FIC: I'd Have Been Here More (If Only I'd Known) (Nathan/Charles/Pickles; PG-13)
TO: nawazarrio
FROM:seashadows
Title: I'd Have Been Here More (If Only I'd Known)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Charles/Nathan/Pickles
Warnings: none
Words: 6,470
Beta: Gearsmoke
The video referenced: Old Folks Home -The Whitest Kids You Know
Pickles was giggling his ass off.
That wasn’t really unusual; Pickles tended to get drunk and/or stoned out of his gourd about sixty-five percent of the time (possibly more, but Nathan never got past Algebra I in high school, and that was, like, calculus-level stuff). When that happened, though, he usually either bothered everyone in the rec room or stumbled around the haus, looking for a target to annoy. He’d end up puking in a few different places, banging his head on a suit of armor or something just as hard, and passing out - in Charles’s office, which Nathan didn’t really get - four hours later. He didn’t usually park his ass in the hallway outside Nathan’s door and giggle loud enough to keep the vocalist from whacking off. Nothing kept Nathan Explosion from whacking off. It was un-American.
"Hey!” he yelled in the direction of the door, glaring at his wilted boner and standing up, then pulling on his jeans. He was going to see what Pickles was doing, possibly punch him, and then get back to jerking off, because it was kind of a slow day for groupies and he needed to get his rocks off. “Fuck off, Pickles. I’m, uhhh…jack - I mean eating chips.” The only answer he got was another giggle. “Fine.” He walked over to the door, and pulled it open hard enough to make the handle hit the wall. Oops.
"Pickles?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over Pickles’s laughter. “Pickles! The fuck’re you doing?” he asked, tilting his head to peer at the stoned drummer slumped against the stone wall. The fucking ginger asshole was pretty obviously sloppy; he was grinning wide, cheeks as red as his hair. He had a laptop propped on his thighs, and his bare, pasty-white legs - fuck, he wasn’t wearing any pants; that image was going to haunt his nightmares now - were sprawled out on the floor. “I’m not letting you stink up my can if you get the weed shits again. Just, uh, just telling you that. Yeah.”
Pickles rolled eyes stained blood-red with some kind of drug. Could’ve been pot, could’ve been something else. “I don’t gaht the weed shits. Lookit this.” He turned his computer, pulling an earbud out of his left ear. “It’s on YouTube.”
"Uhhh…” Nathan stared at the screen. He couldn’t really figure out the tiny sounds coming out of the earbud, but the video was kind of, um, weird. There were teenagers, and old people, and they looked like they were…dancing? Kind of. The dancing kind of looked like what Murderface tried to do every time he had anything stronger than weed, which meant it was kind of scary. “The fuck are they doing, Pickles?”
"Dood. Can’t you hear?” Pickles shook the ear bud. The face he made was kind of really hilarious, like he thought it was the earplugs’ fault he didn’t take them out of the fucking socket. “Fine, I’ll take it out.” He cranked the volume on the keyboard with his thumb, yanking the plug out of the headphone socket at the same time.
“Let’s go to the old folks’ home! We can get doped up, and then all get stoned!” The music blared out of the speakers and right into Nathan’s earphones. Or was that eardrums? He never remembered what they were; Charles was better at remembering words than he was.
Whatever they were, it hurt; the acoustics in the hallway added to the surprise, and made it sound even louder. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” He slammed a hand down on Pickles’s computer, making it close on the drummer’s fingers. “Aw, fuck, sorry,” he said, watching Pickles hiss through his clenched teeth. He was really big and clumsy and awkward. “But you gotta turn it down a little, holy shit.”
"Dood, faine.” Pickles opened his computer back up and tapped a key on the keyboard, probably dialing the volume back to something that wouldn’t fucking kill. That was metal, though - sounds that killed. Killer sound. It was kind of like what Dethklok did with every song, except…what if it wasn’t? What if it was, like, literal killer metal sound? With fucking metal drills that killed the insides of your ears and let in all kinds of -
"Whoa, hey!” He interrupted himself, but that was okay; his thoughts got interrupted all the time. “Good song title. Fucking Metal Music Drill.” He pulled his recorder out of his pants pocket and clicked it on, then held it up to his mouth. “Idea for a song. Music that, uh, has metal drills in it. Huge ones. And a guy listens to it and it drills into his ears and he, uhh…dies of brain coming out his ears. And this happens forever.” He clicked the recorder off and stuffed it back in his pants. Who was a fucking lyrical visionary? He was!
"Nate,” Pickles whined. “C’mahn. I wanted to show you the video.”
Oh, right. The stupid, probably-not-brutal video. “Yeah, sure,” Nathan growled. When in doubt, use a metal voice and everything will be fucking awesome - that was the rule he went by, and so far, it had worked fucking great. “Is it metal? It didn’t sound metal.”
"Well, keinda.” Pickles scratched the side of his head and yanked on a dread. “It’s, uh, reap.”
That took a minute to figure out (the fucking accent always got thicker when Pickles was bombed). “Rap? You shitting me?” the singer snorted. “That’s, like, the most not-metal music. I’m not listening to any fuckin’ rap.” If Pickles was suggesting that kind of crap, he had to be smoking harder stuff than weed - like cocaine, maybe. Fucking Dr. Rockso must’ve gotten to him.
Nathan made a mental note to find Dr. Rockso and Taser the shit out of him. That would be fun, maybe even more fun than smashing watches.
It’s naht like pussy reap or nothin’,” Pickles said (rudely interrupting Nathan’s clown-tasering fantasy). “It’s metal.”
"That’s not even possible or anything,” Nathan answered. It was official; Pickles was losing his mind. “I’m not watching a fuckin’ rap video, okay? You gotta get that into your head. It’s pussy.”
"But this one’s awesome. Look, Nate.” Pickles turned his computer so that the paused video was facing Nathan; it was some old fucker sitting on a bed with a couple of kids, and the lighting was really weird. “See? It’s all about these kids, and they go visit his grandma in a nursing home and get high off her meds. It’s totally feckin’ metal.”
Nathan stared at the screen. “That doesn’t look like a grandma.” Not unless that dude was really a lady, and she was a train…transsexy or whatever the hell that was.
"Course it doesn’t. That ain’t the grandma.” Pickles pointed. His finger made the guy’s head split into about a zillion colors, which was kind of trippy. “Deat’s one of the other doods at the nursing home. He gets Percodan, and all the kids get high ahff it.”
"Whoa, really?” Nathan bit his lip, scratching his stomach as he took another look at the screen. “I guess…I guess that old dude’s kinda metal.” What if Ofdensen had meds and gave them out? That’d be totally metal, like a brutal grandpa or something, except the robot wasn’t gray or anything yet.
"Yeah!” Pickles exclaimed. His eyes were lit up, his cheeks as red and round as apples while he grinned - he looked more excited than Murderface did after Toki puked troll meat. “You know what we gahtta do. Reet, Nate?” He looked expectantly into Nathan’s eyes. “Guess.”
"Uhhh…” He was coming up blank. Chewing on his lip again, Nathan tried to think. “Um. Get an old dude and put him outside Skwisgaar’s room and see if Skwisgaar fucks him?”
"Nah, but deat’s a good idea, dood. I was talkin’ about going to a nursing home and getting high ahff their stuff.” Pickles stood up, then fell back down onto the floor.
Nathan groaned and went to pick him up. Pickles’s legs sometimes turned into blood-filled jelly sacks when he was high. If Toki or Skwisgaar was around, Pickles got his hair messed with, but luckily Toki was probably messing with his model planes, and Skwisgaar was probably off fucking someone. Or a lot of someones. Like a dick-riding conga line full of old fat la - fuck, gross. “Wait. You wanna go to a…I thought you had, you know, stuff here.”
The drummer shrugged. “Sure, but it’s - I dunno. It’s lost a latta appeal. I mean, I c’n get high anytime, but when can I get high ahff odder people’s stuff? Deat’s the thrill of the forbidden. Or something. Know what I mean?”
"Um.” Now that he thought about it (not very hard, mind you), booze didn’t taste as good when he didn’t steal it from the robot or drink it right before a show or basically drink booze when and where he wasn’t supposed to drink booze. “Kinda, um. So you wanna go visit some old people and steal their pills? That’s harsh.” Stealing from old people wasn’t metal; it was too easy, and kind of…mean.
"No, dood! Deat ain’t brutal. Stealin’ pills? Nah.” Pickles shook his head so hard that his dreads went flying all over, like red, hairy snakes (another good song title - Red Hairy Snakes). “They’re gonna give ‘em to us.”
"Uh. How’re we gonna get ‘em to give us their, uh, meds?” Nathan asked. Old people didn’t really go for rock stars, except if you were Skwisgaar and the old person happened to be a GMILF. Otherwise, you got your head smacked with a goddamn purse, and that hurt. “Don’t they need them?”
"Yeah, they do. Huh.” Pickles scratched his chin. “But…what if we gaht someone who wasn’t us? Some smart dood. Like…shit! I gaht it!” His grin spread across his face like butter or something (Nathan wasn’t good at fucking similes or metaphors or whatever that was). “We’ll get the robaht to take us!”
"What?”
"No, listen. We’ll just tell ‘im Dethklahk wants’ta help old people by playin’ awesahm music for ‘em, and he’ll take us, and then we can get high while he’s ahff talkin’ to a secretary or some shit like that.”
That actually made sense, in a weird Pickles way. “Uhhh,” Nathan said, jerking his head in the direction of his door. “Come in, I guess. I gotta get really, really drunk for this.”
It probably didn’t still smell like he’d been jacking off.
~
He and Pickles were both kind of bombed when they stumbled into Charles’s office, but the manager didn’t even look up. He probably thought they were going to smash his good lamps.
Well, not this time. “Hey, Charles,” Nathan said, making his way over to the big fuck-off desk and straightening himself up as much as he could when he had a bottle of whiskey in his system. “Pickles and me, we wanna go out.”
"Fine,” Charles said. His eyes were glued to his fucking computer screen, like Nathan and Pickles didn’t even matter. Nathan frowned; that kind of hurt. A lot. “You don’t need my permission to go somewhere.”
"NO,” Nathan growled, slapping the keyboard lightly. “You gotta pay attention to us.”
Charles looked up; his face was set into a robot glare, with his mouth all tight and his eyes squinted behind his glasses. “What is it, Nathan?” he asked, his voice thin and annoyed, before he blinked and rearranged his face into something more blank. “Can I help you?”
"Yeah.” Nathan put his hands flat on the desk and leaned in. “We’re gonna go find some old people to visit, and we want you to come with us and pal around.”
"An’ talk to people,” Pickles said. He probably meant to put his hands on the desk, too, but he ended up putting them on Nathan’s ass. “Sahrry, dood. Hey.” He shuffled out from behind Nathan and stared at Charles. “You in or out?”
Fuck. Hadn’t Nathan said he’d do the talking? Pickles was never convincing when he was high, not unless everyone else around him was wasted, too. He elbowed Pickles in the side, making the drummer squeak, and leaned in farther. “You got, like, a grandma or something we can visit?”
Charles wrinkled his nose, and Nathan felt his cheeks go a little hot. He should’ve checked for booze-breath before they came in. “Aren’t your parents in a retirement community, Nathan?”
"Well, yeah, but…” Huh. He didn’t think of that. “They have friends and shit, and a lot of people in nursing homes don’t have that. And they’re not really old.” Old people were the ones who needed shit bags and walkers, and sometimes wheelchairs. They didn’t come visit their kids and annoy the shit out of them - well, sometimes they did, but then they usually hamburger timed.
"Tell me something, Nathan,” Charles said, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands. “Why do you suddenly want to pay a visit to a nursing home? Neither you nor Pickles has ever expressed any interest in that.”
"I can tell ya deat, chief.” Fuck, now Pickles was speaking up again. Nathan tensed a little. “It’s ‘cause it’s good karma, dood! Old people’re cool, mostly. They’ve lived a real long time, and no one ever visits ‘em. If some people from Dethklahk visited ‘em, it’d be good PR for us, and we can help make old people metal!”
"Yeah,” Nathan said after a pause. “That’s right. That’s exactly why.” Pickles was a fucking genius, especially for someone who got high as much as he did. He nodded for emphasis, so forcefully that he was almost headbanging, and shifted his position so he wasn’t breathing whiskey into Charles’s face; that was just rude.
He didn’t know if it convinced Charles, but at least the Eyebrow of Doom went down. “All right,” Charles said. “You’re right, Pickles - it would be good PR for at least part of Dethklok to be seen visiting the elderly.” He picked up his Dethphone and tapped the screen. “My grandmother is in a nursing home in Duluth, and it’s past time I visited her again. Give me time to make some arrangements.”
"Aw, sweet, dood,” Pickles replied, his face cracking into a grin. He hiccupped, swayed a little, and then hit the floor with a loud flump.
"Dude.” Nathan looked down. “His head’s on my feet.”
"Yes, Nathan,” Charles said. “I believe he’s unconscious.”
So Nathan kicked him a little.
~
The Broken Pines Nursing Home didn’t have a landing pad or anything; Nathan could feel a few people crunch under the Dethcopter’s landing equipment when they touched down on the lawn. “Brutal,” he said, and took out his recorder. “Idea for a song: Human Helicopter Landing. People get squished under a copter, and there’s blood and brains everywhere. And, uhh, the helicopter flies better.” No…blood didn’t make stuff go better. It made it go worse. “Wait, uh…it doesn’t fly better. It goes sliding around and kills people. Uncontrollable Helicopter Death.” Charles muttered something about liability insurance or shit like that, but it was so fucking boring that Nathan tuned him out, again.
"Hey!” Pickles looked like he was almost pissing himself, he was so excited; his nose was pressed against the helicopter window. “It’s just like in th’ video!” He pointed out the window at a couple of bald old shits sitting on the lawn. It didn’t look like they’d even noticed the copter landing. “Sleepin’ doods in wheelchairs all over the yard! Deat’s awesome. Ooh, man, I should totally -”
"Hey,” Nathan said. “Hey, Pickles.”
"Yeh?”
"You can’t wake ‘em up. Old dudes get really pissed off when you don’t let ‘em sleep.” Once, he’d woken his dad up from a nap when he wasn’t ready, and he’d clocked him right in the face - and his dad was only like fifty or sixty. “They…like, hit you. Hard.”
"Aww.” Pickles made a really pathetic sad face, with his lower lip hanging out. “Can I jest -“
"NO.” Nathan didn’t even need to hear it to know it would be a bad fucking idea. You just didn’t mess with sleeping old dudes.
"Nathan? Pickles?” Charles said. Nathan turned his head to look at him; he was holding his Dethphone, and one of his fingers was bleeding. Sweet. Blood was even more awesome when it came from a stiff-ass guy in a suit. “My grandmother’s been informed that you’re here.”
"Good,” Pickles said, then giggled. “Is she gahnna be wearin’ a tie?”
"Ah, no. She doesn’t wear ties. But she is ninety-five years old, so you need to be careful with her, okay?” Charles shot them a Dethglare that was even better than Toki’s when he got pissed off.
"So we can’t talk about blood or anything?” Nathan asked.
"Yes, Nathan. That’s exactly what I mean.”
That sucked. What would they talk about now? They were in Dethklok, for fuck’s sake - they pretty muchbreathed blood. “Can I talk to her about, like, kittens and shit?” he said. “I can probably do that for like ten minutes without puking or anything.”
"Dood.” Pickles had to have some pills on him or something, because Nathan would have sworn on some really metal book that Pickles was even higher than he’d been yesterday. “Kittens.”
"What about kittens?” Nathan said, a little impatiently. Why was he the one who always had to bring Pickles back to real life, where kittens weren’t metal? It wasn’t fucking fair.
"Dunno.” Pickles shrugged. “They’re feckin’ tiny.”
Charles sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and stood up. “All right, boys. If you’ll follow me, we’ll go see Gr - my grandmother.”
"Go see who?” Pickles said as they left the Dethcopter. “Were you gahnna say Greamma? You can say deat around us.”
"No, Pickles. I, ah, wasn’t about to call her anything.” Charles’s cheeks were weirdly red; Nathan narrowed his eyes at him as he walked around some sleeping old guy - one who looked so much like Stella Murderface that it was seriously creepy.
"Eucchhh,” Nathan said without thinking about it. They guy opened a pouchy eye and looked at him. “Uh. Don’t worry about it, uh, sir. We’re gonna go see someone else.” The old dude shrugged, closed his eye, and made a weird noise with his mouth that totally sounded like blood puke was about to happen. Old people, Nathan decided, were awesome.
"And another thing,” Charles added, pushing the cloudy glass door open. “Please refrain from making any sounds that indicate you find my grandmother repulsive. She’s ninety-five years old.”
It was seriously shitty timing to say that right then, as it turned out, because Pickles gagged as soon as they walked in. “Nate’s the one who - shit. What’s that smell?”
"Yeah, fuck,” Nathan agreed. It smelled like piss and baby powder and lemon cleaner and older piss and (for some reason) bananas. The place looked nice and all - there were a lot of flowers around in blue vases, and the ceiling was like a giant skylight - but it just smelled like someone had died. Fuck, someone probably did. Like, yesterday. “Hey,” he said, leaning in so that he was speaking right into Charles’s ear. “Does your grandma smell like this?”
Charles sighed. “Nathan, that’s unnecessary. Hello, Anna.” He raised his hand slightly and waved it at the blonde lady behind the reception desk. “We’re here to see Myra Stoeffel.”
"Absolutely, Mr. Ofdensen. She already knows you’re…here.” Her already giant blue eyes widened as she took in Nathan and Pickles. “These are, um, friends of yours?”
Nathan didn’t blame her. He did look pretty fucking scary, after all. “Yeah,” he growled. “We’re gonna go see his grandma with him. Old people are metal.”
Anna-the-Receptionist blinked. “Do you mean metallic? We have quite a few residents with hip replacements and such, so if you have any powerful magnets on your person, I’d advise that you discard them here.”
"No,” Pickles said. “He meant metal, dood, like brutal and awesome. How d’ya naht know what metal is?”
"Enough, Pickles,” Charles interrupted. “Sorry,” he said, stepping a little closer to the receptionist and sliding something across the desk. “It’s, ah, five dollars off at Hot Topic. The press won’t know about the boys’ shenanigans, I presume.” She nodded, her eyes still wide. A lousy coupon was a pretty piss-poor incentive (that was the word Charles used for it, anyway; Nathan preferred ‘blackmail stuff’), but something in his eyes seemed to convince her. “Good. Is my grandmother still on the first floor?”
"Yes, Mr. Ofdensen. One-twelve,” Anna said. She shook her head, like the robot had put a spell on her and she was just snapping out of it. Brutal. Nathan made a mental note to take out his recorder later and make a…uh…non-mental note for a song. It was probably rude to do that when there were old people around.
"Which way would that be?” Charles asked. “It’s been a while.”
"That way.” She pointed to a hallway that branched off from the main lobby; it looked dark from where Nathan was standing, and kind of weird, like there weren’t enough lights in there. Didn’t old people usually need more light? “Just down that hallway, six rooms to the right.”
"Thank you.” Charles nodded at her and started walking, crooking his finger in Nathan and Pickles’s direction. “Are you two coming with me or not?”
"Oh! Right, yeah.” Nathan elbowed Pickles in the ribs - it looked like he was spacing out again, because his mouth was open and there would be a drool wave going on if he wasn’t careful. “Come on, you dildo. We’re gonna go see Charles’s grandma.”
"Yeh, yeh.” Pickles rubbed his ribs, glaring at Nathan. “You don’t gahtta spear me.”
Nathan snorted. “That’s what she said.”
Pickles giggled all the way out of the lobby and down the hallway, which was a fucking depressing blue-gray color and was so tiny that Nathan felt classphobic, or whatever that word was that meant you were scared of small spaces. The doors were shit brown - they kind of went with the blue, but they also made him think those guys in the video were probably onto something about nursing homes and crap.
Charles’s grandmother’s door had “112” on it in those sticky cling letters; they were on crooked and were starting to peel off, but Nathan didn’t have much time to think about how depressingly metal that was before Charles knocked on it. “Grandma?” he said. Pickles shoved his fist in his mouth and made another choked giggling noise. “It’s Charles.”
There wasn’t any answer, but maybe Charles had super-hearing or something, because he twisted the doorknob and opened the door anyway. “I’ve brought friends,” he said. “Do you remember that I manage a band?”
Shuffling into the room after him, Nathan could see the tiny woman sitting on the bed, wearing a purple, plastic-looking shirt and pants that swallowed her up. The harsh lights made her scalp shine through the straggly white hair hanging down to her shoulders. “Hello, Charles,” she said, lifting her head. She was wearing yellow-rimmed plastic glasses that were so thick, her eyes looked squinty. “Who are these big men?”
"Dude, he just told you,” Nathan said. Was she deaf or something?
"Nathan,” Charles said, shooting him a look before turning to his grandmother. “Grandma, do you remember that I manage a band?”
"You do what, dear?” his grandmother asked, and slowly patted the space next to her on her bed. “Sit next to me and tell me about your major. I’ve forgotten.”
Charles didn’t even say anything about the fact that she hadn’t even been listening, which was pretty fucking rude, if you wanted Nathan’s opinion about it. “Grandma,” he said, sitting down on the thin, nubby white blanket, “I graduated from college more than twenty years ago. I manage a music group now. Will you two come over here?” He crooked his finger at Nathan (well, probably at Pickles, too; Pickles was leaning against his back). “The tall man is Nathan, and the redhead is Pickles. They sing and drum in the band Dethklok. Nathan, Pickles, this is my grandmother, Mrs. Stoeffel. Sit on the floor so she can see you.”
That was kind of embarrassing, but whatever. She was like a hundred, right? Nathan grunted, lowering himself onto the floor and yanking Pickles down with him. “Sorry about him,” he said, jerking a thumb at the drummer. “He’s kind of high.”
"Hi to him, too,” Charles’s grandmother said, and smiled. Her teeth were yellow and gross, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing; from this angle, Nathan could see the square line of her jaw - exactly like Charles’s. Huh. “The better greeting is ‘hello’, young man.”
"Hey.” Pickles grinned and waved at her. “Oh, dood, Skwisgaar would love you.”
She blinked. “Who’s that?”
"The lead guitarist of Dethklok,” Charles explained, touching his grandmother on the shoulder. God, this was fucking surreal, seeing Charles motherfucking Ofdensen explaining shit to an old lady. Even if she was related to him. “There are two guitarists. Skwisgaar has a taste for…ah, never mind.”
"Two guitar players?” She ran a wrinkled, knobby hand through her hair. “That seems unnecessary, dear. Make one of them get a real job.”
"Yer sayin’ fire Toki?” Pickles said. “Deat’s what I been sayin’ we should do all along! Charles, yer grandma’s a feckin’ genius.”
Charles rubbed his forehead and turned to his grandmother. “No, Grandma. We do need two guitarists for better sound dynamics.”
She scratched her chin. “I thought you said you were majoring in political science. Have you changed it to music?”
Charles shook his head. “I did major in political science, but I’m grown up now. I’m a lawyer, and these are two members of a band. I do their finances.”
"Oh, I see,” she said. “Are they your boyfriends, Charles?”
Nathan inhaled a glob of spit, and hacked for about a minute while he tried to figure out if she’d actually just said that, or if he was just losing his hearing from all the screaming he normally did. “What?” he rasped, after clearing all the crap out of his lungs. “Did you just say we’re his boyfriends?”
"I did, dear.” She reached out and actually patted Nathan on the fucking head, like she didn’t know how un-metal what she’d just said was, and wouldn’t have cared even if she did know. Or something. It was making Nathan’s brain hurt, trying to figure it out. Also, her hand was cold even through his hair. “When Charles was a little boy, he told me he wanted to marry a nice man. It’s been a few years, but I think he still wants to.”
"Charles,” Pickles said, scooting up and hugging his knees, “is she fer real?” There was a shit-eating grin on his face about a mile long. “’Cause I won’t tell anyone, but theat’s naht metal.”
"She’s had degenerative dementia for the past ten years or so,” Charles said - all professional, like the woman who pushed his mother into the world (or maybe his dad, but her name would probably be Ofdensen then, right?) wasn’t sitting right next to him. “She’s ninety-five years old, Pickles. Her mental filters are nonexistent.”
Pickles’s smile dissolved as fast as it had spread across his face. “Degenerative?”
"Progressive, Pickles. She’s not getting any better.”
"Oh.” Pickles’s voice was soft, so much that Nathan almost couldn’t hear him. “Deat…sucks.”
"Charles Foster Ofdensen,” his grandmother broke in, “how many times have I told you not to talk about a lady’s age? Especially in polite company.” She flapped her hand in Nathan and Pickles’s direction. “You’re not too old for a switching, you know.”
I think I am, Grandma.” Charles smiled, but it looked sad this time, like saying the words ‘ninety-five’ was making him think about hamburger time. Nathan knew he was thinking about it. Fuck, that was really depressing - she was probably going to be in a box soon, all dead and rotting while maggots -
Pickles interrupted his train of thought by getting to his feet, shaky like he’d just drunk most of a bottle of booze, and blurting out “I gahtta use the can.”
"Over there, dear,” Charles’s grandmother said, and pointed to another brown door on the other side of the room. “That door. And it’s called the water closet, not the can.”
Thanks, dood.” Pickles nodded at her, running over to the door and slamming it hard behind him.
Nathan stared at the door for a second, then looked at Charles. “I don’t think he really has to piss.”
"Neither do I. Excuse me.” Charles stood up, glanced at his grandmother, and then turned to look at Nathan. “I’m going to see what’s wrong with Pickles. Talk to her, please.”
"Uh…okay.” Fuck, now he was gonna have to talk about kittens, and if this was anything like one of Pickles’s usual spaz attacks, he’d have to talk about them for way longer than ten minutes and he’d definitely throw up. Fucking fantastic. “Hey,” he said, giving Charles’s grandmother his best non-creepy smile. “Um. Do you like kittens?”
"Kittens? Why would I like them?” She wrinkled her face up, which looked super fucking weird with the wrinkles that were already there. “Sit here with me, dear. I’m sure you don’t enjoy looking up my nose.”
"Sure.” That actually made a lot of sense. Old people were definitely metal. “Nngh.” He heaved himself up off the floor and sat down on the bed, which was still warm from where Charles’s ass had been (weird) and which creaked when he sat down (everyone was a critic). Up close, Charles’s grandmother looked even more like Charles; her eyes were definitely the same color.
She looked at him up and down. “Aren’t you a big young man! Are you in school with Charles?”
Seriously? Charles had told her about Dethklok like a zillion times in the last five minutes. Her mind really was going. “I’m not in school,” Nathan answered. “I’m a singer.”
"You take care of that voice, then.” She leaned in and patted his throat with her freaky cold hand. “No more cigarettes, and don’t try to tell me that you don’t smoke them, because you sound like you’ve been licking a gravel pit, dear.”
"Uh,” he said. That was pretty nosy, but gravel pits were metal. “Thanks. Look, I gotta go make sure my, uh, friend isn’t about to hambur - die.” She wouldn’t know about hamburger time, right. “Are you gonna be okay?”
"Oh, I’ll be fine.” She flapped her hand at him. “You find your friends.”
"Okay. Yeah.” Nathan got up and walked to the bathroom door, turning around when he got there to make sure she hadn’t fallen over and cracked her skull open. Nope, just sitting there. Shrugging, he turned the bathroom doorknob and went in. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Charles, who was sitting on the floor - it would’ve been a lot funnier if it weren’t so goddamn weird, but Nathan was probably still going to make fun of him for it later - didn’t even look up at him. Pickles, who was sitting on the toilet seat with his head in his hands, was still shaking. “You didn’t leave my grandmother alone, did you?”
"She said it was okay,” Nathan protested. Did Charles think he was an idiot? “Look, she’s alone all the time. I just wanna make sure Pickles isn’t, you know, freaking out or anything.”
"I’m naht freakin’ out.” Pickles’s voice was muffled behind his hands. “I…I just don’t wanna ever get old and…oh, gahd. I don’t wanna forget shit!”
"Dude…” Pickles was right, though. It was pretty creepy, seeing someone’s mind going to shit up close and personal. Pickles had already had to go through a lot, especially during that fucked-up week when he thought he was going to, well, hamburger time. Maybe that was why it was worse for him. “You’re not gonna forget shit.”
"Yeah, I am, ya dick.” Pickles pressed his feet against the toilet, like he was going to smash into pieces and fly away if he didn’t hold onto it with everything he had. “I’m gahnna git old and forget shit, and then I’m gahnna hamburger time and just…I’ll be nothin’.”
"Whoa,” Nathan said. That was…depressing. And true. “Hey, Charles, does everyone get old and forget shit?”
"No.” Charles shook his head, moving a little closer (not that there was much room to do it, but whatever; Charles was kind of a ninja like that). “Pickles, progressive dementia is the exception, not the rule. You’ll have access to the best medications to keep your mind as sharp as possible.”
"Dood.” Pickles took his hands away from his face and just glared at Charles, and holy shit, were those tears in his eyes? “Y’said deat like I’m supposed to just believe ya. But I don’t, okay?”
This was all kinds of fucked up. Pickles was being all emotional and gay and shit, and it was fucking catching, because Nathan could feel his mouth drooping into a frown, too. It looked like Pickles was going to be in a funk until the end of time, and they’d all die crammed into this weird-smelling old person’s bathroom, and then their bodies would -
Gay. Pickles was being emotional and gay. Reacting with his dumb gay heart. Ugh. No. Nathan frowned, thinking extra hard about how to fix this problem. Pickles didn’t really react to getting punched or yelled at - it was just like he expected it, and let it roll off him. Maybe reverse psychology would work, like…what if doing some shit that was really gay would snap him out of it?
That made fucking sense. Better man up, Nathan. “Hey, Pickles,” he said.
"What? Y’gahnna tell me I ain’t ever -“
Nathan kissed him. He fucking kissed him, and Pickles’s lips were warm and kind of chapped and a little scratchy from his beard hairs, but the drummer smelled kind of nice and smoky and WHOA. Did his dick just twitch? Fuck, he didn’t want to get a fucking boner. Pulling away, he wiped his mouth on his shoulder and tried not to blush. Blushing wasn’t metal, either.
Pickles just…stared. And then he blew up. “What the fuck are you doin’, Nathan? Dood! Deat’s naht cool!”
"Fuck you,” Nathan said. Why didn’t he think before he did stuff? Well, he actually had thought about it, so why didn’t he think smart shit instead of stupid ideas like that? “You’re being all depressed and…and gay and shit, so I was gayer. Did it work?”
"You don’t do gay stuff to cheer someone up, ya douchebag!” Pickles exclaimed. “You call ‘em a dick and punch them!”
"We’re trying to steer Nathan away from hitting people, Pickles,” Charles said, and stood up, looking at both of them with a raised Eyebrow of Doom. It might have been his dick talking, since he had a really uncomfortable raging semi, but Nathan kind of wanted to lick that eyebrow all of a sudden. No - not just lick. He wanted to bite it.
"Yeah, sure, but he kissed me to cheer me up! You don’t think that’s weird, chief?”
Charles paused. “It’s a bit…uncharacteristic, but no, I don’t think it’s weird.”
One second, he was finishing his sentence, and the next second, Pickles was kissing him. The redhead practically lunged at Charles, grabbing him by the suit-covered shoulders and pressing their bodies together.
Nathan’s jaw dropped, and a sudden, really uncomfortable feeling in his pants let him know that his boner liked what it…well, what he saw. This wasn’t just a peck, like what he’d given Pickles; he was seeing a totally epic rock-star makeout between two sexy (yeah, they were sexy) guys…and was that tongue? Yeah, it was Pickles’s tongue flickering against Charles’s lips. If he got any harder, he was probably going to rip his fly right open. “Fuck,” he muttered. “That’s…hot.”
Charles’s face was flushed when Pickles broke the kiss. For once, it looked like Pickles had made the robot shut up, because nothing was coming out of the guy’s mouth except a few fucking hilarious noises. “Pickles,” he finally said. “Is this what you want?” Just that.
Pickles’s eyes widened. “You’d actually…”
"Yes.” Charles’s cheeks flushed redder.
"So yer grandma was right?”
Yes.”
"Then she’s not crazy,” Pickles said. “And if she’s not crazy, I’m not gahnna be crazy, either.” That shit-eating grin was back, only this time his mouth was reddened from - okay, if Nathan thought about that kiss any longer, he was totally going to come in his pants.
"Hey,” he said. “If I think about that fuckin’ kiss any longer, I’m gonna come in my pants.”
"Whoa, dood, for real?” Pickles said. “You liked that, too? Heh…I guess you weren’t just, uh, tryin’ ta make me stop bein’ emo, huh?”
"Maybe.” Nathan shrugged. “But you guys are hot, and I guess we…uh, we can do some gay shit if it’s not gonna fuck stuff up in the band.” That was the rule: don’t fuck up band dynamics. Nathan figured it was a pretty good rule; he made it up himself.
"I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Charles said, “but that idea is extremely appealing.”
"Feck, yeah, it is,” Pickles said, digging in his pocket. “And look what I gaht.” He held up a bag of…something. “I gaht some awesahm gov’mint weed from this old dood outside. Why don’t we go beack home, get really fucked up, and do some gay shit to each other?”
"You actually got shit from the old guys here?” Pickles was either really smart or really fast, or both. “Awesome.”
Charles pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why don’t I say goodbye to my grandmother and take you two back to Mordhaus before you do something you’ll regret? I’ll end up doing things I’ll regret right now…in this bathroom, and I don’t want to do that to my knees.”
"Do you mean - oh.” It was a good thing Nathan was thinking today, because otherwise he would’ve never picked up that Charles actually wanted to blow him. Really bad, like…so bad that he was thinking of doing it in this bathroom.“Yeah, uh. Let’s get the fuck outta here and get back to Mordhaus before we do…that. With your grandma in the other room.”
~
Two weeks later, the Broken Pines Nursing Home registered the single largest donation it had ever received. It was, in fact, so huge that two residents had severe heart attacks and a receptionist fainted. Nathan would later maintain on the Dethklok Minute that, for some reason, it was “totally, totally fucking worth it.”
Only he, Pickles, and Charles knew just how ‘worth it’ it was.
FROM:seashadows
Title: I'd Have Been Here More (If Only I'd Known)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Charles/Nathan/Pickles
Warnings: none
Words: 6,470
Beta: Gearsmoke
The video referenced: Old Folks Home -The Whitest Kids You Know
Pickles was giggling his ass off.
That wasn’t really unusual; Pickles tended to get drunk and/or stoned out of his gourd about sixty-five percent of the time (possibly more, but Nathan never got past Algebra I in high school, and that was, like, calculus-level stuff). When that happened, though, he usually either bothered everyone in the rec room or stumbled around the haus, looking for a target to annoy. He’d end up puking in a few different places, banging his head on a suit of armor or something just as hard, and passing out - in Charles’s office, which Nathan didn’t really get - four hours later. He didn’t usually park his ass in the hallway outside Nathan’s door and giggle loud enough to keep the vocalist from whacking off. Nothing kept Nathan Explosion from whacking off. It was un-American.
"Hey!” he yelled in the direction of the door, glaring at his wilted boner and standing up, then pulling on his jeans. He was going to see what Pickles was doing, possibly punch him, and then get back to jerking off, because it was kind of a slow day for groupies and he needed to get his rocks off. “Fuck off, Pickles. I’m, uhhh…jack - I mean eating chips.” The only answer he got was another giggle. “Fine.” He walked over to the door, and pulled it open hard enough to make the handle hit the wall. Oops.
"Pickles?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over Pickles’s laughter. “Pickles! The fuck’re you doing?” he asked, tilting his head to peer at the stoned drummer slumped against the stone wall. The fucking ginger asshole was pretty obviously sloppy; he was grinning wide, cheeks as red as his hair. He had a laptop propped on his thighs, and his bare, pasty-white legs - fuck, he wasn’t wearing any pants; that image was going to haunt his nightmares now - were sprawled out on the floor. “I’m not letting you stink up my can if you get the weed shits again. Just, uh, just telling you that. Yeah.”
Pickles rolled eyes stained blood-red with some kind of drug. Could’ve been pot, could’ve been something else. “I don’t gaht the weed shits. Lookit this.” He turned his computer, pulling an earbud out of his left ear. “It’s on YouTube.”
"Uhhh…” Nathan stared at the screen. He couldn’t really figure out the tiny sounds coming out of the earbud, but the video was kind of, um, weird. There were teenagers, and old people, and they looked like they were…dancing? Kind of. The dancing kind of looked like what Murderface tried to do every time he had anything stronger than weed, which meant it was kind of scary. “The fuck are they doing, Pickles?”
"Dood. Can’t you hear?” Pickles shook the ear bud. The face he made was kind of really hilarious, like he thought it was the earplugs’ fault he didn’t take them out of the fucking socket. “Fine, I’ll take it out.” He cranked the volume on the keyboard with his thumb, yanking the plug out of the headphone socket at the same time.
“Let’s go to the old folks’ home! We can get doped up, and then all get stoned!” The music blared out of the speakers and right into Nathan’s earphones. Or was that eardrums? He never remembered what they were; Charles was better at remembering words than he was.
Whatever they were, it hurt; the acoustics in the hallway added to the surprise, and made it sound even louder. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” He slammed a hand down on Pickles’s computer, making it close on the drummer’s fingers. “Aw, fuck, sorry,” he said, watching Pickles hiss through his clenched teeth. He was really big and clumsy and awkward. “But you gotta turn it down a little, holy shit.”
"Dood, faine.” Pickles opened his computer back up and tapped a key on the keyboard, probably dialing the volume back to something that wouldn’t fucking kill. That was metal, though - sounds that killed. Killer sound. It was kind of like what Dethklok did with every song, except…what if it wasn’t? What if it was, like, literal killer metal sound? With fucking metal drills that killed the insides of your ears and let in all kinds of -
"Whoa, hey!” He interrupted himself, but that was okay; his thoughts got interrupted all the time. “Good song title. Fucking Metal Music Drill.” He pulled his recorder out of his pants pocket and clicked it on, then held it up to his mouth. “Idea for a song. Music that, uh, has metal drills in it. Huge ones. And a guy listens to it and it drills into his ears and he, uhh…dies of brain coming out his ears. And this happens forever.” He clicked the recorder off and stuffed it back in his pants. Who was a fucking lyrical visionary? He was!
"Nate,” Pickles whined. “C’mahn. I wanted to show you the video.”
Oh, right. The stupid, probably-not-brutal video. “Yeah, sure,” Nathan growled. When in doubt, use a metal voice and everything will be fucking awesome - that was the rule he went by, and so far, it had worked fucking great. “Is it metal? It didn’t sound metal.”
"Well, keinda.” Pickles scratched the side of his head and yanked on a dread. “It’s, uh, reap.”
That took a minute to figure out (the fucking accent always got thicker when Pickles was bombed). “Rap? You shitting me?” the singer snorted. “That’s, like, the most not-metal music. I’m not listening to any fuckin’ rap.” If Pickles was suggesting that kind of crap, he had to be smoking harder stuff than weed - like cocaine, maybe. Fucking Dr. Rockso must’ve gotten to him.
Nathan made a mental note to find Dr. Rockso and Taser the shit out of him. That would be fun, maybe even more fun than smashing watches.
It’s naht like pussy reap or nothin’,” Pickles said (rudely interrupting Nathan’s clown-tasering fantasy). “It’s metal.”
"That’s not even possible or anything,” Nathan answered. It was official; Pickles was losing his mind. “I’m not watching a fuckin’ rap video, okay? You gotta get that into your head. It’s pussy.”
"But this one’s awesome. Look, Nate.” Pickles turned his computer so that the paused video was facing Nathan; it was some old fucker sitting on a bed with a couple of kids, and the lighting was really weird. “See? It’s all about these kids, and they go visit his grandma in a nursing home and get high off her meds. It’s totally feckin’ metal.”
Nathan stared at the screen. “That doesn’t look like a grandma.” Not unless that dude was really a lady, and she was a train…transsexy or whatever the hell that was.
"Course it doesn’t. That ain’t the grandma.” Pickles pointed. His finger made the guy’s head split into about a zillion colors, which was kind of trippy. “Deat’s one of the other doods at the nursing home. He gets Percodan, and all the kids get high ahff it.”
"Whoa, really?” Nathan bit his lip, scratching his stomach as he took another look at the screen. “I guess…I guess that old dude’s kinda metal.” What if Ofdensen had meds and gave them out? That’d be totally metal, like a brutal grandpa or something, except the robot wasn’t gray or anything yet.
"Yeah!” Pickles exclaimed. His eyes were lit up, his cheeks as red and round as apples while he grinned - he looked more excited than Murderface did after Toki puked troll meat. “You know what we gahtta do. Reet, Nate?” He looked expectantly into Nathan’s eyes. “Guess.”
"Uhhh…” He was coming up blank. Chewing on his lip again, Nathan tried to think. “Um. Get an old dude and put him outside Skwisgaar’s room and see if Skwisgaar fucks him?”
"Nah, but deat’s a good idea, dood. I was talkin’ about going to a nursing home and getting high ahff their stuff.” Pickles stood up, then fell back down onto the floor.
Nathan groaned and went to pick him up. Pickles’s legs sometimes turned into blood-filled jelly sacks when he was high. If Toki or Skwisgaar was around, Pickles got his hair messed with, but luckily Toki was probably messing with his model planes, and Skwisgaar was probably off fucking someone. Or a lot of someones. Like a dick-riding conga line full of old fat la - fuck, gross. “Wait. You wanna go to a…I thought you had, you know, stuff here.”
The drummer shrugged. “Sure, but it’s - I dunno. It’s lost a latta appeal. I mean, I c’n get high anytime, but when can I get high ahff odder people’s stuff? Deat’s the thrill of the forbidden. Or something. Know what I mean?”
"Um.” Now that he thought about it (not very hard, mind you), booze didn’t taste as good when he didn’t steal it from the robot or drink it right before a show or basically drink booze when and where he wasn’t supposed to drink booze. “Kinda, um. So you wanna go visit some old people and steal their pills? That’s harsh.” Stealing from old people wasn’t metal; it was too easy, and kind of…mean.
"No, dood! Deat ain’t brutal. Stealin’ pills? Nah.” Pickles shook his head so hard that his dreads went flying all over, like red, hairy snakes (another good song title - Red Hairy Snakes). “They’re gonna give ‘em to us.”
"Uh. How’re we gonna get ‘em to give us their, uh, meds?” Nathan asked. Old people didn’t really go for rock stars, except if you were Skwisgaar and the old person happened to be a GMILF. Otherwise, you got your head smacked with a goddamn purse, and that hurt. “Don’t they need them?”
"Yeah, they do. Huh.” Pickles scratched his chin. “But…what if we gaht someone who wasn’t us? Some smart dood. Like…shit! I gaht it!” His grin spread across his face like butter or something (Nathan wasn’t good at fucking similes or metaphors or whatever that was). “We’ll get the robaht to take us!”
"What?”
"No, listen. We’ll just tell ‘im Dethklahk wants’ta help old people by playin’ awesahm music for ‘em, and he’ll take us, and then we can get high while he’s ahff talkin’ to a secretary or some shit like that.”
That actually made sense, in a weird Pickles way. “Uhhh,” Nathan said, jerking his head in the direction of his door. “Come in, I guess. I gotta get really, really drunk for this.”
It probably didn’t still smell like he’d been jacking off.
~
He and Pickles were both kind of bombed when they stumbled into Charles’s office, but the manager didn’t even look up. He probably thought they were going to smash his good lamps.
Well, not this time. “Hey, Charles,” Nathan said, making his way over to the big fuck-off desk and straightening himself up as much as he could when he had a bottle of whiskey in his system. “Pickles and me, we wanna go out.”
"Fine,” Charles said. His eyes were glued to his fucking computer screen, like Nathan and Pickles didn’t even matter. Nathan frowned; that kind of hurt. A lot. “You don’t need my permission to go somewhere.”
"NO,” Nathan growled, slapping the keyboard lightly. “You gotta pay attention to us.”
Charles looked up; his face was set into a robot glare, with his mouth all tight and his eyes squinted behind his glasses. “What is it, Nathan?” he asked, his voice thin and annoyed, before he blinked and rearranged his face into something more blank. “Can I help you?”
"Yeah.” Nathan put his hands flat on the desk and leaned in. “We’re gonna go find some old people to visit, and we want you to come with us and pal around.”
"An’ talk to people,” Pickles said. He probably meant to put his hands on the desk, too, but he ended up putting them on Nathan’s ass. “Sahrry, dood. Hey.” He shuffled out from behind Nathan and stared at Charles. “You in or out?”
Fuck. Hadn’t Nathan said he’d do the talking? Pickles was never convincing when he was high, not unless everyone else around him was wasted, too. He elbowed Pickles in the side, making the drummer squeak, and leaned in farther. “You got, like, a grandma or something we can visit?”
Charles wrinkled his nose, and Nathan felt his cheeks go a little hot. He should’ve checked for booze-breath before they came in. “Aren’t your parents in a retirement community, Nathan?”
"Well, yeah, but…” Huh. He didn’t think of that. “They have friends and shit, and a lot of people in nursing homes don’t have that. And they’re not really old.” Old people were the ones who needed shit bags and walkers, and sometimes wheelchairs. They didn’t come visit their kids and annoy the shit out of them - well, sometimes they did, but then they usually hamburger timed.
"Tell me something, Nathan,” Charles said, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands. “Why do you suddenly want to pay a visit to a nursing home? Neither you nor Pickles has ever expressed any interest in that.”
"I can tell ya deat, chief.” Fuck, now Pickles was speaking up again. Nathan tensed a little. “It’s ‘cause it’s good karma, dood! Old people’re cool, mostly. They’ve lived a real long time, and no one ever visits ‘em. If some people from Dethklahk visited ‘em, it’d be good PR for us, and we can help make old people metal!”
"Yeah,” Nathan said after a pause. “That’s right. That’s exactly why.” Pickles was a fucking genius, especially for someone who got high as much as he did. He nodded for emphasis, so forcefully that he was almost headbanging, and shifted his position so he wasn’t breathing whiskey into Charles’s face; that was just rude.
He didn’t know if it convinced Charles, but at least the Eyebrow of Doom went down. “All right,” Charles said. “You’re right, Pickles - it would be good PR for at least part of Dethklok to be seen visiting the elderly.” He picked up his Dethphone and tapped the screen. “My grandmother is in a nursing home in Duluth, and it’s past time I visited her again. Give me time to make some arrangements.”
"Aw, sweet, dood,” Pickles replied, his face cracking into a grin. He hiccupped, swayed a little, and then hit the floor with a loud flump.
"Dude.” Nathan looked down. “His head’s on my feet.”
"Yes, Nathan,” Charles said. “I believe he’s unconscious.”
So Nathan kicked him a little.
~
The Broken Pines Nursing Home didn’t have a landing pad or anything; Nathan could feel a few people crunch under the Dethcopter’s landing equipment when they touched down on the lawn. “Brutal,” he said, and took out his recorder. “Idea for a song: Human Helicopter Landing. People get squished under a copter, and there’s blood and brains everywhere. And, uhh, the helicopter flies better.” No…blood didn’t make stuff go better. It made it go worse. “Wait, uh…it doesn’t fly better. It goes sliding around and kills people. Uncontrollable Helicopter Death.” Charles muttered something about liability insurance or shit like that, but it was so fucking boring that Nathan tuned him out, again.
"Hey!” Pickles looked like he was almost pissing himself, he was so excited; his nose was pressed against the helicopter window. “It’s just like in th’ video!” He pointed out the window at a couple of bald old shits sitting on the lawn. It didn’t look like they’d even noticed the copter landing. “Sleepin’ doods in wheelchairs all over the yard! Deat’s awesome. Ooh, man, I should totally -”
"Hey,” Nathan said. “Hey, Pickles.”
"Yeh?”
"You can’t wake ‘em up. Old dudes get really pissed off when you don’t let ‘em sleep.” Once, he’d woken his dad up from a nap when he wasn’t ready, and he’d clocked him right in the face - and his dad was only like fifty or sixty. “They…like, hit you. Hard.”
"Aww.” Pickles made a really pathetic sad face, with his lower lip hanging out. “Can I jest -“
"NO.” Nathan didn’t even need to hear it to know it would be a bad fucking idea. You just didn’t mess with sleeping old dudes.
"Nathan? Pickles?” Charles said. Nathan turned his head to look at him; he was holding his Dethphone, and one of his fingers was bleeding. Sweet. Blood was even more awesome when it came from a stiff-ass guy in a suit. “My grandmother’s been informed that you’re here.”
"Good,” Pickles said, then giggled. “Is she gahnna be wearin’ a tie?”
"Ah, no. She doesn’t wear ties. But she is ninety-five years old, so you need to be careful with her, okay?” Charles shot them a Dethglare that was even better than Toki’s when he got pissed off.
"So we can’t talk about blood or anything?” Nathan asked.
"Yes, Nathan. That’s exactly what I mean.”
That sucked. What would they talk about now? They were in Dethklok, for fuck’s sake - they pretty muchbreathed blood. “Can I talk to her about, like, kittens and shit?” he said. “I can probably do that for like ten minutes without puking or anything.”
"Dood.” Pickles had to have some pills on him or something, because Nathan would have sworn on some really metal book that Pickles was even higher than he’d been yesterday. “Kittens.”
"What about kittens?” Nathan said, a little impatiently. Why was he the one who always had to bring Pickles back to real life, where kittens weren’t metal? It wasn’t fucking fair.
"Dunno.” Pickles shrugged. “They’re feckin’ tiny.”
Charles sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and stood up. “All right, boys. If you’ll follow me, we’ll go see Gr - my grandmother.”
"Go see who?” Pickles said as they left the Dethcopter. “Were you gahnna say Greamma? You can say deat around us.”
"No, Pickles. I, ah, wasn’t about to call her anything.” Charles’s cheeks were weirdly red; Nathan narrowed his eyes at him as he walked around some sleeping old guy - one who looked so much like Stella Murderface that it was seriously creepy.
"Eucchhh,” Nathan said without thinking about it. They guy opened a pouchy eye and looked at him. “Uh. Don’t worry about it, uh, sir. We’re gonna go see someone else.” The old dude shrugged, closed his eye, and made a weird noise with his mouth that totally sounded like blood puke was about to happen. Old people, Nathan decided, were awesome.
"And another thing,” Charles added, pushing the cloudy glass door open. “Please refrain from making any sounds that indicate you find my grandmother repulsive. She’s ninety-five years old.”
It was seriously shitty timing to say that right then, as it turned out, because Pickles gagged as soon as they walked in. “Nate’s the one who - shit. What’s that smell?”
"Yeah, fuck,” Nathan agreed. It smelled like piss and baby powder and lemon cleaner and older piss and (for some reason) bananas. The place looked nice and all - there were a lot of flowers around in blue vases, and the ceiling was like a giant skylight - but it just smelled like someone had died. Fuck, someone probably did. Like, yesterday. “Hey,” he said, leaning in so that he was speaking right into Charles’s ear. “Does your grandma smell like this?”
Charles sighed. “Nathan, that’s unnecessary. Hello, Anna.” He raised his hand slightly and waved it at the blonde lady behind the reception desk. “We’re here to see Myra Stoeffel.”
"Absolutely, Mr. Ofdensen. She already knows you’re…here.” Her already giant blue eyes widened as she took in Nathan and Pickles. “These are, um, friends of yours?”
Nathan didn’t blame her. He did look pretty fucking scary, after all. “Yeah,” he growled. “We’re gonna go see his grandma with him. Old people are metal.”
Anna-the-Receptionist blinked. “Do you mean metallic? We have quite a few residents with hip replacements and such, so if you have any powerful magnets on your person, I’d advise that you discard them here.”
"No,” Pickles said. “He meant metal, dood, like brutal and awesome. How d’ya naht know what metal is?”
"Enough, Pickles,” Charles interrupted. “Sorry,” he said, stepping a little closer to the receptionist and sliding something across the desk. “It’s, ah, five dollars off at Hot Topic. The press won’t know about the boys’ shenanigans, I presume.” She nodded, her eyes still wide. A lousy coupon was a pretty piss-poor incentive (that was the word Charles used for it, anyway; Nathan preferred ‘blackmail stuff’), but something in his eyes seemed to convince her. “Good. Is my grandmother still on the first floor?”
"Yes, Mr. Ofdensen. One-twelve,” Anna said. She shook her head, like the robot had put a spell on her and she was just snapping out of it. Brutal. Nathan made a mental note to take out his recorder later and make a…uh…non-mental note for a song. It was probably rude to do that when there were old people around.
"Which way would that be?” Charles asked. “It’s been a while.”
"That way.” She pointed to a hallway that branched off from the main lobby; it looked dark from where Nathan was standing, and kind of weird, like there weren’t enough lights in there. Didn’t old people usually need more light? “Just down that hallway, six rooms to the right.”
"Thank you.” Charles nodded at her and started walking, crooking his finger in Nathan and Pickles’s direction. “Are you two coming with me or not?”
"Oh! Right, yeah.” Nathan elbowed Pickles in the ribs - it looked like he was spacing out again, because his mouth was open and there would be a drool wave going on if he wasn’t careful. “Come on, you dildo. We’re gonna go see Charles’s grandma.”
"Yeh, yeh.” Pickles rubbed his ribs, glaring at Nathan. “You don’t gahtta spear me.”
Nathan snorted. “That’s what she said.”
Pickles giggled all the way out of the lobby and down the hallway, which was a fucking depressing blue-gray color and was so tiny that Nathan felt classphobic, or whatever that word was that meant you were scared of small spaces. The doors were shit brown - they kind of went with the blue, but they also made him think those guys in the video were probably onto something about nursing homes and crap.
Charles’s grandmother’s door had “112” on it in those sticky cling letters; they were on crooked and were starting to peel off, but Nathan didn’t have much time to think about how depressingly metal that was before Charles knocked on it. “Grandma?” he said. Pickles shoved his fist in his mouth and made another choked giggling noise. “It’s Charles.”
There wasn’t any answer, but maybe Charles had super-hearing or something, because he twisted the doorknob and opened the door anyway. “I’ve brought friends,” he said. “Do you remember that I manage a band?”
Shuffling into the room after him, Nathan could see the tiny woman sitting on the bed, wearing a purple, plastic-looking shirt and pants that swallowed her up. The harsh lights made her scalp shine through the straggly white hair hanging down to her shoulders. “Hello, Charles,” she said, lifting her head. She was wearing yellow-rimmed plastic glasses that were so thick, her eyes looked squinty. “Who are these big men?”
"Dude, he just told you,” Nathan said. Was she deaf or something?
"Nathan,” Charles said, shooting him a look before turning to his grandmother. “Grandma, do you remember that I manage a band?”
"You do what, dear?” his grandmother asked, and slowly patted the space next to her on her bed. “Sit next to me and tell me about your major. I’ve forgotten.”
Charles didn’t even say anything about the fact that she hadn’t even been listening, which was pretty fucking rude, if you wanted Nathan’s opinion about it. “Grandma,” he said, sitting down on the thin, nubby white blanket, “I graduated from college more than twenty years ago. I manage a music group now. Will you two come over here?” He crooked his finger at Nathan (well, probably at Pickles, too; Pickles was leaning against his back). “The tall man is Nathan, and the redhead is Pickles. They sing and drum in the band Dethklok. Nathan, Pickles, this is my grandmother, Mrs. Stoeffel. Sit on the floor so she can see you.”
That was kind of embarrassing, but whatever. She was like a hundred, right? Nathan grunted, lowering himself onto the floor and yanking Pickles down with him. “Sorry about him,” he said, jerking a thumb at the drummer. “He’s kind of high.”
"Hi to him, too,” Charles’s grandmother said, and smiled. Her teeth were yellow and gross, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing; from this angle, Nathan could see the square line of her jaw - exactly like Charles’s. Huh. “The better greeting is ‘hello’, young man.”
"Hey.” Pickles grinned and waved at her. “Oh, dood, Skwisgaar would love you.”
She blinked. “Who’s that?”
"The lead guitarist of Dethklok,” Charles explained, touching his grandmother on the shoulder. God, this was fucking surreal, seeing Charles motherfucking Ofdensen explaining shit to an old lady. Even if she was related to him. “There are two guitarists. Skwisgaar has a taste for…ah, never mind.”
"Two guitar players?” She ran a wrinkled, knobby hand through her hair. “That seems unnecessary, dear. Make one of them get a real job.”
"Yer sayin’ fire Toki?” Pickles said. “Deat’s what I been sayin’ we should do all along! Charles, yer grandma’s a feckin’ genius.”
Charles rubbed his forehead and turned to his grandmother. “No, Grandma. We do need two guitarists for better sound dynamics.”
She scratched her chin. “I thought you said you were majoring in political science. Have you changed it to music?”
Charles shook his head. “I did major in political science, but I’m grown up now. I’m a lawyer, and these are two members of a band. I do their finances.”
"Oh, I see,” she said. “Are they your boyfriends, Charles?”
Nathan inhaled a glob of spit, and hacked for about a minute while he tried to figure out if she’d actually just said that, or if he was just losing his hearing from all the screaming he normally did. “What?” he rasped, after clearing all the crap out of his lungs. “Did you just say we’re his boyfriends?”
"I did, dear.” She reached out and actually patted Nathan on the fucking head, like she didn’t know how un-metal what she’d just said was, and wouldn’t have cared even if she did know. Or something. It was making Nathan’s brain hurt, trying to figure it out. Also, her hand was cold even through his hair. “When Charles was a little boy, he told me he wanted to marry a nice man. It’s been a few years, but I think he still wants to.”
"Charles,” Pickles said, scooting up and hugging his knees, “is she fer real?” There was a shit-eating grin on his face about a mile long. “’Cause I won’t tell anyone, but theat’s naht metal.”
"She’s had degenerative dementia for the past ten years or so,” Charles said - all professional, like the woman who pushed his mother into the world (or maybe his dad, but her name would probably be Ofdensen then, right?) wasn’t sitting right next to him. “She’s ninety-five years old, Pickles. Her mental filters are nonexistent.”
Pickles’s smile dissolved as fast as it had spread across his face. “Degenerative?”
"Progressive, Pickles. She’s not getting any better.”
"Oh.” Pickles’s voice was soft, so much that Nathan almost couldn’t hear him. “Deat…sucks.”
"Charles Foster Ofdensen,” his grandmother broke in, “how many times have I told you not to talk about a lady’s age? Especially in polite company.” She flapped her hand in Nathan and Pickles’s direction. “You’re not too old for a switching, you know.”
I think I am, Grandma.” Charles smiled, but it looked sad this time, like saying the words ‘ninety-five’ was making him think about hamburger time. Nathan knew he was thinking about it. Fuck, that was really depressing - she was probably going to be in a box soon, all dead and rotting while maggots -
Pickles interrupted his train of thought by getting to his feet, shaky like he’d just drunk most of a bottle of booze, and blurting out “I gahtta use the can.”
"Over there, dear,” Charles’s grandmother said, and pointed to another brown door on the other side of the room. “That door. And it’s called the water closet, not the can.”
Thanks, dood.” Pickles nodded at her, running over to the door and slamming it hard behind him.
Nathan stared at the door for a second, then looked at Charles. “I don’t think he really has to piss.”
"Neither do I. Excuse me.” Charles stood up, glanced at his grandmother, and then turned to look at Nathan. “I’m going to see what’s wrong with Pickles. Talk to her, please.”
"Uh…okay.” Fuck, now he was gonna have to talk about kittens, and if this was anything like one of Pickles’s usual spaz attacks, he’d have to talk about them for way longer than ten minutes and he’d definitely throw up. Fucking fantastic. “Hey,” he said, giving Charles’s grandmother his best non-creepy smile. “Um. Do you like kittens?”
"Kittens? Why would I like them?” She wrinkled her face up, which looked super fucking weird with the wrinkles that were already there. “Sit here with me, dear. I’m sure you don’t enjoy looking up my nose.”
"Sure.” That actually made a lot of sense. Old people were definitely metal. “Nngh.” He heaved himself up off the floor and sat down on the bed, which was still warm from where Charles’s ass had been (weird) and which creaked when he sat down (everyone was a critic). Up close, Charles’s grandmother looked even more like Charles; her eyes were definitely the same color.
She looked at him up and down. “Aren’t you a big young man! Are you in school with Charles?”
Seriously? Charles had told her about Dethklok like a zillion times in the last five minutes. Her mind really was going. “I’m not in school,” Nathan answered. “I’m a singer.”
"You take care of that voice, then.” She leaned in and patted his throat with her freaky cold hand. “No more cigarettes, and don’t try to tell me that you don’t smoke them, because you sound like you’ve been licking a gravel pit, dear.”
"Uh,” he said. That was pretty nosy, but gravel pits were metal. “Thanks. Look, I gotta go make sure my, uh, friend isn’t about to hambur - die.” She wouldn’t know about hamburger time, right. “Are you gonna be okay?”
"Oh, I’ll be fine.” She flapped her hand at him. “You find your friends.”
"Okay. Yeah.” Nathan got up and walked to the bathroom door, turning around when he got there to make sure she hadn’t fallen over and cracked her skull open. Nope, just sitting there. Shrugging, he turned the bathroom doorknob and went in. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Charles, who was sitting on the floor - it would’ve been a lot funnier if it weren’t so goddamn weird, but Nathan was probably still going to make fun of him for it later - didn’t even look up at him. Pickles, who was sitting on the toilet seat with his head in his hands, was still shaking. “You didn’t leave my grandmother alone, did you?”
"She said it was okay,” Nathan protested. Did Charles think he was an idiot? “Look, she’s alone all the time. I just wanna make sure Pickles isn’t, you know, freaking out or anything.”
"I’m naht freakin’ out.” Pickles’s voice was muffled behind his hands. “I…I just don’t wanna ever get old and…oh, gahd. I don’t wanna forget shit!”
"Dude…” Pickles was right, though. It was pretty creepy, seeing someone’s mind going to shit up close and personal. Pickles had already had to go through a lot, especially during that fucked-up week when he thought he was going to, well, hamburger time. Maybe that was why it was worse for him. “You’re not gonna forget shit.”
"Yeah, I am, ya dick.” Pickles pressed his feet against the toilet, like he was going to smash into pieces and fly away if he didn’t hold onto it with everything he had. “I’m gahnna git old and forget shit, and then I’m gahnna hamburger time and just…I’ll be nothin’.”
"Whoa,” Nathan said. That was…depressing. And true. “Hey, Charles, does everyone get old and forget shit?”
"No.” Charles shook his head, moving a little closer (not that there was much room to do it, but whatever; Charles was kind of a ninja like that). “Pickles, progressive dementia is the exception, not the rule. You’ll have access to the best medications to keep your mind as sharp as possible.”
"Dood.” Pickles took his hands away from his face and just glared at Charles, and holy shit, were those tears in his eyes? “Y’said deat like I’m supposed to just believe ya. But I don’t, okay?”
This was all kinds of fucked up. Pickles was being all emotional and gay and shit, and it was fucking catching, because Nathan could feel his mouth drooping into a frown, too. It looked like Pickles was going to be in a funk until the end of time, and they’d all die crammed into this weird-smelling old person’s bathroom, and then their bodies would -
Gay. Pickles was being emotional and gay. Reacting with his dumb gay heart. Ugh. No. Nathan frowned, thinking extra hard about how to fix this problem. Pickles didn’t really react to getting punched or yelled at - it was just like he expected it, and let it roll off him. Maybe reverse psychology would work, like…what if doing some shit that was really gay would snap him out of it?
That made fucking sense. Better man up, Nathan. “Hey, Pickles,” he said.
"What? Y’gahnna tell me I ain’t ever -“
Nathan kissed him. He fucking kissed him, and Pickles’s lips were warm and kind of chapped and a little scratchy from his beard hairs, but the drummer smelled kind of nice and smoky and WHOA. Did his dick just twitch? Fuck, he didn’t want to get a fucking boner. Pulling away, he wiped his mouth on his shoulder and tried not to blush. Blushing wasn’t metal, either.
Pickles just…stared. And then he blew up. “What the fuck are you doin’, Nathan? Dood! Deat’s naht cool!”
"Fuck you,” Nathan said. Why didn’t he think before he did stuff? Well, he actually had thought about it, so why didn’t he think smart shit instead of stupid ideas like that? “You’re being all depressed and…and gay and shit, so I was gayer. Did it work?”
"You don’t do gay stuff to cheer someone up, ya douchebag!” Pickles exclaimed. “You call ‘em a dick and punch them!”
"We’re trying to steer Nathan away from hitting people, Pickles,” Charles said, and stood up, looking at both of them with a raised Eyebrow of Doom. It might have been his dick talking, since he had a really uncomfortable raging semi, but Nathan kind of wanted to lick that eyebrow all of a sudden. No - not just lick. He wanted to bite it.
"Yeah, sure, but he kissed me to cheer me up! You don’t think that’s weird, chief?”
Charles paused. “It’s a bit…uncharacteristic, but no, I don’t think it’s weird.”
One second, he was finishing his sentence, and the next second, Pickles was kissing him. The redhead practically lunged at Charles, grabbing him by the suit-covered shoulders and pressing their bodies together.
Nathan’s jaw dropped, and a sudden, really uncomfortable feeling in his pants let him know that his boner liked what it…well, what he saw. This wasn’t just a peck, like what he’d given Pickles; he was seeing a totally epic rock-star makeout between two sexy (yeah, they were sexy) guys…and was that tongue? Yeah, it was Pickles’s tongue flickering against Charles’s lips. If he got any harder, he was probably going to rip his fly right open. “Fuck,” he muttered. “That’s…hot.”
Charles’s face was flushed when Pickles broke the kiss. For once, it looked like Pickles had made the robot shut up, because nothing was coming out of the guy’s mouth except a few fucking hilarious noises. “Pickles,” he finally said. “Is this what you want?” Just that.
Pickles’s eyes widened. “You’d actually…”
"Yes.” Charles’s cheeks flushed redder.
"So yer grandma was right?”
Yes.”
"Then she’s not crazy,” Pickles said. “And if she’s not crazy, I’m not gahnna be crazy, either.” That shit-eating grin was back, only this time his mouth was reddened from - okay, if Nathan thought about that kiss any longer, he was totally going to come in his pants.
"Hey,” he said. “If I think about that fuckin’ kiss any longer, I’m gonna come in my pants.”
"Whoa, dood, for real?” Pickles said. “You liked that, too? Heh…I guess you weren’t just, uh, tryin’ ta make me stop bein’ emo, huh?”
"Maybe.” Nathan shrugged. “But you guys are hot, and I guess we…uh, we can do some gay shit if it’s not gonna fuck stuff up in the band.” That was the rule: don’t fuck up band dynamics. Nathan figured it was a pretty good rule; he made it up himself.
"I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Charles said, “but that idea is extremely appealing.”
"Feck, yeah, it is,” Pickles said, digging in his pocket. “And look what I gaht.” He held up a bag of…something. “I gaht some awesahm gov’mint weed from this old dood outside. Why don’t we go beack home, get really fucked up, and do some gay shit to each other?”
"You actually got shit from the old guys here?” Pickles was either really smart or really fast, or both. “Awesome.”
Charles pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why don’t I say goodbye to my grandmother and take you two back to Mordhaus before you do something you’ll regret? I’ll end up doing things I’ll regret right now…in this bathroom, and I don’t want to do that to my knees.”
"Do you mean - oh.” It was a good thing Nathan was thinking today, because otherwise he would’ve never picked up that Charles actually wanted to blow him. Really bad, like…so bad that he was thinking of doing it in this bathroom.“Yeah, uh. Let’s get the fuck outta here and get back to Mordhaus before we do…that. With your grandma in the other room.”
~
Two weeks later, the Broken Pines Nursing Home registered the single largest donation it had ever received. It was, in fact, so huge that two residents had severe heart attacks and a receptionist fainted. Nathan would later maintain on the Dethklok Minute that, for some reason, it was “totally, totally fucking worth it.”
Only he, Pickles, and Charles knew just how ‘worth it’ it was.