-but then the weird, high-pitched sound of plastic hitting stone floor brought him back to reality, and reality was Toki’s raised head and bright blue gaze locking with his, burning into him like a flame until Skwisgaar felt less than the meanest organism that had ever crawled from the muck of primordial oceans. He felt sickened by his own existence; Toki’s perfectly dry eyes were hurting him worse than any tears he’d even seen fall from them.
“Toki…” Skwisgaar said, and took a step in his direction. The moment Skwisgaar moved, Toki’s eyes narrowed to slits, as if having the blond come any nearer to him was the most undesirable thing he could imagine. Skwisgaar stopped, standing helpless beneath his lover’s harsh stare.
“I trusted you,” Toki said, and Skwisgaar felt his mind and heart reeling in painful tandem as he continued, “Never again.”
Toki turned and made his weaving way down the corridor; Skwisgaar curled his arms around his stomach and sank to the floor, swallowing everything he wanted to say, swallowing the pain, swallowing his sickness.