#about what happened to skiwsgaar... who knows if nathan got the real story

[atmilliways]

1!

“Toki trying to convince Nathan to do something lame.” It’s lame in the sense that I couldn’t come up with anything particularly lame. I sort of had an idea when I started, but it took a weird hop a little while in and ended unexpectedly. I’m not sure if I want to continue it or rework it to fit into the chaptered fic I’m still toiling away at. 

(mtl prompts list)

—

It started off totally wholesome and innocent. 

Okay, no it didn’t. It started out with Toki walking in on Nathan fucking the manager over his desk, and the little shit ran screaming from the room like he’d just seen his parents doing it and needed to wash the dirty scene from his eyeballs with boiling acid. 

Then the texts started. As a rule, Nathan didn’t bother to read any texts from the Scandinavian guitarists because they were always a horrible mishmash of misspelled words, typos, autocorrects, and non-English words — in other words, completely incomprehensible. Toki, being generally more talkative, was the worst about this. Nathan solved the problem of the Norwegian relentlessly blowing up his phone  first by ignoring it, then eventually by leaving it in his jeans pocket to get taken out with the wash. He was issued a new one, with a new number, the next day. 

Since avoidance seemed to be working pretty well, Nathan continued the trend until it snowballed into the entire band just sort of forgetting to include Toki in things. That worked pretty well for a while too, until the whole Special Persons Invites Club mess. By then Toki seemed to have given up on trying to talk to him about what he’d seen, but Nathan was still vaguely on alert for the idiot to blurt it out right there in front of Pickles and Skwisgaar during a club meeting. Why else would he exclude Murderface, the band member most likely to shit his pants at the news and have a screeching gay crisis that could go on for weeks?

Well, aside from the fact that it was Murderface, that guy was pretty rank. But yeah, so totally incapable of coming out of the closet himself that he’d just ruin it for as many other people as possible. 

When nothing happened, Nathan just sort of figured Toki had forgotten about it. And then he’d started having those weird dreams about whales, and that thing with the liquid master had happened, and Pickles was so mad at him and pissing him off so much it was starting to border on cold war feud territory… and he kinda forgot too. 

Fast forward about a year and Nathan was still reeling from all the shit that had gone down. They all were, really. Everything from Roy’s death to Charles’ sudden resignation to Toki and Abigail’s rescue, it was too much to take in and make sense of. Had they become better people or something? Were they expected to save the world now, all by their dumbass selves? 

It was Nathan’s turn to sit in the box-like hospital room with Toki and keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t wake up from his frequent drugged naps and go totally postal on the doctors and nurses or whatever, so he was crammed into the unfairly narrow visitor’s chair and trying to think. Not just about all the weird shit that had gone down, either… Ever since that, hrm hrm HRMMM, thing with Abigail on the Dethsub, Charles hadn’t been anything more than politely civil towards him. It had fucked up the whole boss-and-employee-with-benefits thing all to hell, and Nathan couldn’t help wondering guiltily if that was part of why the guy had left. They’d heard through the grapevine that Charles had taken over for that old priest who’d died, but none of Nathan’s calls or texts to the man seemed to go through anymore. 

“Nathans?” croaked a raspy voice. The frontman looked up to meet Toki’s bleary gaze. “Are you here’s to helps me goes to the b-a-s-t-h-r-o-h-m-n-s-e?” 

“Uhhhh…” It took his fumbling brain a moment to figure that one out, but when he got it, he grimaced. “No. They gave you a catheter after you pissed on Skwisgaar and he fell and broke his ass for a couple days. Just… go ahead and pee where you are.”

“Oh.” Toki giggled, either about the Skwisgaar thing or at the privilege of peeing without wetting the bed. “Okays.”

There was a deeply uncomfortable silence, during which Nathan pretended he didn’t know exactly what his band mate was doing over there. 

“Nathans?” Toki asked again. 

Fully expecting to be asked for ice water and a crazy straw, Nathan sighed and levered himself out of the uncomfortable chair. They all took Toki duty every few days, partly to protect the hospital staff but partly to reassure themselves that the kid — even though Nathan was technically younger, it was hard not to think of Toki as the baby of their fucked up little family — really was alive and well. Or at least, healing. Not dead, anyway, and definitely no longer a missing-in-action Schrödinger’s guitarist. After all that time they’d spent dicking around when they could’ve just fucking manned up and helped with the search, getting him water or his deddybear seemed fair enough penance. It beat having to say sorry, anyway. 

“Yeah, what?”

“You remembers… that time what’s I saw you and Charleses doings it up the butts?” 

Nathan froze, all the blood slamming out of his face in shock. “Uhhhhhhhhhh…” 

“Is he mads at you ‘cause of Abigails?” Toki continued weakly but earnestly. “I talks to her yesterdays and she saids maybe that ams what happens why he goes to that church place.” 

The creepy thing about that was, Abigail had opted to be moved to another hospital so she could be closer to her family. Several weeks ago. 

“So maybes whats you should does is… apoljisecks to hims in person, likes you did with Pickle.” 

“Toki, that’s…” Nathan scowled, trying to find the right words to convey how he felt about that suggestion. “Apologizing is really fucking lame and not metal. And you know how I feel about that.” 

Toki just looked at him with a grimace that said, Reallies? Okays, we does it this ways then. He groped around for the bed controls and hit the button that elevated his pillows slightly, so he was practically sitting up. 

“Nathans,” he slurred, “I talks to all the guys, and they says you should does it. Espescially Pickle, he said he was ams very moved whens you did it to hims. And Skwisgaar says you ams really bumming everyones out because you needs to get laid. Even Morderface agrees you beens in a real weirds mood since the submarines… I think that says a lots.” 

“What… does that say?” Nathan asked with menacing slowness, his scowl deepening stubbornly, but on the inside he was totally freaking out. Toki had talked to the guys about this? All of them? 

And those assholes actually backed him up on this apologizing thing? 

Toki gave him a wavery smile. “That you misses and cares about hims.” 

“I don’t— God, you’re making it sound gayer than it actually is.”

“Whats am gayer than sex in the butts with two guys?” Toki asked, puzzled.

There wasn’t really any good answer for that, so Nathan just stomped over to the window and glared out through it at nothing, his arms crossed sullenly over his chest. Yeah, he was pissed at Toki, but dammit if the kid hadn’t hit a nerve about his conflicted feelings over their former manager.

He thought about the long string of texts on his phone — all sent to Charles, with no reply for months. At some point the stupid knock knock jokes and links to cat memes had given way to things like Did you get my text and Just fucking talk to me you dick.

He thought about how he really had been in a piss-poor mood ever since being stuck on that sub for three months, and how it no longer felt quite adequate to simply blame his own actions on Charles holding out on him so they could all focus on the new album. After all, it was the album that was somehow supposed to save the fucking world, right? And sure, Charles could’ve explained that at the time, but Nathan had to admit it wouldn’t have had the same convincing affect as a giant flying dude coming out of nowhere and murdering the head of their record label with scary-ass mind powers. 

He thought about fooling around with Charles, getting the guy to loosen up a little for a change, and how afterwards Charles would be all relaxed and pliant and actually laugh at shit like a normal person… 

“Nathans?” 

“WHAT?” 

“Can I haves a cups of ice waters whats got a real cool straw?” Toki asked petulantly. His pout at being snapped at was practically audible. 

When Nathan stomped out of the room to get the requested drink, he stopped a passing doctor by grabbing onto one lab-coated arm and swinging her around. 

“Hey,” he demanded gruffly, jabbing a thumb back over his shoulder towards Toki’s room, “is that dildo okay to be moved?” 

The doctor blinked. “Um, yes, Mr. Explosion. He still needs to be on medication, but he’s healing up more quickly than expected.” 

“Good,” Nathan growled, “because were going on a trip. Get him ready to go by… uh, just as soon as possible. Got it?” He’d been about to say tomorrow, but now that he’d decided on his next course of action he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Releasing the bewildered physician, he rounded on the klokateers standing guard outside Toki’s door. “You guys, you call… someone, and make sure the submarine is ready to go. And tell all the guys, too.” 

He straightened up to his full imposing height — not that anyone around him needed to be more intimidated, it just felt cool and important to do every once in a while. Without realizing it, his growl was starting to take on some of the ominous rumble of prophecy. 

“We’re going back into the ocean.”