Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/7386166.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Metalocalypse
  Relationship:
      Nathan_Explosion/Pickles_the_Drummer, Pickles_The_Drummer/Original
      Character(s), Pickles/Seth_implied_if_you_look_closely
  Character:
      Nathan_Explosion, Pickles_the_Drummer, Charles_Foster_Offdensen, Seth_
      (Metalocalypse), The_Terrible_Teenage_Boys_of_Tomahawk
  Additional Tags:
      Underage_Rape/Non-con, Dubious_Consent, Underage_Drinking, Non-consensual
      video_involving_a_minor, Drug_Use, First_Time, Blow_Jobs, Implied_Sibling
      Incest, Seth_is_awful, Pickles_is_seriously_repressing_some_stuff, Nathan
      tries_to_help, Panic_Attacks, Asthma, Triggers, Fights, Homophobic
      Language, Ableist_Language, Angst_and_Fluff_and_Smut
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-07-04 Completed: 2016-08-27 Chapters: 6/6 Words: 16478
****** Seth, Lies & Video-Tape ******
by DoubleBit
Summary
     While converting the family's VHS collection, Seth comes across a
     memory that Pickles would rather leave buried.
Notes
     Because I'm in love with fucked-up, small-town Pickles, who's 16
     during the events in question.
     This story is basically complete, but I'm posting as I finish final
     drafts. There's some icky stuff in here, so please be careful. As
     always, thanks for reading. <3
***** Incoming Text *****
The chime of an incoming text startled Pickles awake, and in the darkened room
he groped for his DethPhone on the nightstand where it ought to be. This wasn’t
his bedroom, though, and the sound came from the floor, where Pickles’ pants
lay crumpled in a pile with his socks and his underwear, a beer bottle and a
couple empty condom wrappers.
“Fackin’ shit,” he huffed, hanging half-off the bed to paw through his clothes
until his fingers lit on the cold metal of the phone. Nathan liked his room
pitch black, and insisted he couldn’t sleep without the heavy, light-proof
curtains drawn tightly shut across the windows. In the darkness, the glow of
the screen seemed blinding, and Pickles blinked at it several times before
reading:
Text from: Seth
Pickles groaned. Seth only texted when he wanted something, or – more rarely
and dreadfully – when he was blazed as fuck and just wanted to talk. In any
case, Pickles already felt a sharp headache building just behind his eyes.
Hey brother mine.
How’s it going?
In the bed beside him, Nathan shifted, and Pickles pulled the sheets up to
obscure the screen from view. The phone sounded again, and Pickles cursed and
switched it to vibrate.
It’s 2am. I know you’re not asleep.
Pickles rolled onto his side, the heat of Nate’s back pressed against his own.
How was the guy always so warm? He contemplated ignoring the message and trying
to go back to sleep, but Seth was nothing if not persistently awful, so Pickles
tapped out a reply:
What do you want?
Can’t I just check up on you? Seth replied, and Pickles could practically see
his brother’s fucking smirk, that raised eyebrow, that head full of thick
fucking hair.
Fuck you. I’m turning off my phone.
No you’re not. You haven’t figured out how.
If you knew how to use your phone, you would have blocked my number by now.
Maybe the worst thing about Seth – though only one among many contending
attributes – was the fact that no one knew Pickles better. And maybe Nathan
knew Pickles’ favorite everything, and Charles knew his entire medical history
and probably his genetic code, and Tony knew a lot of things that even Pickles
had forgotten, but somehow it was Seth’s gross reptile brain that connected
with Pickles on a primordial level, capable of reaching out to him even into
adulthood just for the sake of making him feel weak and fearful for its own
sadistic entertainment.
If you don’t get to the point, I’ll just have the entire network shut off.
Because I can.
I swear to fucking god.
Ok ok.
So I’m digitizing all of Mom and Dad’s old VHS tapes.
Pickles rolled his eyes as he imagined Seth in his room above the garage
(though of course Seth was in Sydney), high as a kite and watching home movies
of his own shitty trombone recitals.
Wow – way to go. They must be paying you.
Two replies arrived in quick succession:
And I found your old tape.
Ha ha very funny. But yeah, they are.
Pickles’ stomach lurched. What tape?
You know what tape.
Pickles cast a quick glance at Nathan – broad shoulders illuminated by the
phone, sides still rising and falling evenly. Just the sight of him usually
inspired a sense of safety, but Pickles only felt a cold dread, crushing his
chest like a stone as he prayed that Nate wouldn’t wake up just now. His
fingers left sweaty smudges across the screen of his phone as he typed:
I’m serious. What tape?
That’s not gonna work, bro.
You know what tape.
And before Pickles could breathe, there was the mp4, waiting in his inbox. From
the still alone, he recognized the scene, though he’d only been there once – a
bedroom in an old party-house, a three-story Victorian on the corner of 7th and
Prospect where he found himself one Halloween, slamming shots and smoking weed,
and…
The sheets were blue. There were girls’ clothes strewn across the floor –
skirts and bras and panties; a poster of Jimmy Page; a few old stuffed animals;
and the whole place smelled like fake flowers and cigarettes.
Pickles hit Play and braced himself.
Given that he noticed all those other details, Pickles wondered how he’d failed
to spot the camera, which – judging from the angle and its unobstructed view –
must’ve been sitting in plain sight on a desk or a shelf.
The lens faces the doorway – the figure of a boy appears, tall and athletic,
backlit by the light in the hall.
“Seerah said we could use dis room,” he says.
And then there’s another silhouette, the one Pickles knows for his own – from
the wild hair, from the slim build, from the way he clutches the doorframe for
stability and from the voice that slurs out, “Shit, dood, I keen’t – I ain’t
never – oh, fack – let’s jest lee down fer a bit, huh? – an’ I do – I mean, I
will, but ya know I – I ain’t never –”
Text From: Seth
Pickles closed the player with trembling fingers, swallowing a wave of nausea
before reading:
Good times, huh?
You’re lucky I found it before Mom and Dad accidentally popped it into their
VCR.
Have you shown anyone?
Lucky they decided to have me do this instead of taking it to that place in the
mall.
Pickles wanted to scream.
HAVE YOU SHOWN ANYONE?
Seth decided to torture him by allowing five minutes to pass, during which time
Pickles lay with the phone on his chest, hands fisted into the sheets, tears
stinging at the corners of his eyes while he tried to slow his breathing,
trying to remember the last place he’d even seen his goddamn inhaler. A few
strands of Nathan’s hair fell onto Pickles’ shoulders.
“Fack,” he whispered to himself. “Oh facking fack.”
Text From: Seth
Give me some credit, dude.
Not yet. ;)
Pickles sighed. Seth was angling for cold manipulation rather than impulsive
destruction – so at least that was something. Pickles reiterated his original
question.
So what do you WANT?
Not sure yet.
I’ll keep you posted.
Try to get some sleep little bro.
You always did party too hard.
XOXO
I’ll fucking bury you, Pickles entered, and then quickly deleted. That kind of
wishful thinking had never made anything better.
After a few minutes, the screen of his phone went black, and Pickles dropped it
back onto the floor. An hour later, he gave up trying to sleep and pulled on
his pants and socks, gathered the phone and his wallet and tip-toed towards the
door.
“Mmm. Pickles?”
Pickles froze. “Yeah?”
He heard the mattress creak, Nathan’s groggy voice asking him, “Where you
going?”
Pickles paused before replying, and hoped that Nate would miss the strain in
his tone as he tried to sound casually indifferent. “Jest goin’ back ta my
room.”
“You, uh… you could always just stay here. Or whatever.”
“Nah. Dat’s okee. I uh, didn’t mean ta fall asleep an ya.” He opened the door a
crack, and Nathan groaned at the intrusion of torchlight from the corridor.
“Shit. Sarry. Go back ta bed, dood. I’ll see ya when I see ya.” He slipped into
the hall and closed the door behind him before Nate could answer.
Padding softly back to his own bedroom, Pickles felt an undeniable guilt
compounding the anxious twisting in his guts. He shouldn’t feel that –
rationally, he knew he shouldn’t feel anything. That was part of the original
arrangement, after all – No Spending the Night. Though honestly, they’d been
breaking all sorts of rules lately – just two days before, Nathan had laid a
hard smack across Pickles’ ass the moment Skwisgaar left the studio to take a
piss, and the week before that, Pickles may or may not have whined out Nathan’s
name seconds before coming all over his own stomach and Nate’s fancy imported
sheets.
Nathan broke the rules more often, but Pickles found it difficult to be upset;
the whole thing still felt very new to Nate, judging by the way his eyes lit up
every time he saw Pickles even half-naked. And truthfully, the rules weren’t
for Nathan. They weren’t even for the rest of the guys – Pickles suspected that
Skwisgaar knew something, while Toki seemed typically oblivious, and Murderface
worried more about being excluded than he worried about what exactly he was
being excluded from.
“Da rules are fer me, dood,” Pickles had explained, even as he resisted the
urge to break his own rule against affectionate touching and take Nathan’s
hand.
“Why do you need rules? Rules are fucking stupid.” And of course Nate would
never say, this, but Pickles could hear the underlying question – “Why don’t
you trust me?” – as loudly as if Nathan had screamed it.
‘Cause ya get hurt when ya play wit’out rules, Pickles didn’t say, instead
falling back on some lame explanation about not wanting to damage their working
relationship, which wasn’t exactly untrue, but also wasn’t exactly honest. “I
don’t wanna make it – ya know, weird fer everybody,” he said.
Yeah right. Like things hadn’t started to get weird from the first time Nathan
gaped at Pickles’ trimmed red bush and freckled thighs like a kid in a fucking
candy store. But the rules prevented Pickles from making it worse by giving
words to that look, or to how it made him feel.
In his private bathroom, Pickles avoided the red-eyed gaze of his reflection as
he opened the medicine cabinet to rifle through a cornucopia of pills,
searching for the little blue-and-whites that ushered him into a perfect,
dreamless sleep when taken with a shot (or three) of tequila. Pickles climbed
into bed, checked his messages one last time, and when he opened his eyes
again, it was morning and he’d been gripping his phone so tightly that the
edges of it cut into the flesh of his palm.
***** Tomahawk, 1988 *****
Chapter Summary
     Pickles finds a fun way to pass the time, and Seth finds a way to
     profit.
Chapter Notes
     Thanks, readers!
     (Apologies-not-apologies for the terrible accents again.)
The first time Pickles went down on one of Seth’s friends, it was more
serendipity than anything. Three weeks before the beginning of his sophomore
year, a late-summer thunderstorm flooded the gutters of Tomahawk and left
Pickles standing soaked in front of the supermarket with water seeping through
the holes in his Chucks and four ice-cold tall-boys shoved down the front of
his leather jacket. He cursed under his breath and began to walk towards the
park, where he intended to get drunk behind the tennis courts before heading
home as late as possible. (His mother began the summer hounding him to get a
job, but after he was fired from Burzum’s inside of two days, she resigned
herself to cold silence, and Pickles had spent the rest of his vacation getting
high, playing guitar, and raiding the sofa cushions for quarters to spend at
the arcade in the mall.)
While Pickles waited for a stop-light to change, a familiar red Mustang with
black racing stripes blew past him, then screeched to a halt and reversed,
splashing filthy water all over his shins while the driver of the car reached
over to roll down the passenger-side window and shout:
“Pickles! Heey, dood – what da fack ya doin’ out in dis shitstorm?”
Pickles hesitated. Among Seth’s friends, Zack seemed the least likely to end up
in prison; he’d been issued a couple MIPs (who hadn’t?), and picked up once for
DUI when he ran his dad’s truck through a guardrail on 51 South, and he’d never
been caught selling his mom’s Lexapro or his own Ritalin in the east-wing
bathroom of Tomahawk High School. But he’d also managed to graduate, and
received a scholarship to play lacrosse at UW – Eau Claire in the fall; more
importantly, though, he rarely laughed at Seth’s jokes. So Pickles approached
the car.
“Jest doin’ some shappin’. I tat you’da left fer caallege by now.”
Zack shook his head. He wore his blue-and-yellow letterman’s jacket, a few
locks of light-brown hair clinging damply to his cheeks as he smiled and said,
“Nah. Nat til next weekend. Heey, let me give ya a ride, huh? Yer ganna fackin’
drown out dere.”
Pickles scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, sure, okee.”
Zack hardly gave him time to close the door before he hit the gas and sped off
down the block. The sound of clinking glass from the back seat caused Pickles
to look over his shoulder, where a milk-crate filled with liquor bottles
jostled around between a twelve-pack of Dr. Pepper and a case of Old Milwaukee.
“Holy shit, dood – dat’s a lat of booze.”
Zack snorted. “Right? An’ dat’s only like, half my mam’s stash.” He nodded at
the bulge in Pickles’ jacket, where the top of a can peeked out above his
zipper, and gave a knowing smirk. “What ya gat dere – pap?”
Pickles unzipped his jacket and let the cans tumble out into his lap. “Heh. Nat
exactly.” He tugged at the front of his t-shirt. “Fack. Dat’s fackin’ cold.”
“Ya know, sooner er later, dey’re ganna ban ya from dat store.”
Pickles cracked open a drink and slurped the froth that spilled out the mouth
of the can. “I ain’t gat cat yet,” he said with a shrug.
“Ya know dat’s jest ‘cause old Mr. Nelson feels sarry fer yer mam an’ doesn’t
wanna bust ya, right?”
Pickles frowned. “Jest take me by da park, huh? Ya can drap me aff by da
playground er whatever.”
“Ugh. Dood. Drinkin’ at da park is fackin’ lame. Fackin’ junior hey shit.” The
car lurched to a sudden halt at a stop-light, and Pickles’ beer sloshed onto
his chin and chest.
“Fack! Fackin’ learn to drive, dood!”
“Sarry.” Zack’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel while he watched Pickles
lick the side of the can. “Heey, look – drinkin’ at da park is fackin’ stupid,
an’ anywee, it’s fackin’ pourin’ out dere. I know dis pullout aff da Double-
C where dere’s like, dis creepy abandoned cabin – real old, like. Looks like
some shit outta fackin’ Evil Dead or somethin’. Wanna go check it out?”
Pickles weighed the possibility that Zack was setting him up for a prank, like
the previous summer when Seth’s friend Ty invited him to a Saturday-night
party, and Pickles woke the following morning to find himself naked and tied to
the base of the crucifix in front St. Mary. “Who else is ganna be dere?” he
asked.
Zack hung a sloppy, wide turn onto Bridge Street. “I mean, nobody. I jest now
had dis idea. I was plannin’ an headin’ over ta my brother’s house, but… I
dunno. Goin’ out an’ gettin’ tanked in da woods sounds like more fun than what
either of us had planned, don’t ya think?”
“Yeah, sure, but –”
“An’ I ain’t fackin’ wit’ ya, if dat’s what yer worried about. No tricks er
pranks er nothin’ like dat. I won’t even try writin’ on yer face wit’ markers.”
Zack held up the three middle fingers of his right hand, his gaudy class ring
catching Pickles’ eye. “Scout’s honor,” he said, and then turned to look at
Pickles with something like sympathy. “‘Sides, I know all about bein’ da
youngest. My older brother, Jack – I mean, he ain’t nothin’ like Seth, but
still… what a fackin’ dildo. Heey, can I get a sip’a dat beer?”
True to Zack’s word, they saw no one else after turning down an unsigned dirt
road, through a thick stand of pine until they arrived in front of a tiny,
decrepit trapper’s cabin that looked even older than Pickles had expected –
hewn from hemlock, the roof smothered by dried needles. He imagined the musty
smell inside, dead animals maybe, and graffiti and broken bottles. But they
never left the car.
By the time he’d finished his second beer, the rain was falling so heavily
against the glass that the woods and the cabin became a dark blur, and neither
Pickles nor Zack felt particularly moved to leave the dry interior of the
Mustang to go exploring. Instead, Zack opened a bottle of Crown Royale and
passed it to Pickles first.
Things got fuzzy from there. Pickles remembered opening the door to piss, and
he remembered Zack playing with the radio dials, searching for anything besides
talk. At some point, they finished the bottle, and Zack rolled down his window
to huck it outside, well away from the car. He remembered their breath fogging
up the windows, making the cab feel like a muggy mess. They both took off their
jackets and opened another bottle of something, and Pickles spilled what
smelled like gin all down the front of his shirt, while Zack laughed and swore
at him for getting it on the seat.
He didn’t remember whose idea the kiss was, though judging by the way he had
sprawled over the bucket seat, holding himself upright with one hand on the
headrest and one on Zack’s thigh, it was probably his own. “No wee. No fackin’
wee,” Zack was saying, though when Pickles pulled back, Zack only pulled him
down again by the wet collar of his t-shirt, adding, “Jesus, no – don’t – don’t
fackin’ stap, dood.”
The whole scene felt strange – a hazy mixture of wonder and fear, and the
unrelenting ache of Pickles’ cock as his hips rutted against the soft leather
of the bench seat and one hand slipped tentatively under the hem of Zack’s
shirt. Zack grabbed Pickles’ wrist, guided his hand back down toward his
erection, and Pickles gasped, startled by the reality of the situation, by the
fact that he’d actually managed to give someone else a boner with his
inexperienced, toothy kissing.
“What, uh – what do ya want me ta do?” he asked, apprehensively.
Zack laughed and ground up into his touch. “Jeez – what do ya think I fackin’
want ya ta do?”
The smell of it was intimidating, but the taste not as unpleasant as Pickles
had expected. And once he followed Zack’s advice – “Relax, dood – oh – fack –
jest slow down a little – yeah, like dat – jest fackin’ relax” – he found that
he only gagged two or three times. It had never occurred to Pickles that being
on the losing end of a blow-job might actually be enjoyable in its own right,
but hearing Zack lose his shit – at one point slamming his head back against
the window so violently that Pickles thought it might break – made him feel
unexpectedly powerful. And every iteration of “Oh fack – oh my Gad – oh Jesus”
pushed him closer to his own orgasm, until Zack gave a sharp tug on his hair
and looked down at him with glassy, bloodshot eyes.
“Heey, ya might wanna –”
Pickles barely had time to register Zack’s implication when he felt the thick,
bitter rush of it filling his mouth, and his stomach heaved in response.
“Sarry,” Zack managed, tucking himself back into his jeans as Pickles spit a
mouthful of jizz into an empty beer can. “Shit, I’m sarry. I didn’t mean fer –
I didn’t mean ta – yer jest so – I usually don’t uh, come dat fast, but – ya
jest – fack, man.”
Sliding back into the passenger’s seat, Pickles opened the door and flung the
can into the trees. The rain persisted, though gentler than before. He leaned
his seat back, kneading at his crotch with the heel of his palm, biting his
bottom lip while one hand crept up beneath his dingy black t-shirt to play with
a nipple-ring. “‘S okee, dood. It happens. Ya don’t gatta ‘pologize. Jest –
fack, it’s – it’s my turn now, right?” Pickles unzipped his fly and continued
rubbing himself through the front of his briefs, watching Zack expectantly. He
had always wondered what this would be like – if it would feel the same as with
a girl – but Zack only cleared his throat and looked at the console.
“I, uh – it’s gettin’ kinda dark,” he said. “We should prably get back ta town,
don’t ya think?”
Pickles’ hands stilled on his body and he lifted his head to glare at Zack.
“Are ya – are ya fackin’ with me right now? Ya jest came in my mouth, an’ yer
nat even ganna offer ta like, jerk me aff er whatever?” Pickles’ anger quickly
gave way to an even deeper disappointment, and he let his head fall back
against the headrest. “Jeez, man – ya gatta be fackin’ kiddin’ me.”
“Look, dood –” Zack turned the key in the ignition and put the car into gear.
“Don’t – please don’t make dis a thing, okee? Dat wasn’t even s’posed ta
happen. I jest tat ya could use a ride, an’ maybe we’d have some beers, an’ den
ya came at me wit’ – I didn’t – I mean, I’m nat – It felt really good like –
like, fack – an’ I wish I could do dat fer ya, but I’m nat really – um, I’m
nat, ya know – queer, an’ I think I should prably jest take ya home now, okee?”
Pickles zipped up his jeans and snatched his jacket from the floor, feeling
naked all of a sudden. He folded his arms across his chest and glowered out the
window as they drove towards town. “Fine. Jest take me home, den. I don’t give
a fack. Jest –” He hated the way his voice wavered, and cleared his throat
before going on: “Jest please don’t tell Seth, huh?”
“I won’t. I pramise. But jeez, Pickles – yer – yer too fackin’ – ya gatta be
more careful.”
 
Pickles scoffed. “I’m nat da one who ‘accidentally’ gat his dick sucked by
another guy.”
To his credit though, Zack didn’t tell Seth – but he must’ve confided in
someone else before he left for Eau Claire, because by the second week of
September, Pickles went from being known as “Seth’s little brother – he’s a
fackin’ shit-show” to “Seth’s little brother – he’s a fackin’ shit-show an’
he’ll totally suck yer dick if ya put enough liquor in him.” So Pickles got
better at swallowing, and while a part of him found his new reputation gross
and more than a little degrading, a bigger part of him fucking loved knowing
that half the reason Seth’s friends even came over was to see if they could get
Pickles alone for a few minutes – in the bathroom or the basement, or even
Seth’s bedroom if he’d gone out for a beer run.
“Heey, Pickles – ya wanna take some shats?” they’d offer. “Ya wanna play some
Atari?”
There was AJ with the long blond hair who afterwards invited Pickles outside to
smoke a joint like nothing at all had happened, and Chaz who liked to kiss
first and take off Pickles’ shirt, and Ty who never opened his pretty brown
eyes and didn’t know what to do with his hands, and Eric who yanked on Pickles’
hair and came on his face and called him a disgusting slut – a moment which
Pickles replayed in his head for weeks and which made him harder than anything
he’d ever imagined.
“Ya gatta fackin’ sweer nat ta tell my brother,” Pickles always made sure to
say, but he’d discovered that boys were liable to swear just about anything in
return for a BJ. And anyway, Seth was sure to find out sooner or later; Pickles
knew they’d probably come to blows, but a bloody nose seemed like a small price
to pay for the look on Seth’s smug face when he discovered that all his friends
were fucking closet cases who’d been getting head from his little brother in
his own house, and in some cases on his own bed.
Seth learned the truth on a Sunday – at Mass, of all places. Pickles had
stopped attending church after the fifth or sixth time that he arrived to the
service visibly blitzed, and Father Gallagher gently encouraged his parents to
leave him at home. So he used Sunday mornings to sleep in, jerk off, and noodle
around on his guitar, while Seth dutifully attended Mass – partially because he
instinctively understood that his mother’s good graces were the only thing
separating him from homelessness, but also because church was a great place to
meet sexually pent-up high school girls, even if they were all Catholic.
In the narthex, Seth bumped into Eric, pulling him away from his grandmother to
ask in a low voice, “Heey, bro – ya comin’ over fer poker an Tuesdee?
Tamarrow’s da first, which means Ty, Ben an’ Jake get deir checks, so we can
plee fer, ya know, real fackin’ money dis time.”
“Yeah – totally. Count me in. An’ uh, do ya think Pickles’ll be around?”
Seth raised an eyebrow. “Dood – yer like da third fackin’ person ta ask me dat
dis weekend; what da fack is goin’ an?”
The two brothers shared a common impulsiveness, which in Pickles manifested as
a simple tendency towards drug use and self-destruction, but in Seth was
tempered by a manipulative streak that provided him with the patience to play
the long game where it seemed profitable. And if there was one thing that Seth
loved as much as tormenting Pickles, it was turning a profit, and his revenge
offered an opportunity for both. He laid out the parameters of his scheme that
Tuesday over cigars and a game of poker.
“Dood – are ya fackin’ serious right now?” Chaz had asked him.
“Serious?” Seth laid down his cards. “‘Course I’m fackin’ serious. You’ve all
been actin’ like fackin’ dags, so it’s time ta, ya know, start placin’ some
bets.”
In hindsight, it should’ve been clear that something had changed by the first
weekend in October, when Ty interrupted Pickles mid-fellatio to stammer out an
awkward proposition for “ya know, like, actually uh, ya know, doin’ it,” and
then three days later Eric locked his bedroom door and tried to forcibly
wrestle Pickles to the floor, which Pickles answered by fracturing Eric’s
orbital socket and then letting himself out to walk home alone in the dark.
Halloween arrived on the heels of an unseasonably warm week, and Pickles
arrived to the party on 7th and Prospect without a costume, wearing a stained
cotton t-shirt and a pair of black board-shorts that seemed ready to fall off
his hips no matter how tightly he cinched his belt. The vibrations from the
stereo rattled the picture frames on the peeling walls of the old Victorian
house, and Pickles shouted a few cursory hellos, asking an acquaintance for
directions to the keg, which he found in the kitchen.
“Dood! Pickles!”
Pickles looked up to find Zack holding out a brimming shot glass. He’d always
imagined that leaving Tomahawk changed you beyond recognition, and while Zack
had traded his Tomahawk High jacket for a UW tee and had recently stopped
shaving, he seemed to be otherwise the same person he had been, which Pickles
found vaguely disappointing.
“Heey, man. What – uh, what’re ya doin’ here?”
Zack smiled. “Figured if I hung out next ta da keg, ya were bound ta show up
sooner er later.”
Pickles eyed the drink, then looked down at his own frothy Solo cup. “I meant:
what are ya doin’ in Tamahack?” He took the shot and chased it with a draught
of beer. “Did ya miss it dat much, er was caallege jest too hard fer ya?”
Zack laughed and clapped a hand on Pickles’ shoulder. “Hard? It’s fackin’ fun
as hell – you’d love it. Nah, I’m jest up here fer da weekend.”
“Oh.” Pickles felt his cheeks burning for no real reason. “Can’t be dat much
fun, if ya still wanna come back home fer a lame Halloween party.” He heaved
himself up to sit on the kitchen counter.
Zack shrugged, blue eyes watching Pickles over the rim of his cup as he sipped
his beer. “Well, I heard ya might be here.”
Pickles didn’t know what to make of that. He felt his heart leap up into his
throat, and tried to wash it down with another drink. “Yeah, well. I’m too old
fer trick-er-treatin’, an’ Seth’s prably already out somewhere, drunk as fack,
wearin’ a hockey-mask an’ tryna fight some kid fer his candy. Where da fack
else’m I ganna be?”
“I also hear ya been an somethin’ of a rampage since I left.” Zack gave him a
knowing smirk, and Pickles half-expected a nasty comment – instead, Zack only
leaned against the counter-top with one hand squarely between Pickles’ knees.
Pickles looked up to see if anyone had noticed, but they were alone in the
kitchen. “Guess I didn’t know ya needed it dat bad.”
“Well, ya kinda left me hangin’,” Pickles croaked.
“Yeah.” Zack’s shoulder pressed into Pickles’ chest as he reached around him to
lift a liquor bottle from the counter. He glanced fleetingly at the label
before refilling Pickles’ glass, then smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, dat, uh
– it wasn’t, ya know, my best moment. Ain’t ya ever like, had somethin’ jest
kinda fall inta yer lap an’ ya like, freeze up an’ don’t even know what ta do
with it?”
“No.” Pickles plucked the shot glass from Zack’s hand and downed it with a
shudder. “It was a dick move. I –” he paused to check the door before
continuing. “All I even did was suck yer cack an’ ya gat all fackin’ scared an’
acted like a big fackin’ –”
Pussy, he’d have said, if Zack hadn’t kissed him.
Pickles nearly fell off the edge of the counter, but Zack had one hand on his
waist, the other on his bare knee; his breath tasted like Budweiser, and he
smelled like cheap cologne, which Pickles found weirdly charming.
“I get it,” Zack said as his fingers slid up inside the leg of Pickles’ shorts.
“I was a dildo. So let me make it up to ya.”
*
He woke sometime around noon with a merciless headache and the smell of vomit
clinging to his hair. Pickles groaned and grabbed for the pillow, hugged it to
his chest and rolled onto his side, when someone tore it out of his arms and
smacked him hard in the face.
“Oh no ya don’t. Get da fack up, ya fackin’ fairy.”
The sound of Seth’s voice knotted Pickles’ stomach, and his eyes shot open as
he lurched over the side of the bed to give a couple violent dry-heaves.
Staring at the stained, beige carpet, he realized with a start that this was
Seth’s room – that he’d been lying unconscious in Seth’s bed – and suddenly
Pickles felt a harrowing sense of empathy for the girls that found themselves
in just this position.
He sat up abruptly, wincing as the throbbing in his head quickened. He was
relieved to find that he was fully clothed, though the positives of the
situation seemed to end there – and his shirt was on backwards. Just beyond the
foot of the bed, Seth’s TV crackled with static, and in the chair beside it,
Pickles spotted a garbage bag full of Halloween candy.
Seth sat beside him on the mattress, wearing khakis and a polo, his thick brown
hair combed neatly back, still damp from a shower. Pickles expected his brother
to be angry, but Seth only seemed amused – that goddamn smirk playing at the
corner of his lips made Pickles feel instantly afraid.
“Glad ya woke up; I was worried about ya,” Seth said, his tone an unsettling
mockery of affection as he considered Pickles with predatory eyes. “Zack said
ya gat pretty shit-faced, an’ he was good enough ta bring ya home.”
Pickles clutched at the comforter with sweaty palms. He turned to look at the
door, but it was closed, most likely locked. “Why da fack am I in yer bed?”
Seth snorted derisively. “Ya know, nat everyone in da whole town’s tryna fack
ya. Can’t I jest, ya know, try an’ take care of my little fackin’ train-wreck
of a brother? Ya’d rather I let ya fackin’ choke ta death an yer own puke –
fackin’ – break Mam’s heart?” He reached up to grab Pickles by the hair on the
back of his neck and gave his brother’s pounding head a rough shake, his breath
hot on Pickles’ ear. “Dough da wee ya been actin’ lately, I don’t think
anyone’d fackin’ blame me. If I let ya choke an it.”
“Fack you,” Pickles snarled. “Don’t fackin’ touch me.”
Seth’s grip on Pickles’ hair tightened, and he gave hard yank. “Dat’s funny –
Eric told me ya like havin’ yer hair pulled.” Pickles grimaced, and Seth
considered his brother’s face closely. “Do ya? Are ya gettin’ a hard-an from
dis, ya fackin’ faggot?”
Pickles glared at him. He wanted to clock Seth in the mouth, but with Seth
holding onto him this way the angle was impossible. “I ain’t a fackin’ faggot,”
he spat.
With his free hand, Seth lifted the remote and aimed it at the television.
Pickles’ heart stopped when he saw the room, the two silhouettes, the messy
bed. He watched Zack flick on the light-switch, blue eyes looking straight into
the camera for a second before he laid his hands on Pickles’ hips and guided
him towards the mattress, closed the door and pulled Pickles’ shirt off over
his head while Pickles babbled:
“Jeez, dood – fack – yer fackin’ serious, huh? Oh shit – don’t hate me, but – I
ain’t gat a candom er nothin’ –”
Zack set to work on Pickles’ shorts, and Seth gave an admiring whistle. “Da
fact dat he gat yer ass fackin’ naked – dat’s nat even part’a da bet. Dat’s
jest, ya know, fackin’ bonus points. Jest showin’ aff.”
“Bet?” Pickles swallowed and looked away from the screen, suddenly embarrassed
for his past self. “What da fack are ya tackin’ about?
“Oh! Dat reminds me.” Seth reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled
$10 bill, then tossed it onto Pickles’ lap. “Consider dat yer share, dough it’s
more’n ya fackin’ deserve.” He smiled, clearly pleased with himself. “Maybe use
it ta buy some rubbers next time, huh?”
Pickles stared down at the bill, uncomprehending. The room seemed to tilt
slightly to one side, and a bit of bile worked its way up his throat. “What…
what da fack, Seth?”
Seth shrugged. “Ya gatta, ya know, work an yer fackin’ business sense, bro. Me,
I gat a fackin’ entrepreneurial spirit, an’ if ya wanna act like a fackin’
whore an’ blow all my friends, den I’m ganna – fackin’ – make sure at least one
of us gets, ya know, gets some fackin’ money out of it.”
Pickles flinched as the boy on the tape let out a long, needy whine. It had
felt so good – at the time – and Zack kept saying it – “Ya feel so fackin’
good, dood. Ya look so fackin’ good like dis” – but in the cold, hard eye of
the camera, he just looked really fucking hammered.
“Gad, dood, ya sound like a fackin’ chick.” Seth hit rewind to listen to
Pickles moan again. “So anywee, Zack wasn’t plannin’ an comin’ home til
Thanksgiving, but when I told him about da bet – an’ told him da stakes was up
ta five hundred if he was in – he said he’d fackin’, ya know, come up fer da
weekend an’ settle it.” Seeing the look of bewildered anguish on Pickles’ face,
he carried on: “So dere was AJ an’ Trent an’ Ty an’ Chaz an’ Ben an’ Jake an’
Eric an’ a couple guys ya don’t know, but Zack seemed pretty confident about it
– said he’d have yer cherry an’ da video tape ta prove it in 48 hours er less.
An’ ta be feer, I had a little more faith in ya, an’ I said no fackin’ wee
would ya be dat easy but… ya know,” he gestured towards the screen. “Here ya
are. So tell me again how yer nat a fackin’ faggot.”
Pickles reflected that he had not thought it possible to feel so betrayed by
someone he’d never trusted in the first place. “Are you tellin’ me ya sold my –
ya charged ‘em fackin’ fifty dallars each ta see who would –” He faltered and
clenched his jaw, unable to finish.
Seth waived a hand dismissively. “See, dat’s exactly what I mean. You’d be out
dere chargin’ fifty lousy dallars – I charged ‘em a hundred.”
“But you said –”
“I said five hundy fer Zack. Wit’ a fifty-fifty split. Five fer him, five fer
me. Ya know, ta compensate fer da pain an’ sufferin’ of havin’ my kid brother
actin’ like da town cum-dumpster.” Seth grinned and ruffled Pickles’ hair.
Seth was nineteen – a couple inches taller than Pickles, and heavier, but he
lacked Pickles’ talent for going from speechless to ape-shit in a fraction of a
second, and the playful gesture tripped the wire in Pickles’ brain that sent
him lunging at his brother, tackling Seth awkwardly to the floor where they
grappled for half a minute before Pickles came out on top with one knee on
either side of Seth’s ribs.
Things got a bit blurry from there. He remembered Seth’s fists, striking him
anywhere they could – his thighs and his sides mostly. At some point the
television stand toppled over, and Seth’s TV tumbled to the floor – the screen
went black and blissfully silent, while Pickles heard his father’s footsteps
racing up the stairs, his father’s voice shouting. He remembered Seth’s blood,
mixing with his own where he’d cut his knuckles open on Seth’s perfect fucking
teeth, the feeling of animal triumph when he saw all that red around Seth’s
mouth, even as a pair of police sirens began to wail in the distance. It was
beautiful. Dimly, he registered the sound of the lock breaking, four sets of
hands on him, lifting him off his brother like he was weightless. The handcuffs
felt cold and sharp, and even after the cops had dragged him out of the room,
Pickles heard himself screaming, “Fack you! Fack you! Don’t you ever fackin’
touch me!”
***** The Video *****
Chapter Summary
     Pickles goes to Offdensen for damage control.
When he wanted to rankle Offdensen, Pickles had discovered almost nothing as
effective as the word “dad” – “Yeah, okee, Dad” or “Fine, Dad, whatever you
see.” But however much he outwardly resisted their CFO’s guidance, Pickles took
great comfort in the knowledge that there was someone in the universe whose
sole purpose seemed to be protecting him from the consequences of his own
terrible choices. And unlike his real father, Charles never judged you for the
trouble you got into – never called you a disappointment or a drunk, or told
you that you belonged in a garbage can.
This was not to say that Pickles didn’t find Offdensen intimidating at times,
especially times like these, when he walked into that cavernous office and sat
in the chair in front of Charles’ colossal mahogany desk and fidgeted like a
child sitting in front of the school principal.
“I, uh – sarry ta bather ya, chief, but…” Pickles looked desperately for
something to busy his hands, but Charles kept his workspace unfortunately free
of clutter. He settled for drumming his fingers on the edge of the desk. “I gat
kind of a prablem.”
Charles only looked at him expectantly.
“It’s, uh – about my brother.” Pickles cleared his throat and looked around.
“Ya don’t have like, another affice, do ya? Like, a super secret affice where
ya go ta deal with all da extra facked-up shit?”
“No,” Charles lied. Still, for someone capable of no more than three distinct
facial expressions, Offdensen was adept at reading people, and he leaned back
in his chair to open a drawer and ask, “Would you, ah, care for a glass of
scotch? I was just about to have one myself.”
Pickles guessed that was a lie too, seeing as it was only just noon, but he
nodded anyway. “Yeah,” he said with an uneasy smile. “I been feelin’ a little
dehydrated todee.”
He’d recently noticed that Charles kept a weighted tumbler amongst his glasses
– the bottom thicker than all the others – and that this was the glass he
always used when pouring for Pickles. He’d thought to complain about it, but
Offdensen only ever drank top-shelf stuff, so Pickles decided it all evened out
in the end.
“So,” said Charles, laying down a coaster and sliding Pickles a drink, “What is
this, ah, extra fucked-up shit?”
Pickles took a sniff of the scotch before swallowing a mouthful. “Well, ya know
my brother’s a Grade-A piece’a shit fackin’ dildo scumbeeg, right?”
“I can see why you’d say that.”
“An’ when we were kids, he used ta – he did some kinda facked-up shit to me.
Like, aside from da usual – ya know – physical violence an’ caallin’ me a
faggot an’ all.”
Offdensen shifted uncomfortably. “Pickles, I know you’ve, ah, thrown that chair
across the room the past couple times I’ve suggested this, but –”
“No.” Pickles shook his head. “Fack you. I ain’t goin’ to a fackin’ shrink.”
“Talk therapy is not the same as –”
Pickles finished his drink and slammed the empty glass down hard on the desk.
He saw a flash of anger in Offdensen’s eyes, but it passed as quickly as
lightning. “Gaddammit, Charlie – ya think I’m in here ‘cause I jest really need
ta tack about my feelin’s ta somebody dat ain’t even gat none?” He registered
the cruelty of the remark as soon as it left his mouth, but carried on without
apology. “I’m tryna tell ya dat I gat a prablem – like, da kind dat’s yer jab
ta fix.”
A tense silence filled the room. Pickles regretted his decision to come here,
and was just about to stand up and leave when Charles reached out to refill his
glass. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m listening.”
Pickles drank more slowly this time, feeling the creeping burn of the liquor
and staring into his cup before beginning, “My brother has a video of me.” His
eyes darted up just long enough to catch the frown on Offdensen’s face.
“What kind of video?”
“Um – ya know.” Pickles felt himself blushing, which he hated. “Like a sex
teep.”
“I see.” Pickles could almost hear the gears in the CFO’s head begin turning.
“And presumably he intends to blackmail you with it?”
“Yeah – Seth’s fackin’ predictable like dat.”
“Did he say what he wants?”
“Nope.” Pickles smiled humorlessly. “Jest wanted ta remind me dat he has it.”
Charles sighed. He removed his glasses and folded them carefully before laying
them on the desk, then leaned back in his chair to think. Pickles finished his
drink and quietly helped himself to another. He reflected that he needed
something harder than alcohol, and wondered idly what Charles did to unwind, if
anything.
Offdensen looked at him seriously, his voice carefully measured. “I know it
much be, ah, upsetting for you to have a family member violate your privacy
like this, but – this isn’t new territory for us. We’ve got an entire team in
our PR department dedicated to managing the impact of compromising photos and
videos. Skwisgaar’s had over a dozen sex tapes end up in the press, and we’ve
managed to not only control the damage, but to actually acquire the
distribution rights. Did you know that his three-volume nursing-home
compilation has sold more copies on DVD than The Matrix?”
Pickles stared at him. “No. I mean, yeah – I knew dat. Murderface owns like,
three capies. But like, no – dis video dat Seth’s gat – it can’t get out. Like,
never. I’ll give him whatever, but… I don’t trust him ta destroy it.”
“Fair enough.” Charles replaced his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his
nose and asking, “Do you have a copy of this video?”
Pickles thought about lying, but lying was exhausting – and anyway, Charles
always knew when you were lying, so there wasn’t really much point. “If I say I
do, yer ganna make me show ya, huh?”
“I’d prefer to know what we’re working with,” Offdensen replied, softening his
tone ever-so-slightly to add, “I’m not going to make you show me anything, but
I am going to ask you to trust me.”
Pickles considered, squinting at Charles for a few seconds before pulling the
DethPhone from his pocket, biting his lip as he thumbed through his inbox. He
hesitated before handing it over. “Jest – jest you, dough, okee? Nobody else.
No PR department er nothin’.”
Charles nodded. “Of course.”
“Oh, an’ try nat ta get a boner.” Pickles cringed at his own lame joke, and
Offdensen looked mortified.
Watching Charles watch the video was even worse than he imagined – sort of like
listening to someone read the most pathetic page of your diary aloud. Having
never actually seen the entire video, Pickles forgot the worst part of that
night – that he’d been drunk on an empty stomach, and getting fucked turned out
to be a lot like off-roading in a truck with no shocks.
“Oh shit, dood – I think I’m ganna –” he had managed, just before he threw up
all over the bed, the wall and himself.
Pickles flinched at the sound of his own retching, and Charles stopped the
video. He turned the phone over in his hands for a moment. Pickles had seen
Offdensen exasperated before – even angry, on a couple of occasions – but now,
underneath that stony expression, Pickles saw something that frightened him.
I’m sarry, he wanted to say, It was a mistake, but the cold fury that radiated
off of Charles left Pickles in a petrified silence.
“How old were you when this was made?” Offdensen asked finally.
“Old enough to know better,” Pickles replied, slouching down in his chair,
staring at the smudge his lips had left on the rim of the glass.
“Answer my question.”
“Sixteen.”
Charles’ eyes rolled upward as he did the math. “Fifteen years ago. And did you
– were you aware that you were being recorded?”
“Well, I mean – ya can prably tell I wasn’t aweer’a very fackin’ much dat
night. But no. Nobody ever – uh, asked me er told me er nothin’. I didn’t find
out til Seth showed me it da next dee. Tat it was real fackin’ funny.”
“And the boy who – the other boy in the tape – how old was he?”
Pickles shrugged, feeling a little interrogated. “I dunno. Eighteen, maybe
nineteen. One’a Seth’s friends.”
“Do you know his last name? Where he is now?”
“Zack Keller. He drapped out after his first year at Eau Claire. Prably gat a
couple facked-up kids an’ a wife dat he cheats an with other guys in da
bathroom of da gas station dat he prably still works at in Tamahack. Look,
Charlie, I don’t really give a fack about him. I jet want da video gone.”
“Consider it done.”
Pickles blinked in disbelief at the simplicity of the answer. “Really?”
“Hmm.” Charles licked his lips, considering. “And ah, what would you like to do
with Seth?”
“Do with him? I mean, I’d like ta choke him ta death with my bare hands and
throw his corpse into a giant tank’a piranhas an’ watch it disappear.” Pickles
gave a dry smirk and finished his fourth glass of scotch. “But why’d ya ask?”
“Unfortunately, the statute of limitations on – on what happened to you has
most likely passed. But by sending this to you, Seth is guilty of distributing
child pornography, and could be –”
Pickles stood up too fast, and the blood rushed from his head. The tumbler fell
to the floor, intact, and before he could think, he’d lunged across the desk to
snatch his phone from Charles’ fingers. “Fack you! It ain’t – it ain’t like
dat! It ain’t fackin’ kiddie porn, okee? I was – fackin’ Jesus – I was a
fackin’ teenager – nat some fackin’ little kid dat didn’t know what I was
doin’!” If anyone else had said those words to him, Pickles would’ve laid them
out cold; and while he doubted Charles would ever hit him back, he knew the CFO
was like a fucking quadruple jiu-jitsu blackbelt sensei or some shit, so he
restrained himself and only stood there, shaking.
“Pickles.” Charles said his name softly and waited for Pickles’ eyes to
refocus, for his breathing to slow. “You’re right – you were a teenager. And
whatever we call what happened, that’s up to you. The important thing is that I
could have Seth put away. For a very long time. If you want.”
Seth in prison – where he belonged. Not like he hadn’t been there before. And
their parents could take out a second mortgage to buy the best lawyer in
Wisconsin, but it wouldn’t matter. Whoever they got wouldn’t stand a chance
against the Dethklok legal team – against Charles. If it ever went to trial –
which seemed unlikely – well, good luck finding a jury that didn’t include at
least eight hardcore Dethklok fans. And maybe then their mother wouldn’t be so
fucking quick to tell everyone about how well her eldest had done for himself –
“Ooh, my Sethy’s a registered sex-offender,” she’d have to say. There was just
one problem…
Pickles scratched at the back of his neck. “Would anyone else have ta watch da
teep?”
“Yes.”
“Den no.” Seeing that Charles intended to argue with him, he closed his eyes
and shook his head. “You – ya don’t understand. I – Nate can’t find out about
dis.”
Offdensen didn’t bother trying to hide his frown. Though he’d never explicitly
said so, Pickles knew their CFO disapproved of his relationship with Nathan.
Nate waived it off – “He just doesn’t want us fucking up the band” – but
Pickles suspected that Charles’ disapproval had at least as much to do with a
belief that Pickles was getting the better end of their arrangement. (An
assessment with which Pickles agreed.)
“I thought you’d, ah, decided to be more open with Nathan.”
Pickles shrugged again, like Charles wasn’t asking him to go against three
decades of lessons learned and instinct. “I did. I mean, I am. More open. Dan I
was. I been, ya know, hanest. About stuff. Most stuff. But, bein’ open with him
doesn’t mean I gatta tell him every fackin’ thing dat ever happened in my life,
reet?”
“Well, no, but –”
“An’ anything dat happened between me an’ my brother – I jest wanna keep him
far da fack away from it, okee?”
“Pickles, what happened on that tape… it wasn’t consensual. Nathan won’t hold
it against you.”
“It was, dough.” Pickles smirked as he bent to pick up the tumbler from the
rug. “An’ anywee, I’m nat worried about Nate’n holdin’ it against me. Ya know
da guy – he thinks I’m a lat better’n I am. I jest – ya only get ta have so
many issues before people start figurin’ out yer more trouble dan yer worth. If
dat means nothin’ happens ta Seth, den whatever.” He set the glass carefully on
the coaster on top of Charles’ desk. “An’ don’t think I don’t notice dis
bullshit weighted glass.”
“You’ve told me that you find moderation difficult,” Charles replied. “I’m just
trying to, ah, make it a little easier.”
Pickles scowled. “Whatever, Dad. Ya wanna help me? Jest make da fackin’ video
disappear, okee?”
***** What About Murder? *****
Chapter Summary
     Nathan tries to help.
Chapter Notes
     Now without fucking drafting errors. Holy balls.
     Thanks, ya lovely dildos!
1999…
They’d been playing together for almost two years when Seth showed up to a gig
in LaCrosse, fresh out of prison and drunk on Jaeger, buying shots for any girl
that looked too young to buy them for herself. Four years had passed since
Pickles last saw his brother at the Ministry Sacred Heart ER, wheeling past him
on a gurney while Pickles asked the receptionist when he could expect to see
someone about his hand. Nathan had never felt as strongly about anyone as
Pickles did about Seth, and he didn’t understand yet that while Pickles might
swear up and down that he’d never speak to that motherfucker again – (“It’s
over,” he’d say, “I’m fackin’ done,” like Seth was an ex-lover instead of some
douchebag nobody relative from Nowhere) – it was only a matter of time before
Seth inevitably resurfaced, like a shark scenting blood, and the same fucked-up
history that compelled Pickles to smash his brother’s head through the window
of the Tomahawk Applebee’s also compelled him to pay Seth’s medical bills
afterward.
It wasn’t till several nights later that Pickles thought to wonder whether Seth
meant to see his band at all. It wasn’t like he kept his brother up-to-date on
his creative endeavors, but Bayou of Blood did have a website – (well-curated
by then-guitarist Dave, a music school drop-out whose playing style could only
be described as “precise”) – and that website did feature a photo of the band –
Nathan, Pickles, William and Dave – along with a brief bio of each, which
surely appeared whenever anyone (Seth) googled “Pickles + Tomahawk, WI” or
“Pickles + Snakes n Barrels,” or even just “Pickles the Drummer,” so it wasn’t
beyond the reach of possibility that Seth had simply been waiting for his
brother’s new band to play somewhere nearby. After all, Pickles was always good
for a few bucks or a few drinks, and Seth had never been above leveraging his
little brother’s celebrity for a bit of easily-impressed small-town pussy.
That night in LaCrosse, one particular asshole stood out amidst the sea of
black t-shirts in his khakis and a baby-blue polo, wearing slicked-back hair
and a soul-patch that Murderface zeroed in on with all the lispy derision of a
loser who’s spotted an even bigger loser.
“Hey guysch – check out thisch bag of dicksch. Looksch like he wandered out of
a porno schponschored by JC Penney.”
Nathan and Dave laughed, and Pickles looked up from adjusting his cymbals to
ask, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Nate said with smile. “Just this dildo at the bar who’s really
scraping the bottom of the jailbait barrel.”
Pickles, who loved a laugh at another man’s expense as much as any other jack-
off, scanned the bar for this unfortunate piece shit, then froze, his sharp
grin vanishing as he choked, “Oh. Fack.”
“Dude – you know that guy?”
Pickles said nothing, but stood there dumbfounded as if he’d fallen under a
spell.
“Pickles?”
Nate had never been particularly literate when it came to reading people, and
the subtleties of things like posture and vocal inflection often passed him by.
But Pickles was different – he’d stuck around long enough for Nathan to puzzle
out which of his little smirks meant condescension or amusement or lust – and
when he told Pickles that he heard voices – had heard them as long as he could
remember – Pickles only opened another beer and asked with great interest,
“Well, what do dey tell ya?” The voices concerned themselves with Pickles,
which was unusual. Fire, they named him sometimes, so Nathan learned to think
of him that way – as a person who sometimes needed tending, needed fuel and
attention, and sometimes just needed to be left the fuck alone. Now, he sensed
Pickles wavering and unsteady. Nathan frowned and passed his hand in front of
Pickles’ unblinking eyes.
“Uh – dude?”
“Maybe he’sch in love,” Murderface teased, not looking up from his tuner.
Nathan growled. He knew Will was just being a fuckhead, but even the suggestion
of it stirred up an unpleasant feeling in Nathan’s guts. A surly warning from
the stage-manager broke Pickles’ trance, and he began fiddling with his drum
throne in a determined effort to keep his eyes down.
As the house lights dimmed, Nate squinted into the crowd, searching for the
dick with the polo shirt, and discovered that he’d made his way towards the
stage and now stood leaned against the wall beside speaker stack with one arm
around a girl, shouting something in her ear. His other arm pointed straight at
Pickles, who was double-fisting a pair of clear plastic cups filled with what
looked like straight vodka while he sound-checked his bass pedals one last
time.
He played aggressively that night, the din of the drums like a rockslide that
surrounded Nathan and all but drowned out Dave and Murderface. He broke a skin
halfway through the set and had to stop to swap out the floor tom, and Nate
didn’t miss the way Pickles’ hands shook as he adjusted the tension before
launching back into that same fill as if nothing had happened. The sound was
heavy, and Nathan loved the feeling of the drums rattling his bones, though he
was beginning to hear why Pickles had been needling the rest of them to
audition a second guitarist before they wasted any more money on recording.
“So why don’t you double-up in the studio and play rhythm?” Nate had asked him,
“At least until we can find someone permanent.”
“Nuh-uh.” Pickles shook his head. “No wee. I ain’t fackin’ with guitar anymore.
I jest wanna stee in da back – fackin’ – jest fackin’ exorcise some demons.” He
smiled and shrugged. “It’s what I’m fackin’ made for.”
Nathan couldn’t argue – the first time he’d heard Pickles play the drums, he
felt like he’d been hit in the face with a pillowcase full of doorknobs. Still,
he remembered the night he came home early from his shift as a bouncer at a
local biker bar, and heard the sound of an unplugged guitar and Pickles’ voice
softly singing:
Outside it’s cold but inside it’s a storm
I swore I’d never come this way
I swore I’d never see the day
But cold girls’ll fuck anything that’s warm
He’d listened for almost a minute before Pickles noticed him standing there in
the doorway and stopped abruptly, his freckled cheeks flaring red, more like a
teenager caught plucking in his bedroom than a man who’d played sold-out arena
shows on five continents.
“Keep going,” Nate told him. “Or I’ll tell everyone that I caught you playing
unplugged and singing like a total pussy.”
Other people usually made Nathan feel tense and unmoored, but he liked being
alone with Pickles. There was Pickles the Drummer, of course, who popped pills
like candy, got into fistfights and threesomes with equal frequency, and played
the drums hard and fast as a fucking hurricane, who made Nate feel like
anything was possible. But there was also just Pickles, who acted affectionate
when he smoked weed, could tell you the history of any old-school arcade game,
loved cinnamon buns, and had a beautiful singing voice when he thought no-one
was listening. That Pickles made Nathan feel like nothing really mattered, but
in a good way.
Nate didn’t know what to make of the version of his friend that appeared that
night in LaCrosse. He’d watched Pickles cold-cock dudes twice his size, but now
– in the parking-lot after the show – he stood there with this skinny asshole’s
arm around his shoulder, hunched over on himself like a beaten dog in need of
rescue. The douchebag in the khakis leaned in close to whisper in Pickles’ ear,
and something in Nathan that had up until that moment remained safely submerged
came rushing up to the surface.
“Dude – let’s go. We’ve got to be in Minneapolis tomorrow.”
Pickles opened his mouth to say something, but the fuckwad with the soul-patch
interrupted him to slur, “Ain’t ya ganna introduce me, li’l bro?”
Nathan blinked. It was obvious, all of a sudden. This dildo was taller, with
brown hair and better teeth, his smirk more shit-eating than impish, but they
shared the same green eyes, the arched eyebrows, the thin build and the
handsome profile.
Pickles looked sick and mumbled when he spoke: “Nate’n – dis is my brother,
Seth.”
Seth looked Nathan up and down, one hand playing with Pickles’ dreads, the
other lifting a brimming cup of beer to his lips. “Typical,” he said, then
poked a finger at Nathan’s chest. “You guys oughtta come up ta Eau Claire. I
could, ya know, book a venue up dere. I know everyone in dat scene, ya know –
club-owners an’ promoters an’ shit. Ya wanna like, make dis tour fackin’
prafitable, ya gatta stap in Eau Claire. Cut me in, and ya could consider me
like, ya know, yer fackin’ regional manager er whatever.”
Nate waited for Pickles to tell his brother to fuck off, mind his own business,
they already had two shows lined up in the Twin Cities, but Pickles only stared
at his own toes, catatonic, while Seth went on about all the shitty little
towns Bayou of Blood had to play if they ever wanted to, ya know, get fackin’
noticed.
“Why don’t ya jest like, tell ‘em who ya are an’ stap actin’ like some fackin’
nobody?” He held Pickles tighter, and said to Nathan, “Didja know dat? Didja
know my little brother’s already fackin’ famous? Fackin’ – ya know dat one
sang, ‘Cold Girls?’ Fackin’ Number 3 for six weeks? Betcha didn’t know dat sang
was about me.”
* * *
“What makes you think something’s wrong with Pickles?”
Nate fidgeted uncomfortably. He hated chairs – they always seemed to be made
for someone smaller. He also hated when Charles played dumb like this – like it
wasn’t always totally obvious when something was wrong with Pickles, and like
Nathan wasn’t the person most likely to notice. “There just is, okay?”
He didn’t feel like explaining it. Not that Charles didn’t already know about
the two of them, but Nathan could only imagine how gay it would sound coming
out of his mouth in words.
I took a video of him on my phone. Not even a dirty video, just – like a stupid
little video of him not even doing anything. And he fucking freaked out on me.
“Freaked out” would’ve been an understatement anyway; “had a panic-induced
asthma-attack” might’ve been more accurate.
“Dood – what da fack is dis?”
When Nate left to take a post-coital piss, Pickles splayed himself out on the
bed, looking like a hot mess the way he always did right afterward – dreadlocks
a sweaty tangle, jizz splattered across his stomach, and that lazy, well-fucked
grin spreading across his face as he watched Nathan’s naked ass leave the room.
Now, sixty seconds later, he sat bolt upright, one hand tugging at the sheets
to cover himself, the other clutching Nathan’s phone while he stared at the
screen in shock. Nate’s guts lurched, and he hurried through an inventory of
possible incriminating things Pickles might’ve come across – some really
vanilla gay porn, maybe, or that dick-pick he’d taken and sent to Murderface as
a joke.
But when he sat down beside Pickles to get a look, Pickles rebuffed the arm
around his waist with a hard elbow to Nate’s ribs. “Fack you. Don’t touch me
like dat right now.”
“Well at least let me see what’s got your fucking panties in a knot,” Nathan
growled, trying not to let on how badly the blow actually hurt.
Pickles turned the phone towards him, held it just out of reach, and without
his glasses, Nate had to squint to see the screen. “What, that? That’s just a –
just a stupid video I took. It’s like thirty seconds long.”
Pickles scowled at him. “When?” he demanded. “When did ya take dis?”
“Last week?”
“Why?”
Nathan blinked at him. It was pathetic, he knew, and kind of faggy to take a
video of Pickles sleeping, but he didn’t understand why Pickles was so upset.
Not like the whole world hadn’t seen him passed out – at press conferences and
parties and that one show in Montreal. And anyway, Nathan had meant to delete
the file days ago, but every time he tried, he just ended up watching it again.
“Because you – you were bass-pedaling in your sleep,” he offered.
“An’ what?” Pickles cleared his throat. “Ya tat it was fackin’ funny and wanted
ta show someone?”
The accusation caught Nate by surprise. The idea of sharing the video had never
occurred to him. “No,” he replied. “Just thought it was – just thought it was
fucking metal is all.”
But none of that was Charles’ business, so Nathan folded his arms across his
chest and waited.
Offdensen frowned, searching for the combination of words that would not
(directly) violate his promise of confidentiality. “Supposing there is
something wrong – what would you like me to do about it?”
“What about murder?”
“What about it?”
Nathan gripped the edges of the chair and tried to pull it forward, which made
a grating noise against the hardwood floor. Charles cringed, and Nate asked,
“Could we – I – um, have someone murdered? Like, for a good reason?”
Charles held back a smile. He’d lost count of how many lives he’d taken to
maintain Dethklok’s safety and success, but still, he found it sweet that
Nathan would ask.
“Hypothetically,” he replied, though he’d sent Toki and Murderface away with a
perfunctory “no” when they’d asked the same question. “Whose murder are we
discussing?”
“Pickles’ brother, Seth.”
“I see.” Charles pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose to peer
incisively at Nathan. “And what makes you so sure that Seth is the cause of
Pickles’ ah, mood?”
“I can delete it, okay?” Nathan had said. “Just give me the fucking phone back
and I’ll delete it right now.”
But Pickles clung to the phone insistently, his eyes watering, fingers shaking,
and his breathing had become a reedy rasp. “Dood, ya keen’t – ya keen’t jest
fackin’ – fackin’ video people in deir sleep, okee? It’s nat – yer nat even
s’posed ta stee da night, remember? An’ dis is why. Ya let people stee da
night, an’ –” he paused to give a few dry coughs, “An’ dey take fackin’ videos,
and den dey – dey act like dey fackin’ own you.”
Fuck you, Nathan wanted to say, but Pickles had begun wheezing, pawing at his
chest with one hand while his face darkened.
“Where’s your inhaler?”
“Bathroom,” Pickles managed, pointing with the hand that still clutched the
phone. “Drawer.”
Nate found it there beneath the sink, along with a pair of syringes and a few
boxes of Plan B. He handed it to Pickles. “I don’t know what to do,” he said
uselessly, then stood there, watching as Pickles took a gasping hit of
albuterol, then another.
Pickles had apologized to him when he finally recovered his breath. Leaned back
against the headboard, looking up towards the ceiling, Pickles let out another
dry cough and wiped a stray tear from his cheek. “Fack – I’m sarry I’m such a
paranoid asshole.” He glanced at the phone lying on sheets.
Nathan picked it up and looked at the screen. They’d been in his bed that
night, and Pickles fell asleep with the leather cuffs still on his wrists, feet
tapping out a beat on the mattress. Nate looked back at Pickles, face still
flushed, lips a little purple.
He deleted the file. “Don’t worry about it. It’s gone.”
Hiding behind a curtain of black hair, Nathan shrugged and grumbled, “I can
just tell when it has to do with his family. And Seth – he like, did something
to Pickles. Like, I don’t know what, exactly, but it fucked him up and it keeps
on fucking him up, and I – um, basically I just want Seth dead, okay?”
Some sort of revelation played out across Charles’ features, and Nathan worried
that he’d been caught out. Showing or verbalizing any sort of emotional
investment was against Pickles’ rules – besides just being not fucking metal –
and Nate realized belatedly that saying he wished Pickles’ shitty brother was
dead was probably tantamount to saying that he loved Pickles and thought of him
as a boyfriend. But whatever Charles thought, he only asked,
“And do you think Pickles wants him dead?”
Nate grimaced. “I – I don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably not.” As an only
child, sibling relationships baffled him. He could’ve sworn Pickles planned on
beating Seth fatally at his own wedding reception – still remembered the way
Pickles kept swinging even when Nathan pulled him off – and then the next day
offered his brother six-hundred thousand dollars a year (plus benefits) to head
up Dethklok Australia just because he felt guilty about it. Families were
incomprehensible enough without siblings.
Charles sighed. “Believe it or not, Nathan, I also find Seth, ah, loathsome.
But I can’t have him killed unless he either forces my hand, or unless Pickles
asks me to do it himself.” He paused before adding, “For what it’s worth,
though, I ah, appreciate the sentiment. And I know Pickles does too.”
***** Terms *****
Chapter Summary
     Nathan tells Seth how it's going to be, and Seth thinks about how it
     is.
Seth almost never wore pants, if he could get away with it, and this morning’s
meeting was no exception. Explosion either forgot about the time difference or
didn’t care, and Seth was going to be damned if he’d crawl out of bed at 3am
for a teleconference and put on pants.
Amber didn’t stir as he threw the sheets back and sat up on the edge of the
mattress, and for a second he resented her slumbering form – curled up on her
side, facing away from him, dead to the world. Since their son was born, it
seemed like Amber hardly left the bed. Seth supposed this was normal, and he
knew that it made his own life easier, since they had a staff of three to keep
JR clothed, fed and happy. Still, seeing the stack of old Cosmos pile up beside
the bed, the waste-basket overflowing with tissue and wrappers, the ashtray
full of menthol-lights – it made him feel like a failure somehow, and so
naturally he resented her.
“Come an, babe – let’s watch da fackin’ world burn,” he’d said when the riots
first started, pulling her close as they looked out the bay window of their
beachfront mansion, fortified now with land- and sea-mines, motion-activated
death-rays, and a forest of razor-wire.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m ganna go lie down with JR.”
Honestly though, at least Pickles would’ve appreciated the sight of Sydney in
flames. On the night that Seth set fire to the family’s garage – payback for
being sent to his room for swearing – he’d turned to look at his brother’s face
and saw there something approaching rapture. Standing across the street in
their pajamas, bathed in the glow of the flames and the fire-engine lights,
Seth felt for the first time that he and Pickles understood one another, and
for a fleeting, weird moment, he was excited to show his little brother the
whole shitty world.
“Pretty wicked, huh?”
Pickles nodded, his eyes following the billowing black smoke up into the sky.
“Yeah.”
Seth hadn’t intended to blame Pickles for the incident, at least not until the
words were already coming out of his mouth, but then, Seth rarely intended to
do anything until he was already in the midst of it. He never did understand
how his parents failed to guess the truth; Pickles had been a sweet kid up
until that point – always saying please and thank you, playing nicely with the
neighbor kids, and just generally making Seth look like an asshole.
He remembered coming home from school early one afternoon to hear his parents
arguing, heard his father say something about Pickles’ hair, about where the
fuck did that hair even come from.
“I’m da one who – fackin’ – burned it down. Ya know – burned down da garage,”
he’d confessed once when he was lit. “Blamed it an Pickles, but ya know, it was
me dat did it.”
 
“Dat’s facked up, babe,” Amber had replied. “No wonder he’s such a train-
wreck.”
Seth huffed. Pickles the Train-Wreck. It was true that Pickles never needed any
help getting into trouble after that. Every time his brother came home in the
back of a squad car, Seth pretended not to listen to their father’s stony
voice, ordering Pickles to his bedroom the same way you might tell a tiresome
dog to go lie down, while their mother sighed and said, “Hanestly, it’s like ya
enjoy gettin’ cat.” (Seth never understood why Pickles got off so easy, while
Calvert screamed himself hoarse when Seth got expelled one year for fighting.)
But if Pickles never needed help getting into trouble, he also never needed
help getting out of Tomahawk.
On the day he left, Seth had come after him, jogging down the street until he
caught up. It was an evening in early spring, and Seth hadn’t thought to grab a
coat as he ran out of the house after his brother.
“Dood – where ya ganna go?”
Pickles, who had always dressed like an idiot, looked likewise cold in his
leather jacket and jeans, his cheeks and ears a deep red, his breath coming out
in short white puffs. “Los Angeles,” he replied.
“L.A.? Where da fack didja get da money ta go ta L.A.?”
“None’a yer fackin’ business.”
Seth’s head swam. “Soon as I turn eighteen, I’m fackin’ outta here,” Pickles
had always said, and Seth told him, “Fine. I bet Mam and Dad can’t fackin’
wait.” But eighteen was a long ways off still, and now Pickles was leaving,
like – who the fuck did he think he was? You couldn’t just leave like this.
“Well, what’re ya ganna do in L.A.? Ya like, don’t even know anyone.”
“I’m ganna do whatever I want,” said Pickles. “I’m ganna drink an’ stee out
late. I’m ganna start a beend, and it’s ganna be fackin’ huge. An’ I’m never
even ganna think about you, er Mam er Dad, er dis stupid little town again.”
“More like you’ll end up suckin’ dick jest ta pay da rent.”
Pickles said nothing and quickened his pace.
“Yer my little brother, an’ I fackin’ love you. But I – ya gatta know dis is
fackin’ stupid, reet? Yer sixteen an’ ya ain’t never even been to a city
bigger’n Madison.
Still nothing.
“Yer ganna get fackin’ eaten alive,” Seth tried again, and made the mistake of
grabbing the shoulder of his brother’s jacket.
Pickles spun and decked Seth in the mouth, hard enough to send him staggering,
and when he pressed his fingers to his lip, they came away with blood. He
wondered where his little brother had learned to hit like that. Pickles stared
at him, one hand still clenched into a fist while the other clung to the strap
of his backpack.
“I told ya nat ta fackin’ touch me,” he said. Then his expression softened a
shade and he added, “An’ anywee, ya gat what ya wanted – I’m fackin’ gone, an’
it’ll be like I was never dere. So stap fallowin’ me like a fackin’ last dag
an’ go da fack home.”
“Dood –” Seth spit a bloody wad onto the sidewalk and wiped at his mouth with
the collar of his shirt. He considered his brother. Pickles looked new to him
then – all at once young and grown up, and suddenly the whole neighborhood
around them seemed drab and dull in contrast, the idea of going the fuck home
to that house – their house – stifling. Don’t, Seth wanted to say. Ya can’t.
“Fack you,” he said instead. “I hope ya fackin’ die out dere.”
But Pickles must’ve known that he didn’t mean it, because he only smirked. “I’d
rather die out dere dan live here.” His eyes drifted towards the drug store,
where a rusted red pick-up sat idling. He waved at the driver – a cute girl in
a baseball cap that Seth didn’t recognize – and re-shouldered his pack.
“Who’s dat?” Seth asked.
“Dat’s my ride to da bus stop in Eau Claire.” Pickles paused before stepping
off the curb. He chewed on his lip and looked at his shoes – a stolen pair of
black-on-black Chucks – and Seth had never wanted to strangle anyone so badly.
He’d better stop looking at his shoes like that if he wanted to last five
fucking seconds in Los Angeles.
Pickles didn’t make eye contact when he said, “Listen, dood – don’t try an’
find me, okee?” then turned his back and crossed the street, lifting his middle
finger to flip Seth the bird over his shoulder. “An’ have a nice life, ya
fackin’ douchebeeg.” Seth didn’t need to see his brother’s face to know that he
was smiling.
*
Anymore, Pickles always had that dumbass wasted grin on his face, but Nathan
Explosion might as well have been carved out of the world’s grumpiest-looking
rock; Seth never knew the singer to smile, but he was especially unsmiling this
morning, and Seth reflected that it was just like his brother to glom onto the
biggest, surliest alpha he could find.
“Mornin’, Nate.” Seth sat back in his recliner, balancing the laptop on his
bare thigh while he reached for his mug of Irish coffee. He blew across the top
of it, taking a tentative sip before asking, “What keen Dethklok Australia do
fer ya?”
“This uh, isn’t about Dethklok.”
Seth arched an eyebrow and tilted his screen forward. He’d seen enough of
Mordhaus to know that Nathan was not in the conference room, or the lounge, or
Offdensen’s office. “Okee – well den what keen I do fer ya?”
“It’s about Pickles.”
Oh fack, Seth thought, He’s fackin’ dead, and immediately wondered about the
financial implications. What happens to his rights? he was about to ask, when
Nathan continued:
“I know what you did to him.”
Seth’s brain came to a grinding halt, and for a long moment he felt as if he’d
been turned upside-down – his heart and his stomach seemed to have traded
places, and a thin film of sweat began to form on the palms of his hands and
the back of his neck as he fought the urge to simply close the computer and
claim technical malfunction until he could better compose himself. He didn’t
often feel nervous, and had to swallow twice before replying, “Yer ganna have
ta be more specific.” He willed his lips into a smirk. “Brothers do a lat’a
facked-up shit to each other.”
As usual, Seth’s humor failed to penetrate Explosion’s thick fucking skull,
because he only answered seriously: “No, I don’t have to be more specific. We
both know what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to go into any more fucking
detail about it.”
Seth considered the possibility that Nathan was bluffing, which seemed likely.
He knew that Pickles thought of Nate as his closest friend, that Nate probably
made Pickles feel safe, and that Pickles probably wanted to fuck him – if he
hadn’t already – because Pickles was a hopeless slut like that; but he also
knew that his brother’s fear of vulnerability overpowered almost all of his
other drives (almost to the point of paranoia) and that a practiced
indifference to one another’s fucked-up personal circumstances was foundational
to Dethklok’s continued success. And there were some things you just didn’t
fucking talk about. Whatever Explosion knew – or thought he knew – Seth decided
to neither confirm nor deny.
“Okee, so if ya don’t wanna tack about what a drunk, deviant basket-case my
brother is –”
“Stop.” Nathan’s image quaked for a moment as his fist slammed onto the corner
of his laptop. “Ugh. Jesus. You really are the biggest fucking dildo in the
world. Just shut up for half a fucking second and let me finish a fucking
thought, alright? I’m talking to you because from now on, I want you to go
through me or Charles whenever you’ve got business with the band. Don’t bother
Pickles anymore with your bullshit – you need money or whatever? Talk to one of
us. If you’re just lonely and need to commiserate with someone about what a
complete asshole you are, call me. Or Murderface. Or your fucking parents. But
if you call Pickles – or text him, or write him, fucking, carrier pigeon,
whatever – I will personally fly down there and rip your guts out through your
mouth.”
A strange numbness took hold of Seth, and he tasted the sourness of bile
climbing the back of his throat. He waited for Nathan to ask if he got it, if
he understood, to add some qualifiers or conditions, but the singer seemed to
have concluded his thoughts, and now he stared at Seth through the monitor,
those uncanny green eyes boring into him. Seth remembered how it felt that
evening when he returned to the house, and everything was the same, but quieter
somehow – wrong – and how he wanted to run back outside and stop Pickles from
getting into that truck and beat him fucking unconscious and drag him back home
where he belonged, but instead he just went up to his bedroom and smoked weed
until he fell asleep.
“Let me at least – fackin’ – let me tell him he won’t be hearin’ from me,” Seth
said after a moment, and when he saw Nathan’s lips curl into the beginnings of
a fuck you, he added, “Ya know how anxious he gets.”
Nate gave a low growl. “Fine. ‘Hey Pickles – sorry I’m a douchebag and a shitty
brother. I won’t bother you anymore.’ You can say that. But no weird shit. No
asking for shit. Do you think you can handle that?”
It stung being spoken to like a child by this fucking Neanderthal, but Seth had
enough sense to remember where his paycheck came from, so he only nodded. “Sure
thing.” He went to take a sip of coffee, but his stomach felt too twisted to
drink it, so he set it aside and asked, “Well, Nate, as lang as I gat ya an-
line here, an’ since ya want me ta tack to you when I need somethin’ – are you
guys ganna – fackin’ – do somethin’ ta increase my fackin’ security er what?”
“We already sent you a fucking army of Klokateers.”
“Well somehow despite dat and da fackin’ minefield outside, dere was a break-in
two nights ago. An’ don’t even try ta act like Charles didn’t know two seconds
after it happened. Fackin’ – took some personal shit. Fackin’ electronics an’
stuff.” Seth shrugged, and his eyes slid sideways. “Nothin’ important – ya know
– but I gat like, a fackin’ wife an’ kid an’ shit. Dis is s’posed ta be my
castle an’ I – I feel fackin’ violated, ya know? It ain’t easy runnin’ dis
fackin continent.”
They’d taken his personal computer, a couple externals and a bunch of discs. He
didn’t mention the tapes.
Nathan frowned. “Probably some bat-shit fans. We’ll take care of it.”
“I fackin’ hope so.”
*
“Done,” Zack had said. “Easiest money I ever made.”
It was hard to blame him – or any of the guys. Tomahawk was a small town, and
good pussy was hard to come by. It seemed a lot easier to blame Pickles – for
drinking too much, for acting like a slut, for those fuckin DIY nipple-
piercings and that goddamn crazy-bitch-with-daddy-issues vibe that Seth knew
from experience worked like fucking gravity.
Still, his heart sank when Zack handed him the tape.
*
Hey bro. Your boyfriend says I’m not supposed to contact you anymore.
WTF are you talking about?
So if you don’t hear from me, it’s not cuz I forgot about you.
OK.
See ya when I see ya?
The amount of time that elapsed told Seth that Pickles had probably typed out
about three different replies before settling on another OK.
Goodnight, Chris.
It felt good to use that name – to remind Pickles that there was still at least
one secret between them. Seth climbed back into bed and turned off his phone
rather than waiting for a reply that he knew wouldn’t come.
***** Play Me *****
Play me.
The unsteady script on the note clearly belonged to Pickles, but Nathan didn’t
recognize the handwriting on the label of the VHS – Sharpie so faded it was
almost gone: Pickles ‘88. He turned the relic over in his hands, jabbed his
thick fingers into the sprockets to turn the tape forward and back, the way
he’d done as a kid when the VCR malfunctioned.
Of course, Pickles had also dug up one of those – probably bought it online
just for this occasion – and had a Klokateer wire it up to the behemoth
television set in Nathan’s bedroom. Nate slid the tape into the machine with a
mixture of excitement and apprehension – Pickles’ freaky side had never been
prone to this sort of premeditation, and there was something a little…
committed about it.
The screen flickered for a second with the image of a room – some bedroom that
Nathan didn’t recognize – before lagging and rolling into several seconds of
static, then re-materializing into an extreme close-up of Pickles’ bare chest
and throat as he fiddled with the camera, muttering, “Fack. Fackin’ piece’a
shit – jest stee – fackin’ – okee. Perfect. Fackin’ don’t move.”
Satisfied, Pickles climbed back into his recliner – a massive, plush thing
upholstered in red that he loved passing out in – and Nathan swallowed as he
remembered the time Pickles had straddled him there. Bruises er it didn’t
happen, he’d said, wiry fingers guiding Nate’s clumsy ones up to his hips.
On the screen, Pickles wore only a pair of briefs – cheetah-print in place of
the usual white – and sat with his legs splayed languidly apart in a pose that
looked careless but which Nathan knew was designed especially for him.
“Heey, Nate.”
Nathan glanced at the door before sitting down on the edge of his bed, already
feeling the effects of Pickles – basically naked, saying his name, looking
right into him with those wily green eyes that seemed maybe just a touch
clearer than usual. He wondered if it was too soon to unzip his pants.
“So, I tat about weerin’ clothes – maybe doin’ some kinda stripper dance fer ya
– but I know if I tried dat in person ya’d jest teer ‘em aff me anywee.”
Pickles slipped a thumb down to snap the elastic of his underwear. “An’ ya
won’t admit it, but I know ya love me in dese fackin’ things –”
“You look fucking ridiculous,” Nathan had said the first time he saw them.
“Yeah, well – it looks like fackin’ ridiculous gives ya a boner, dood.”
Now, alone in his room, Nate could admit to himself that he did like those
dumbass cheetah briefs, as long as they were about to come off.
“– but try an’ pay attention up here fer a minute, okee?” Pickles smirked and
gestured towards his face, and Nathan groaned. Pickles might be the one getting
hit, choked, spanked and spit on, but Nate never forgot which of them ran the
show, and he once again found himself at Pickles’ mercy, struggling to listen
while the drummer continued to toy absently with the hem of his undies, giving
Nathan periodic glimpses of that tiger-orange bush that made his palms sweat
and his mouth go dry.
“I know I been actin’ like a douchebeeg lately,” Pickles said, before amending,
“An’ I guess in general. Ya know, with… with this… whatever it is we been
doin’. An’ I know I’m like, all distant an’ bitchy one minute, an’ then two
hours later I’m beggin’ ya ta fack me, an’ dat ain’t – it’s prably fackin’
annoying and it ain’t very feer to ya. It’s confusing. I guess I’m confused.”
He looked down, a slow blush creeping into his face while he fiddled with his
dreads, sweeping them over his right shoulder and twisting them into a bunch.
He did that when he was nervous, Nathan knew, and he thought about how that
thick rope of hair would feel wound around his fist. Pickles cleared his
throat. “An’ ya prably noticed I been kinda weird dis past week, after I kinda…
spazzed out an ya. An’ yer a smart guy, so ya prably figured out it was – ya
know, home stuff dat was buggin’ me er whatever.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.
But anywee, I wanted ta make it up to ya.”
He stopped playing with his hair then, and leaned back in the recliner, the
fingers of his right hand drumming on the arm-rest, while his left hand
wandered up to one nipple, and his eyes considered the camera lens. “Two
rules.”
Nathan scowled.
“Okee, more like one rule an’ one spoiler.” Pickles licked his lips. “Spoiler:
I’m ganna come. I been holdin’ aff fer a few dees, so it’s prably ganna be real
messy. If ya don’t want me ta come, den I suggest stappin’ da teep right now,
comin’ over ta my room, an fackin’ punishin’ me fer doin’ it without yer
permission. If ya do want me ta come, I suggest ya get comfortable and enjoy da
rest’a da feature, den come over ta my room anywee.” He smiled, right hand
slipping down to rub against the front of his briefs, fingers clutching at the
bulge there.
Nathan mirrored the gesture, still resisting the urge to undo his fly until he
heard Pickles’ final rule.
“If ya decide ta keep an watchin’ – an’ I hope ya do, ‘cause I fackin’ made
this ‘specially for ya – I want ya ta come an da screen. Jest blow yer fackin’
load all over me, okee?” Pickles gave a hard squeeze on the curve of his prick.
“Fack, dood – it makes me fackin’ thirsty jest thinkin’ about it.”
Nate didn’t waste any more time.
“Does this make me gay?” he asked, the first time Pickles went down on him.
Pickles looked up at him with a smirk that was equal parts affection and
amusement. “I don’t think dat’s what y’oughtta be worried about,” he said.
“Oh.” Nathan felt relieved, if still a little confused. He’d never tried so
hard to talk himself out of something, but if Pickles said so, Nate was happy
to go along with it – after all, Pickles once drunkenly bragged that he’d been
“sucking dick since you were sucking your thumb,” which was hopefully an
exaggeration, but in any case, Nathan had never really thought of his friend as
gay, despite the admission, so maybe Pickles was right an letting your drummer
blow you was less faggy than it was reckless, which he was okay with – until
Pickles spit into his palm and added, “What y’oughtta be worried about is
whether dis makes us gay fer each other.”
Nate had stopped worrying about any of it after a few months. Now, watching
Pickles on his television, all he could think about was how fucking hard he
was, like a teenager watching his first porno – if the star of your first porno
was basically a death-metal god and kept saying your fucking name.
“Fack, Nate’n,” Pickles was saying, “I need ya so fackin’ bad anymore.” He’d
pulled his cock out by now, already leaking and red, flushed the same color as
his cheeks. “I – ya know I’m a fackin’ slut, rght? An’ like, fer da langest
time I jest tat I’d always be dat wee – gettin’ pounded by regular jack-affs
too chicken-shit ta actually fackin’ bite me…” Pickles gave himself a few slow
strokes, arching an eyebrow at the camera to ask, “I ain’t makin’ ya jealous,
am I, Nate? I guess next time ya better really remind me whose I am – give me
some good marks so’s I don’t forget.”
Nathan’s eyes followed Pickles’ fingernails as they raked across his chest,
leaving four long streaks that looked like they hurt, but not nearly enough.
“Fucking finally,” he muttered when Pickles slid the briefs off his legs and
kicked them away somewhere.
“An’ anywee, ya don’t need ta be.” Pickles slipped two fingers into his mouth,
sucking at them wetly while he adjusted himself to drape one leg over the arm
of the chair to allow for better access. “Yer basically da only thing dat does
it fer me anymore,” he confessed. “Even when I’m like, jackin’ aff an’ I could
be thinking about anything – fackin’, unicorns an’ shit –” He pressed one
finger inside himself, closing his eyes and biting his lip, letting out a
pleasurable little hum before resuming. “An’ all I can think about is yer
hands, yer voice, yer huge fackin’ cack fackin’ me so hard I can’t fackin’
breathe. Nobody else knows how to use me like dat.” Pushing a second finger in,
he sighed. “Fackin’ Christ, Nate – I hope yer keepin’ up.”
*
As far as Pickles could remember, he’d first kissed Nathan in Havana, on the
third night of their second Friender-Bender, halfway through their fifth bottle
of tequila while they watched a torrential rainfall from the dry safety of
their hotel balcony. But Nathan knew it was years earlier than that – on a
sticky night in Miami at the roach-infested apartment they’d christened
“Mordhaus,” back when they were living off Snakes n’ Barrels residuals, still
scraping together the money to record their demo and pay a mounting stack of
noise citations.
He’s so light, Nathan remembered thinking as he helped Pickles to bed. Strange
that someone who filled so much of Nathan’s world could be so light. He
remembered Pickles’ arm hooked loosely over his broad shoulders, the smell that
was mostly booze and sweat but also something else, the oily softness of his
hair and the little wrinkles that had begun to appear at the corners of
Pickles’ eyes, but only if you were close enough to see them.
And yeah, he’d seen Pickles shit-faced on more occasions than he could count,
but on that night it seemed as though Pickles had slipped back in time somehow,
and now he was slurring in a thicker-than-usual accent, clinging to Nathan’s
shirt with a sort of deliberate weakness as the singer guided him down onto his
air-mattress and mumbling, “I want to – I want to – but I keen’t.”
“Can’t what?” Nathan tucked the sheets around his friend, and Pickles cast them
aside.
“We gatta get outta here, dood,” he babbled as he struggled to remove his
shirt, then finally gave up and held his arms above his head while Nathan tore
the thing off. “We gatta get out. I keen’t – I keen’t stee here anymore. I’m
ganna fackin’ die if I stee here one more night.”
“No you’re not. Don’t be stupid.”
On the floor beside the bed, Nathan noticed a letter, lying amongst the usual
mess of empties and magazines and crumpled up Kleenex. Pickles got mail
sometimes – fan-mail, mostly, forwarded to him from his old label in L.A. But
this came from Wisconsin State Prison; the envelope was addressed to “Pickles,”
and while the paper had been folded into thirds, Nathan could make out the
first few lines, which read:
Dear Chris –
How’s it going? Can you fucking believe I’m back in here again? I’m not sure if
you got my last letter, since you fell off the face of the fucking earth after
I saw you in LaCrosse last year, and Mom told me she didn’t think you were
living in L.A. anymore. You really ought to grow the fuck up and let people
know where you are.
Anyway, prison fucking sucks, but what else is new? My commissary’s getting a
little low, so if you won’t come and visit, the least you could do is send me
some fucking –
“I keen’t sleep,” Pickles whined, tossing his head from side to side. “Fack,
dood – how d’ya expect me ta sleep when I keen’t even fackin’ breathe? We gatta
get outta here. We gatta leave reet now.” He sat up abruptly, and without
thinking, Nathan shoved him back onto the mattress, one hand across Pickles’
chest, pinning him there while he blinked up at Nathan with red, unfocused
eyes. Nate felt Pickles’ fingers around his forearm, stronger than he would’ve
guessed, and he expected Pickles to tell him to fack aff. Don’t touch me. What
da fack are ya doin’? Nathan released his hold, but Pickles kept his grip on
Nate’s wrist, and he lifted Nathan’s hand off his chest to stare, green eyes
almost crossed in wonder, thumb swiping across the span of it before he pressed
a long, hard kiss into the flesh of Nathan’s palm.
“Jesus,” Pickles said breathlessly, “Yer hands are fackin’ huge.”
A slow, strange smile spread across his face, and he guided Nathan’s touch
downward to rest at the base of his throat. Nathan swallowed. His hand fit so
perfectly there – fingers nearly encircling Pickles’ neck, the heel of his palm
nested in the hollow just above Pickles’ collar-bone. Pickles tilted his head
back, and Nathan could feel his muscles moving, could feel his jugular pulse,
fast and hard beneath a thin layer of skin – delicate and unreal.
“Fack, Nate.” Pickles looked up at him from beneath flickering eyelashes and
pressed down on Nathan’s fingers with his own. He bit down on his bottom lip,
eyebrows knit in an expression that looked uncomfortably like pleasure. “Oh
fack, dood. Jest a little. Jest for a second. I wish – I wish I wasn’t so drunk
reet now.”
Nathan sat like that, frozen, squeezing gently on Pickles’ windpipe while
Pickles’ hips ground up against nothing.
The thing in there wants the thing in here, said a voice.
Chris, Nathan thought, holding the name in his mind for a moment before letting
it wash away as though it had been written in sand. After a minute, Pickles’
body stilled and his breathing slowed, and his needy little sounds became a
soft snore. Nathan kept his hand there as long as he dared, not wanting to let
go.
*
Pickles always squirmed a lot right before he came, especially with no one
holding him down, and now his back arched off the recliner while his orgasm
rolled over him in waves. The initial spurt of it landed on his face and chest,
and Pickles trembled as the rest spilled out onto his knuckles and his stomach.
He lay there for several minutes – long enough for Nathan to finish and then
wipe the television screen with an old shirt. Eventually, one eye peeked open
and a sly grin crept up the corner of Pickles’ mouth when he asked, “If yer
still watchin’ – why da fack ain’t ya over in my bedroom yet?”
Nathan knocked as a courtesy, and waited for Pickles’ answer.
“Take yer damn time, dood.”
The lights were dim, and the room stank in a very familiar way; some nameless
lo-fi demo played on the stereo. Nate closed the door behind him, still
clutching the video cassette in one hand, and cleared his throat. At the sound
of the deadbolt sliding into place, Pickles swiveled his recliner around and
looked up from his DS, pretending not to notice the way Nate’s eyes widened as
he realized that the drummer was naked, jizz still clinging to his cheek and
his chest.
“Jesus, dude – how long have you been sitting there?”
“Lang enough fer it ta get cold,” Pickles replied with a wicked smirk, dragging
his fingers through the mess and smearing it down his stomach. “What took ya so
lang?”
The sight was almost more than Nathan could stand. “I uh, didn’t know what you
wanted me to do with this,” he growled, holding up the VHS.
Pickles smiled and cocked his head towards the camera – a bulky, ancient thing,
now sitting on the night-stand. “I tat maybe could record over it. Ya know, if
ya want.”
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