Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12629268.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      Gen, M/M
  Fandom:
      Metalocalypse
  Relationship:
      Skwisgaar_Skwigelf/Toki_Wartooth
  Character:
      Toki_Wartooth, Runke_Snogge_-_Character, Skwisgaar_Skwigelf, William
      Murderface, Nathan_Explosion, Pickles_the_Drummer, Charles_Foster
      Offdensen
  Additional Tags:
      Coming_of_Age, Sexual_Economy, Sexual_Content, Explicit_Sexual_Content,
      Rape/Non-con_Elements, Homelessness, Homeless_Youth, Past_Child_Abuse,
      Sexual_Violence, empowerment, Growing_Up, Amsterdam, The_American_South,
      Bad_People, Good_people, Pre-Series, Pre-Klok, Semi-Public_Sex,
      Effeminophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Virginity, Emotional_Sex, Awkward
      First_Times, Crying, mild_canon_homophobia, shopping_montage
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-11-06 Completed: 2018-01-10 Chapters: 9/9 Words: 22431
****** The Power to Survive ******
by Calliopinot
Summary
     Toki Wartooth has seen some things. The brutality that dwells within
     him was born in the snows outside Lillehammer. But it was nurtured in
     the intervening time, the space between there and here, when Toki was
     just a kid on the streets.
***** Homestead (Prelude) *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
With any luck, not that luck was ever on his side, his father wouldn’t notice
his absence until well beyond daybreak. He had been planning for weeks, since
the day he watched that beat-up classical guitar become so much kindling in the
furnace, since his last trip to the punishment hole made him acutely aware, for
the first time in his young life, that death was very much on the list of
penalties for misbehavior.
The goats were all given extra fodder at dinnertime to hush their bleating in
the morning. The cows were worked to the bone, extra milk let to drain into the
gutter for the rats to enjoy. He didn’t care about wastefulness today.
Nothing could be done about the habits of roosters in advance of sunrise, so he
took the axe to them. Toki needed all the time he could get.
After the nightly prayers were finished and the household grew still, Toki drew
a rough-hewn rucksack from beneath a loose slat beside the pine straw mattress.
In it were the “essentials” he’d already gathered for his flight – a single
change of clothes, three carrots and a handful of raw oats he’d nicked from the
horses last week, and a worn little bible, bookmarked in several spots with
faded polaroids of the Reverend and Anja Wartooth.
He tossed in a glass bottle of raw milk before deciding it would jostle too
much, then tiptoed, barefoot, to the door of the room where he slept. To call
it his room would be a misnomer; nothing in or about this house was his.
Nothing here was designed to give him any feeling of permanence, even things he
handled every day, from the crude broom he used to sweep the snow to his own
threadbare clothes. 
So it was with fear, but not much regret, that he slipped out into the blustery
cold that night, guided only by starlight and a burning desire to be.
Chapter End Notes
     My first attempt at multi-chapter. Don't worry, future chapters will
     be much meatier than this prelude. Feedback on pacing and structure
     GREATLY appreciated, as well as sweet notes about how much you LOVE
     IT ;)
***** Drep Du Selv *****
Chapter Notes
     Since the first chapter was such a tease, I'm posting the next one
     sooner than planned. The rest will be more reasonably spaced, and
     lengthier.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
                                        
Toki was glad for the extra time he’d bought.
It took much longer to reach the outskirts of Lillehammer than he had initially
figured. The handful of times he’d gone to town with his father had been on the
back of a horse or sleigh. And as it happened, thin-soled cow hide was not the
best material to sustain a 20-mile walk through the freezing night. The pain
forced him to stop altogether by the time the first rays of sunlight glimmered
over the horizon, but he would only allow himself a moment’s rest.
He had endured worse.
His feet were bleeding and raw when he made it to the dark little shop with
the letters “DREP DU SELV” painted on the window. The combination of words was
not a sentiment taught in any bible lesson, although the Good Book was very
clear on the subject of suicide. Either way, Toki figured it was perhaps the
least likely place his parents would come looking for him, if they were
inclined to do so. Provided, of course, the surly shopkeep would take him in.
 
                                      ***
 
Runke Snogge was never much for charity. Letting that little fucker who tagged
around with the backwoods priest goof off in his store was done out of pure
masochism; pity was painful and therefore metal.
So it was with surprise greater than what he experienced at meeting a half-
frozen lump of Toki Wartooth at his storefront that morning that he felt
genuine concern at the boy’s woeful condition.
What in the hell are you doing here?And then, quickly, You’re getting blood all
over my doorstep. Which, when he thought about it, certainly upped his metal
street cred, especially when that street contained a herring shop to one side
and a ski outfitter to the other – not to mention the daintiest of krumkake
bakeries across the way.
Toki stirred. He was indeed leaking blood onto the music store’s flagstone
walkway. In the cold of night, he hadn’t noticed the jostling rucksack
reopening freshly scabbed-over wounds on his back. He picked at his t-shirt
apologetically, but there wasn’t much for it. The kid was beat, in every sense
of the word, and if Runke didn’t get him inside, he’d have one cold dead kid on
his hands – decidedly more trouble than he was at present.
 
                                      ***
 
Thank you so much.Runke wrinkled his nose as he peeled the ruined garments from
Toki’s fragile frame. Such politeness, even in the face of death.
Getting rid of blood-soaked clothing seemed to make sense in the moment, but
now Runke puzzled over how to get a half-naked Toki from the store threshold
into the little back room where he himself camped out when his folks were being
unbearable. He was totally, definitely going to move out, once his band started
landing gigs, once black metal asserted itself as the right and natural emperor
of music, once people outside of the frigid north had actually heard of black
metal, once…
Runke shook his head clear of the excuses he’d built up as a protective wall
for going on six years, and scanned his dark shop for ideas. He was absolutely
not going to carry the kid princess-style; that would be gayer than taking care
of him already fucking was. Besides, he would run the risk of ruining his
vintage Samael Salvation ’96 Tour tee, although blood wouldbe a decent
accessory. 
Not fucking Toki blood.
Haha! ‘Tokiblod.’ The kid was delirious.
Here, step on this.Runke spotted one of those Christmas gift catalogs in the
pile of junk mail by the front door and ripped out a few pages. Toki complied,
leaving two bloody footprints on the doormat behind him. He’d planned to lay
the pages out across the floor and get Toki to hop from one to the next – what
kid doesn’t enjoy a game of “The Floor Is Hot Lava” – but the pages clung to
the sticky gore under Toki’s feet like makeshift snowshoes.
Runke mentally calculated how much of his grain alcohol stash he’d need to
sacrifice to cleaning up this kid’s wounds as he helped him shuffle into the
tiny makeshift apartment space.
Sit. Toki collapsed onto a stack of boxes that evidently served as lounge
chair, desk, and dining table. He did Runke a small favor in peeling off the
catalog pages, but it was mainly out of curiosity. Most of the time Toki’s
flesh cleaved in places he couldn’t see. Watching the blood gurgle out from
beneath split callouses on his heels and toes was utterly fascinating.
Don’t fucking pick at that! Jesus kid.Runke turned to him with a handful of
towels and an unmarked glass bottle, from which he took a long pull before
setting down to work.
This is going to hurt. Don’t freak out.
 
                                      ***
 
Toki would never tell Runke Snogge his affinity for the man was due in large
part to the fact that his supposedly brutal black metal makeup reminded him so
much of the face paint his beloved clowns wore. He watched Runke apply it every
morning with a placid smile Runke found creepy, yet endearing.
The pair had been sharing the cramped flat behind Drep Du Selv for the better
part of a month. His mom was being an unholy bitch anyway, Runke told himself,
so it was just as well to be out of the house.
Runke was surprised by how quickly Toki healed; he wondered, though never
aloud, just how accustomed the kid was to near-death experiences. Once he was
back on his feet, Toki insisted on helping around the store. Runke probably
would have made him earn his keep anyway, but the way the boy seemed almost
itching to complete mindless, menial tasks kept the subject at bay.
I saw your dad in town today.  
Oh. The Wartooths didn’t venture into Lillehammer proper, or its surrounding
villages for that matter, too frequently. Dens of iniquity, they considered any
place with population density greater than two. As soon as he could count to
three, Toki became painfully aware of what that meant for the Wartooth
household.
Was he looking for me?
Hard to tell.
Yeah, he doesn’t talk much.
The shopkeep and his accidental ward sat in silence, eating cold soup out of a
can on the floor of the tiny flat.
I think I need to get out of Norway.
Runke looked up at him. We all need to get out of Norway.
 
                                      ***
 
Runke Snogge was never much for charity. The kroner he gave Toki was fair pay
for decent work. The beat-up Gibson Flying V he gave Toki was a hand-me-down
piece of shit he was going to throw away anyway, just like that garbage old
grandpa’s guitar he’d given him last year. 
Setting Toki up with a cousin of his, a good enough guy who wouldn’t bitch too
much about smuggling the boy on his fishing boat out of Oslo to Amsterdam –
that was harder to explain away.
“Thanks you.”
Yeah, get the fuck out of here kid. If I ever see your ass in this piece of
shit town again you’d better be able to buy and sell this place, or I’ll know
you really fucked up bad.
Toki just grinned at him like a moron, like a beaten down kid who was getting a
second chance.
Chapter End Notes
     The way I handle foreign languages is a little weird, but hopefully
     you can follow. I tried my best to be consistent with how I treated
     mutually intelligible dialogue vs. mixed languages and those -
     - including English, early on -- that my protagonist doesn't speak.
     All in an effort to make it as readable as possible, and limit my
     trips to Google Translate :)
***** Red Light, Green Light *****
Chapter Summary
     Toki arrives in Amsterdam, where for the first time in his journey -
     - but certainly not the last time -- he finds himself without a home,
     and short on options.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
In Amsterdam, Toki learned what it meant to starve.
 
He had never been fed well, by any stretch of the imagination. But the fine
line between hunger and starvation was evidently toed on the tin plates of
salted meat and boiled root vegetables his parents granted him every few days.
Here, he hadn’t even that.
Losing what little he’d eaten before departing Oslo over the side of the small
fishing vessel didn’t help matters onshore. The North Sea was as choppy and
frigid as it was vast and terrifying to young Toki. It forced him to spare awe
at being so far from home, surrounded by water that wasn’t penned in by shores
like the lakes he’d seen once as a child. 
Cousin Snogge had hoped to get at least a little deck mopping out of the kid –
Runke sold him as diligent if dull – but six hours of dry heaving off the
starboard bow was a worse reaction than even the greenest of greenhorns had
ever had. So like so much toss-back, little Toki was eventually discarded onto
port with nothing more than his guitar case and the reek of vomit and fishmeal
to offer the fine people of Holland.
                                      ***
Dehydrated and disoriented, Toki did his best to take stock of this strange new
town made of water streets and bicycles. Fear crept into his chest with its
vise grip. He didn’t have a plan, had never really had a plan since clumsily
executing the one that freed him from his father’s rule how many weeks ago. 
All he knew now was he needed to eat. Eat to survive. Survive to figure out
what to do next.
But he was alone. So crushingly alone. Even on the roiling boat there had been
people who knew his name, or at least his face, or at least had an idea of who
he was and why he was there. Here he was no one, and nowhere.
Without realizing it, Toki had unsheathed the worn old guitar from its case and
begun playing. When the sensation of his fingers flying across the fretboard
caught up to his brain, he noticed he was no longer on the verge of tears. He
could barely hear the notes under the din of the city around him, but he didn’t
care. His back found the sturdiness of a brick wall reassuring, and he slid
down, eyes drifting closed, sighing almost contentedly as he played out his
terror. 
Clinking metal shook Toki from his reverie. He looked down to see a handful of
copper coins sitting in the guitar case before him. Glancing up did not reveal
their source. Tourists and locals alike continued to buzz by him as though he
didn’t exist. But as he sat there, entranced by his own playing, music he
couldn’t even hear but for in his heart, more change dropped into his case,
flung his way in fits and starts by strangers who did a thing by habit or in
service of their good deed for the day.
Toki’s fingers ached before long. His body was full of lactic acid and salt,
and he was in desperate need of a decent meal and a bath. Scooping out the
bounty of coins – and even a few bills! – before gently replacing his guitar,
Toki felt a little giddy. He had no idea what this funny money even was, but it
was more plentiful than the handful of kroner he blew making his way from
Lillehammer to Oslo, and more was always better. 
                                      ***
Toki wandered the streets of Amsterdam at dusk, painfully aware of both the
gnawing in his stomach and the putrid stench wafting from him. He was hesitant
to enter any place that sold food; he could barely stand the smell himself and
was certain he’d be turned away before parting with any of the Dutch guilder
burning a hole in his pocket.
So the first order of business would be getting clean. Half tempted to just
dive into one of these stone-lined rivers, Toki pressed on in search of a
hostel or public bathroom or broken pipe he could stand under for a couple
minutes. 
The nonsense words written all over the shops and buildings here definitely
didn’t help his quest. Toki had never gotten much of an education in geography
– or world languages, for that matter – but he assumed being so relatively
close to Norway, they’d speak Bokmål in Amsterdam, or at least Danish or
Swedish or something he’d read or heard before.
When he saw the word “sauna” he was awash with relief. In fact, there were
saunas up and down this little alley into which he’d wandered, so he took a bit
of time finding the one least likely to kick him out, which naturally, although
not to his eyes, was the seediest one. The one with a peeling laminated price
list affixed to the door with yellowing scotch tape, and spray paint blacking
out the windows.
                                      ***
Having deposited a fistful of carefully counted coins into a bin at the
unmanned front desk – this place seemed as much on the honor system as anything
– Toki grabbed a towel (grey, whether by design or by overall dinginess, Toki
didn’t care; it smelled clean) and ventured through the double doors leading
deeper into the establishment.
The sharp chemical smell of chlorine and something distinctly more human hit
Toki in the face beyond the doors, along with a flush of heat that wasn’t
entirely attached to the steam and hot, dry air escaping from behind yet more
heavy doors. Laid out before him, in varying states of undress and in varying
throes of sweat-producing activities, were about two dozen men of all shapes
and sizes, grunting and groaning and pushing and pulling and paying no mind to
the new addition to the room. Toki was the youngest by at least a decade, and
definitely the only one never to have seen another man’s penis – before now.
Knowing he walked into something intimately private and yet unabashedly public,
terribly intriguing and yet deathly sinful, Toki urged his feet forward to the
closest, least occupied space he could find. At least the bathroom had stalls.
Toki collapsed onto the toilet seat and slammed the flimsy door shut behind
him. The vestiges of shame and religious teachings that had been literally
whipped into him for 14 years took Herculean effort to overcome; the ancient
bible and photos of his parents he inexplicably still carried seemed to scream
at him from where they sat snugly beside his guitar.
But he wasn’t there anymore, in that torture chamber he once called home.
Whatever was going on outside this toilet stall he could handle in stride. He
was starving, he was dirty, he was free.
                                     *** 
Toki steeled himself before reemerging from the loo. A sauna session sounded
like heaven, but right now he needed to find a hot stream of water and some
soap. Fortunately, the showers were just outside and to the left of the
bathroom. Unfortunately, they did not offer private accommodations.
Toki chose a spot in the corner, the better to keep an eye on his one worldly
possession. Then, whether out of modesty or practicality he couldn’t be sure,
he stepped into the steaming water fully clothed, little handmade cap and all.
It was the only set of clothing he had left, since a well-meaning but
shortsighted Runke Snogge had thrown away the bloody rags in which Toki had
turned up at Drep Du Selv, and they needed cleaning as much as he did. He
ignored the looks he engendered as he pumped body wash, shampoo, and
conditioner from the trio of wall dispensers into his hand and slathered the
whole mess onto his face and head, working down his torso over and under the
shirt, then to his lower body in like fashion.
“Het zou beter werken als je die weg hebt genomen, weet je dat.”(1) Toki gave a
start but purposefully ignored the deep voice and strange words he couldn’t
understand. They weren’t meant for him, he decided, as he dipped his head under
the water.
“Ik zou je daarbij kunnen helpen.”(2) Those words were much harder to ignore,
pressed as they were to the shell of his ear. Toki froze as a hand not his own
grazed his abdomen, fingers tugging at the button of his pants. An attempt to
see what, or who, was happening yielded only an eyeful of stinging toiletries.
“Knulle!” 
“Agh! Krijg de kolere, jungen!”(3)
The obscenity, or perhaps the inadvertent elbow to his would-be molester’s
chin, was enough to get the man to back off.
But Toki’s guard was up, and it stayed up as he toweled off, and in the sauna
down the hall, where he had the brilliant idea of sitting for a few minutes to
dry his clothes – nevermind that he was the only one, again, wearing any.
Whether it was because of the thoroughly relaxing dry heat or the surreptitious
glances he cast at the couple across from him, doing things to each other with
their mouths that left Toki’s agape with wonder, Toki left the spa feeling more
serene than he had in days. A grumble in his stomach reminded him the
lightheadedness may owe account to eating nothing for two days, so he set out
to rectify that.
                                      ***
Every restaurant window was dark, every cart boarded up, “GESLOTEN” admonishing
him in angry red neon everywhere he turned. How could there not be food
available now? He hadn’t dawdled in the spa for too long, had he…?
Toki aimlessly followed the red signs, hoping to eventually find a green one.
Before he knew it he was adrift in a sea of red light, and a hunger unrelated
to the one he’d been feeling all day crawled into his core.
 
 
Chapter End Notes
     (1) It would work better if you took those off, you know.
     (2) I could help you with that.
     (3) Fuck you too, kid.
     Translations are approximate. Dutch is a beast.
***** Kamer Rouge *****
Chapter Summary
     Toki finds a job, and a home, in Amsterdam. Then he starts to get the
     wanderlust. But there are more ways than cash to punch a ticket to
     America...
Chapter Notes
     Chapter warning for non-con (oral) at the end.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
This place was alive.
Toki was suddenly much less interested in the fried fish sandwich he’d traded
for a couple of guilder than the windows upon windows of women bearing more
skin than he’d ever seen in his life before.
This evening was verging on sensory overload. He sat with his legs dangling
over the side of a canal opposite a particularly enticing shop and watched the
pretty redhead on display while he munched his dinner. At least, he thought she
was a redhead. Everything was bathed in fluorescent red light. It was almost
nauseating. Almost.
The redhead curled her finger at Toki, and he could feel his cheeks flush a
shade not dissimilar to the light under which she danced. Stuffing the rest of
his sandwich into his face, he bolted upright, nearly teetering into the murky
water below. His feet, for lack of a more flexible appendage, took him in the
direction of that enticing young woman. He was barely aware of his movements,
only that he needed to find a footbridge and get across, fast.
By the time he made it to the shop, the object of his attention had gone from
the window, replaced by an equally semi-clad and beautiful young lady, but one
who didn’t grab his attention like the redhead had done. Frustrated, he figured
he’d ask after her inside.
A bouncer saw to it the babyfaced Norwegian didn’t set two feet into that
establishment.
Okay, so this was going to be another of those places where Toki wasn’t totally
wanted. But he wanted to be here, he decided, so he’d have to go at it a
different way.
Venturing deeper into the streets full of saunas had proven fruitful, if
frightening; he was able to get cleaned up with only mild harassment at a place
that didn’t turn him away outright. So Toki wound his way further into the red
light district, away from the crowds and toward a shop that could use a red
light bulb replacement or two.
Kamer Rougewere the words plastered on the side of this building.
Here he sat in observation. The clientele that popped surreptitiously in and
out reminded him of the sort of man he’d encountered in the bathhouse – if
decidedly more heterosexual. The women in the windows were less beautiful but
no less appealing to Toki. He could work with this.
 
                                      ***
 
A grumbling stomach and sharp pain roused him suddenly. Toki blinked, aware of
daylight hours but not much else. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but then,
that’s how exhaustion works.
Rubbing the hard line gouged in his neck by the plastic crate he’d evidently
used as a pillow, Toki slowly regained his bearings. He couldn’t tell what time
it was, but the sex shop had lost its crimson allure from the previous night.
Without darkness and leering strangers, it looked like a normal storefront.
Much more approachable, Toki thought.
Endgame decided by the paucity of cash currently in his possession, Toki
stalked around the rear of the building. He felt kinship with the preponderance
of working-class types in the alley, cleaning their establishments from the
previous night’s debauchery, and hoped making himself useful would at least
earn him a few guilder, if not a coveted invitation into the shop he’d been
eyeing.
The back door to the Kamer Rouge popped open as if on cue, and a greasy, black-
clad barkeep tumbled out. He, too, seemed surprised and a bit offended by the
presence of the sun, shooing daylight away with a wave of his hand as he licked
the end of a hand-rolled cigarette.
The bartender patted down the pockets of his funny half-apron then withdrew a
match, striking it with his thumbnail and inhaling deeply. Toki watched as he
took long drag after long drag, eyes growing redder and blearier as he did. The
kid wondered obliquely why a regular cigarette would cause a man to sway like
he was drunk, but decided to take the opportunity for what it was.
Hi! I’m Toki. I need cash. I can help you with cleaning and stuff.
A blank stare met his entreaty, followed by riotous laughter. Toki wasn’t sure
whether to be frightened or affronted, so he opted to repeat his offer instead,
this time using what little English Runke Snogge imparted upon him during their
weeks together – and a lot of pantomime.
“I helps you. Need money.”
“Jesus kid! What’s with the fucking hat?” The bartender’s non sequitur question
was punctuated by giggles and gesticulations of his own. Toki looked at him
blankly for a moment before removing his little blue cap and approaching
slowly, holding it out as an offering.
“No, no, I don’t want— what the fuck language was that even?” He took one last
drag on the joint, contemplated holding it out for the weird kid with the weird
hat but just dissolved into another fit of giggles and unintelligible muttering
about a goddamn useless goddamn linguistics degree.
Toki had no idea what this guy was going on about. He was about to cut his
losses and move on when he noticed the barkeep holding the back door open and
nodding inside. Toki flashed him just enough of a shit-eating grin to make the
guy wonder just what the hell he was getting himself into.
 
                                      ***
 
“This mop is gonna be your new best friend, begrijpen?You’re lucky our last
barback just offed himself or else I’d’ve told you to fuckin’ book it. I’ll be
cutting you in out of my take like I did him so obviously this is all under the
table. Shit, this whole goddamn place is under the table.”
Toki had been in the Kamer Rouge bartender’s employ for less than five minutes
and was already confident he was in over his head. But then a scent like spun
sugar wafted in over the stale beer and general earthiness that clogged the
air.
“Wie is dit? You adopting strays again, Connor?” (1)
In the daylight and dingy bar – and under several layers more clothes – she was
far less enticing than she had been the night prior. But Toki found himself
drawn to the redhead from the window all over again.
That sugary sweet scent owed itself in part to the fresh stroopwafel she was
munching for breakfast. She peeked into the little brown bag and withdrew one
more, chucking the rest in Toki’s direction. “Markus always giving me extras.”
To the bartender named Connor: “This one has home or I going to put him up
too?” Connor shrugged his ignorance.
“Groot.” The redhead surveyed her new foundling with an eyeroll, pausing for a
moment at something she couldn’t quite place. “Send him up when he done with
chores. If this one overdose Ik zweer tot GodI cleaning it up with your
tongue.” (2)
Connor shrugged, declining the argument.
“Ik heetTilly. Tilly Spijker.” She addressed Toki, almost as an afterthought.
Toki looked at her with his head cocked to the side, like an elkhound puppy.
“Erm, my name is Tilly.”
Toki just shook his head at her. He realized with a slight shock of panic that
he would have a lot to learn.
 
                                      ***
 
He fell into the routine easily enough.
Kamer Rouge was a make-yourself-scarce kind of place, so Toki did most of his
work during the day, when tasks involved hauling last night’s unspeakable filth
and restocking beer kegs and condoms. It was unglamorous labor, but what little
value he’d been allowed to believe he possessed was borne out in such work.
Toki came to understand that Tilly was in charge in some way; he suspected she
owned the building by how she seemed to have keys to every room in it, although
he never saw her around at night. The nights were populated by four other girls
and countless men whose eyes he tried never to meet. The girls didn’t speak to
him, but their faces became familiar, and they would smile at him when he
entered their little booths to change their sheets or sneak them a secret shot
of vodka. Connor the bartender didn’t even begrudge him the few extra guilder
he knew the girls tipped him for the booze.
Tilly and Connor talked enough at him that he began to pick up English, albeit
heavily accented from the former and sloppy American from the latter. The
bartender – who had less of a linguistics degree and more of a “knack for
languages, you get me?” – along with a thrift store dictionary helped Toki
translate to and from Norwegian when necessary. 
He slept six nonconsecutive hours a day on the couch in Tilly’s apartment
upstairs. Every time he woke, Toki would restore the sofa to pristine sitting
condition and pack his handful of belongings into his guitar case, which he
always set just outside the door. All of it was in the extreme likelihood he
would not be welcomed back.
And so six months passed Toki by in Amsterdam, in obscurity. He couldn’t say in
happiness; he wasn’t quite sure what happiness was, but he certainly hadn’t
gone for anywhere close to this length of time in his life absent pain or fear.
His guitar gave him comfort and purpose in those blank moments that his father
would have filled with religion, or that the men in the tiny rooms filled with
what the men in the tiny rooms did.
“What are you doing here?” Tilly asked him, apropos of nothing, one Sunday
morning.
“Connor says I has the, um, ferie. Vakantie. Cans make cleans fors you?” (3)
“I mean why you in Amsterdam? You not come here for cleaning up jizz in back
rooms of sex shop rest of your life.”
Toki looked at her quizzically. She hated that look.
“What’s ‘jizz’?”
Tilly saw the youth in his face for the first time. It was easy to miss under
the layers of scars and street-hardened toughness and general grime.
That Sunday, Toki received his first course in sex ed.
 
                                      ***
 
Toki liked Tilly. And he liked Connor too. And he liked the girls who danced in
the windows and disappeared into their rented rooms with strange men. But it
wasn’t enough.
“I’s ams goings to United States of America." 
He announced it one morning after chores. Cap in hand, guitar slung over his
shoulder, he looked almost apologetic.
Tilly couldn’t help but smile matronly at him. He hated that smile.
“How you getting to America, Toki?”
Toki hadn’t puzzled that far out. He just knew he didn’t want to be in
Amsterdam anymore, and if he wasn’t going to be in Amsterdam, he may as well
not be in Europe at all. Plus, the whole “Land of Opportunity” thing folks were
always going on about the U.S. sounded pretty neat.
“I works.”
“You works now. How much you have saved?”
Toki counted in his head. “Two hundred forty seven guilder.” He couldn’t help
but beam. It was more money than he ever knew even existed on Earth.
“We go through about 2,000 guilder worth of booze a night. And that’s on a
weeknight.” Connor didn’t mean to deflate him so thoroughly. But the kid needed
a little perspective.
“Look, I help you. I have friend… well, customer. He runs ship out of Rotterdam
to Charleston. Owes me. Now you owe me. Deal?”
All Toki needed to hear was “help.”
“Ja!”
 
                                      ***
 
Approaching the vessel in Rotterdam was intimidating to say the least. Toki’s
previous experience with watercraft on open ocean had gone over less than
smoothly, and this boat was colossal compared to the last.
Sensing the fear emanating from her passenger, Tilly offered some words of
calm.
“Do not worry. Ship is so big, is like city at sea. You will be fine. Ah, here
is Gustav now.”
The sailor called Gustav exchanged a few words with Tilly, who handed over
Toki’s bounty in guilder and sealed their arrangement with a kiss on the cheek.
He beckoned to his cargo, who said goodbye with an enthusiastic wave.
His enthusiasm waned as soon as he saw the boiler room that would pass for
quarters for the next two weeks. It dissipated entirely when the sailor called
Gustav joined him in the cramped space.
“Ah… thanks to you, sir—” Toki began in dismissal. Rough fingers squeezing his
cheeks halted him midsentence.
A second hand clamping down on his trapezius muscle forced him to his knees.
“You want say thanks?” The sailor called Gustav unbuttoned his heavy canvas
trousers. “Say thanks.”
Toki recognized this position from the men in the sauna and the women in the
window. He had a slight, terrifying idea of what was expected of him. He just
didn’t understand why.
As the gruff old deckhand violently plowed into his mouth, Toki couldn’t help
but wonder if this is how Tilly earned the favor she paid forward to him. The
thought brought him to tears worse than any merciless face fuck ever could.
 
Chapter End Notes
     (1) Who is this?
     (2) I swear to God
     (3) Holiday (Norwegian, Dutch)
     **If you want to know what "Kamer Rouge" means, I find Google rather
     helpful in situations like these. It's a multi-lingual play-on-words
     that's just as fucked up as you think.
***** Antebellum *****
Chapter Summary
     Toki makes it to America, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
Chapter Notes
     Chapter warnings for prostitution and sexual assault, and some
     violence.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Toki loved Charleston, in theory. 
The old architecture felt vaguely European, and warm, humid nights under the
cover of wide leaved Magnolia trees made sleeping outdoors more pleasant than
he could have hoped. The ocean, from land, was beautiful, and he spent many a
crackling summer afternoon watching the waves pummel the shore.
But America was different than Europe. Nobody had patience for Toki’s broken
English on this side of the Atlantic, especially since it wasn't broken with a
normal foreign language like Spanish. He got the feeling that folks in
Charleston weren’t keen on others, people who weren’tfrom here. 
In Charleston, not from Charleston, he was just a kid on the streets, offal, a
fixture of the general condition of urbanism rather than an individual with
potential and prospects, his entire life contained in a beaten guitar case and
a fanny pack he'd swiped off a dumb tourist in Holland and filled with nothing
remotely of use to anyone who mattered.
 
                                      ***
 
The sounds of amplified music caught Toki’s ear. He deviated from his regular
nightly route around downtown – the one planned around when restaurants would
be most likely to toss the remnants of first dinner service – to follow it.
What he found amused him thoroughly. A young man in baggy clothes and a white
plastic mask concealing half his face moved his body as if possessed by a
spinning top. Accompanying him were two bearded men who could have been twins,
one on an accordion and the other on a synthesizer, and a skinny, frosty haired
lady playing an odd upright stringed instrument with a long stick. He’d seen
cellos and double basses and violins and fiddles, but this thing didn’t have a
body.
He moved closer, face set to question, when the lady motioned him to her side.
“You play that thing or just carry it around?” Her eyes fixed on the guitar
slung across his back. 
“You wants me play?” She took a beat to parse the accent, then shrugged.
“Plug in.”
 
Toki earned ten whole dollars that night playing absurdly upbeat dance music,
enough to buy him his first meal stateside not comprised of what wealthier
people threw away. 
Encouraged by the windfall, Toki made a point to inure himself to the local
street performer scene in Charleston. Someone would let him borrow an amp from
time to time, and while solo shredding definitely wasn’t the kind of folk song
sing-along people were used to in the American South, when noise complaints
didn’t shut him down, he managed to collect a few bucks here and there. 
Buskers taught him the many uses of the most versatile word in the English
language – “fuck” – and demonstrated myriad ways to gain supplemental income.
Nimble-fingered guitarists make the finest pickpockets, they explained. Suffice
it to say, the fatter the tourist, the less likely he’d get noticed or chased
down.
Honestly or dishonestly, Toki earned enough in Charleston to keep from starving
outright. What little he was able to squirrel away he put toward bus fare
farther south – where at least he figured it would be warm enough come winter
that he wouldn’t freeze to death in the high likelihood he hadn’t a roof over
his head by then.
 
                                      ***
 
After two months of mere survival, Toki was beginning to forget what he’d
wanted out of coming to America. He was far enough in time and space from his
father’s lash that safety from torture was no longer a palpable motivation. The
only time he felt truly free was when his fingers danced along those worn
wooden frets.
And even they were beginning to betray him. The high E string was long gone,
and three or four frets were so rusted and loose he’d begun to skip those notes
entirely.
What was really so bad about Norway?Toki thought in his darker moments,
clutching a yellowing photo to his chest while he shivered through the rain,
that perhaps a home populated by people who hated him but prayed for him, who
beat him but fed him, that perhaps all of it was better than being free and
alone. The threat of death was less terrifying than the certainty of it, and
with each passing night, Toki grew closer in his confidence that the reaper
would indeed meet him on these streets. 
But then someone or something would cross his path that gave him just enough
hope to wish to see daybreak.
Tonight, it was a shiny black car.
  
Toki had made it as far south as a state called Georgia. He remembered the sign
welcoming him because he could read it. In English. The ability, and the
sentiment, felt nice. Like he was becoming something. What, he wasn’t sure.
The town was called Savannah, but it may as well have been Charleston. The pace
was a little slower here, which meant so too was the public performance scene.
There were no borrowed amplifiers or friendly peddlers willing to cut him in on
their earnings in exchange for doing that thing he’d learned with his mouth on
the crossing to America. There was starvation and desperation, in Savannah. 
So when the shiny black car rolled up, Toki didn’t expect much. When the window
rolled down, he expected policemen with guns and the need to flee – just when
he’d found a comfy bus stop to hole up for the night.
"Hey, kid."
Toki pointed questioningly at himself. 
"Well who the fuck else'd I be talking to? Wanna make some cash?" 
He'd been waiting months in this new country for a question like that.
Nevermind that it came at one in the morning on a random street corner in
downtown Savannah. The wad of bills with large numbers on them spoke for
itself.
The fat man inside the car reeked of Paco Rabanne and rail whisky. Toki wasn't
sure what either of those things were, but the combination wrinkled his nose as
he tossed his guitar into the backseat, taking up the front for himself. A good
look at the driver turned his stomach even further – the guy looked like
Wilford Brimley pre-diabeetus, like one of those huge sea dogs with the long
teeth and moustaches. Hvalross. 
Mr. Hvalross yammered on about God knows what as he whisked Toki away from that
dark corner. The young man picked up on words like "rich" and "important"
though, before the conversation, such as it was, turned to Toki. 
"So, what's your deal, you run away from home?"
"Run away from home?" Toki parroted back to him. The walrus man stole a glance.
Passing streetlights cast a devious glow on an already lecherous grin.
"Oh you're definitely not from around here, huh?"
Toki tried to ignore the meaty paw that worked its way from the armrest to his
knee and slowly up his thigh the more Toki told the man about his new traveling
companion.
Speaking of traveling, it occurred to Toki that they had been on the road for
some time. They surely weren't in the same city anymore. What that meant
geographically he hadn't a clue. He supposed the man wanted help getting back
to the ocean, where he could reunite with his hvalross cousins and swim off in
search of the morning’s freshest catch. Where do walruses live, besides the
ocean? Some place with ice, he thought, not sandy beaches.
"I said where you from, boy?"
Toki stared for a moment into the glimmering dashboard before he realized he
was again being addressed. "Oh, Toki! I'ms Toki, nice to meet you."
Walrus Man arched a single brow at Toki’s grinning face before shaking his
head, and they drove on in silence.
 
                                      ***
 
A rough shove roused Toki from his sleep. He hadn't meant to doze, wanted to
keep an eye on this strange new employer, but the drive seemed endless, and
frankly his body hadn’t rested on anything as comfortable as the car's
reclining bucket seat for months.
His eyes focused to take in the destination. Toki couldn't help but be confused
– and a little disappointed. Their hours-long drive terminated not at the sea,
full of frolicking walruses, or even at a "rich, important" mansion, but in the
broken asphalt parking lot of a one-story motel in Jacksonville, Florida.
Toki took a moment to sound it out, the words on the offensively bright neon
sign. Jack-son-vill-ee Sleep EZ.But it did nothing at all to help him figure
out where he was. Mr. Walrus didn’t seem overly keen on waiting for the boy to
get his bearings, either, instead grasping him by the scruff of his shirt and
shoving him toward one of the identical mud-colored doors.
The interior of the motel room was no more enlightening. Nondescript garments
laid carelessly atop an unmade bed. The television was tuned to mostly static;
Mr. Walrus Face switched it off irritably. 
But Toki was familiar with situations like these. It was what he was good at.
He immediately set to work picking up soiled socks and garters, tossing them
over his shoulder as he moved about the cramped space. A honking chortle over
his shoulder disturbed him mid-clean.
“That’s not the kind of job I was talking about, kid.”
The hvalross of a man shoved Toki to his knees, the pinch in his shoulder
stirring a panicked memory to the surface. But this time there was the promise
of cash, and a lot of it. Toki closed his eyes while the man’s booze-reeking
fingers fumbled with his waistband before them. A soft pudge of flesh pressed
against his lips, and after a moment Toki acquiesced.
This isn’t so bad. This isn’t so bad. This isn’t so bad.It was his internal
refrain in moments like this. There had been too many for him to count.
America is shit. America is shit. America is shit. How quickly the chorus
changed. He had to place a hand on the man's gut to hold it up and out of the
way. America is shit. Anger will help to fight back the tears.
Shock gripped him along with a hand to the crown of his greasy mop of hair. So
those enormous arms weren't all fat. With a single hand, the walrus-faced man
whipped Toki up and back, flinging him onto the grimy bed. It was when the
man’s booze-reeking fingers fumbled with Toki’s waistband that the little
foreigner began to panic.
A firm slap to his face, followed by a backhand, stilled Toki’s struggling.
That feeling, too, was familiar.
“Listen you little fucker. You’re mine for the night. Don’t fucking fight me.”
 
Toki Wartooth had learned long ago how to divorce his mind from pain. He’d
known more of it in one short lifetime than anyone could imagine. This was
different. This pain. This pain was inside of him. He could not run from it, in
mind or in body. He could do no more than stare unblinking at the water stains
on the ceiling, than try to count the blades of the rickety fan as it twirled
above him like a teasing guillotine. He could do no more than let the tears
stream from his eyes as this blob of a man, this walrus whose name he did not
know, split him open with little more than a palm full of spit to ease the way.
 
"Oh yeah you're a fresh one." Stale liquor and decay breathed into Toki's face.
"You a virgin, huh? Ooh, fuck yeah can I pick ‘em. I'm so fuckin’ good. I’m a
fucking CHAMP!"
Tears that etched their way through the dirt on Toki’s face dried in time, as
this invader got off to his self congratulation. His jaw clenched tight as the
sloppy pace increased and then stopped, the giant pinniped of a man collapsing
onto him with a satisfied grunt.
"Woooo!" He had the audacity to let out a celebratory hoot while Toki
suffocated under his mass.
The boy chanced a glance down at the slimy, balding mess atop him and sneered
with disgust. He willed his stomach to cooperate until he could vomit in
private; Tilly spared him the lesson, but he figured puking on the john would
be ill-advised at best. Instead he squirmed impatiently, willing the man not to
pass out on top of him. Hint taken, fortunately, Walrus rolled his heft off
Toki, who immediately reached for his pants.
He willfully ignored the trickle of blood and semen dribbling down his leg as
he pulled them on. Then turned to the blob and nudged him with a socked foot.
There was business to attend to before this employer fell asleep.
"Okay, you pays Toki now." Toki hoped it sounded as transactional as he’d
intended.
"What?"
Toki held out an open palm. "You pays to Toki money. For jobs."
The man laughed ruthlessly and heaved himself up to fetch his own clothes. He
turned his back on the dumb foreigner, wobbling as he tried and failed to get a
foot into his stained white briefs. "Get the fuck out kid."
Not understanding the last sentence, or not caring to, Toki expected that wad
of cash to emerge from the pocket of the pants with which hvalross was
currently fussing. When it didn't, he caught the man's eye again, and repeated
his request.
“Pays to Toki money now, please.” 
The walrus man whirled, enraged, and grasped Toki's outstretched hand, twisting
it behind his back and slamming him into the front door. "I ain't gonna pay
some fuckin’ French twink off the street for a lay."
He grasped the hair at the nape of Toki's neck and pulled back, sinking his
teeth into the shell of Toki’s ear before smashing his forehead into the
unforgiving door frame. And then the man's hands were down Toki's pants, again.
This time, the pain was too great for Toki to bear in silence. He cried out
when the man entered him, lubricated only by the blood and cum left from
moments earlier. Screams of agony and protest earned him a punch to the back of
the head, after which he felt chubby fingers close around his windpipe.
"Shut the fuck up, goddamn slut, or I will kill you."
There was only one word in that string of nonsense Toki needed to understand.
Instead of paralyzing him into submission, the threat to Toki's life galvanized
him to action. He flung his elbow out and back, connecting with the walrus
man’s temple. It was enough to knock his oppressive weight away from Toki, who
spun to face him. In an instant, muscles honed by years of grueling labor began
to contract of their own will, sending fist after fist flying into the fleshy
planes of the fat man’s face until there was little left recognizable as one.
Mr. Walrus lay on his back, gurgling on his own blood.
Satisfied he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon, Toki surveyed the room again.
His surroundings looked completely different than they had just an hour ago.
How fucking naïve he was back then. Now, Toki took his time searching for
anything that may be of value. He reached into the man’s gigantic trousers for
his wallet, extracting every last bill and tucking them neatly into his
discarded fanny pack before securing it around his waist. Spotting the keys
beside the TV, Toki grabbed them, too. He didn’t know the first thing about
driving, but he couldn't leave his guitar behind. And besides, without keys,
his attacker couldn’t give easy chase.
Toki ducked into the bathroom, avoiding the mirror, and shoved a handful of
tissues down his pants, fighting the urge to wretch. He didn’t have time for
that, yet.
As a last, piteous gesture, Toki toed the beaten walrus's chin, tipping his
head onto its side so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood and die. Not that he
didn't deserve to. 
Turning off the lights before he stepped back into the darkness, Toki crept
toward the car. He wasn’t sure if anything that happened inside that room was
overheard, but he didn’t want to chance being spotted by the wrong person.
Right now, every person was the wrong person. 
The car was easy to identify. Among the handful in the lot, its tinted windows
and gleaming black paint stood out like a sore thumb. Kind of like Toki. A
second of fumbling revealed the correct key. Snubbing its nose at Toki's pains
to remain clandestine, the bright, revealing overhead light lit his way as he
rummaged the floors and interior compartments. Behind the passenger seat he
found a half-eaten hoagie, which he thought nothing of tearing into. It had
been a day and a half since he’d eaten.
Inside the glove box Toki found a gun. It was much shorter than the rifles he
used in Norway, and he wasn’t convinced it could take down anything worth
eating – or any potential threat, for that matter. So he chucked it down a
storm drain and continued rummaging, tucking a map of northeastern Florida next
to the bounty in his fanny pack. He was hesitant to press any button that may
make noise – an inadvertent lean on the steering wheel produced a honk that
nearly sent him out of his skin. But the little lever that indicated "Trunk"
was fairly idiot proof, so he pulled on it, observing the effect in the rear
view mirror.
What Toki found inside was the most frightening thing he’d seen since last he
gazed the earthen walls of his punishment hole.
Chapter End Notes
     Things do get better for ol' Toki. I promise.
***** Broken Wings *****
Chapter Summary
     Toki gains clarity, and an unexpected traveling companion.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
“Hvem er du?” (1)
An incredibly dumb question to ask someone curled up in the trunk of a fancy
black sedan with her hands and feet bound with zip ties. Especially to ask
someone with a foul, bloody rag jammed into her mouth, gagging any possible
response.
Toki noticed these things slowly, as the surprise wore off and alarm set in.
The girl couldn’t be more than four or five years older than him. She stirred
along with the clammy air inside the confined space, cracking one bruised,
swollen eye to inspect the change.
A scruffy foreign face was not the one she’d expected to see, but the condition
of her own could not betray fear, or even much surprise. Toki instinctively
held up his hands to show he was no threat, forgetting for a moment they were
covered in the blood of the man he suspected was their shared assailant.
“Fuck. Beklager.” (2) He reached down and whisked away the gag before she could
even wince, wiping his hands on the filthy cotton. “I’ms ams Toki. Who are
you?”
“Help me.”
Her feeble plea was enough to shake off his initial shock and reignite a sense
of urgency; if he wasn’t dead, the fat walrus-faced man wouldn’t be down for
much longer. Toki’s hands felt around the walls of the trunk for something to
undo the girl’s restraints, cursing himself for not carrying a basic knife and
cursing that fat asshole for being smart enough not to leave anything useful
back here with her.
“Waits on,” he told her unnecessarily, remembering a piece of rigid metal that
could possibly work. Toki dashed around to the driver’s side door, removing the
keys and feeling out the sharpest one. A little elbow grease and a lot of
sawing made short work of the two plastic ties.
Without a second thought, Toki hoisted the girl up into his arms and took off
into the night.
                                      ***
The plan had been to find the source of traffic sounds Toki thought he’d heard
from the parking lot. Not that strangers in cars were high on his list of
potential saviors at the moment, but the likelihood was much higher of finding
safety in a populated area along a street with cars than on the utterly
desolate stretch of road they’d been traversing.
After 20 minutes of running full tilt Toki began to slow. He didn’t want to
stop yet – they hadn’t made any turns since leaving the motel, and it would
take nothing to catch up to them from there. But they weren’t being chased from
what he could tell, and the guitar banging against his already sore backside
rapidly grew intolerable.
Ducking down into a little ravine for cover, Toki unloaded his newly acquired
cargo.
“Cans you, um, gå? Umm...” He pointed his fingers down in a “V” and scissored
them to indicate walking. The girl nodded. She had still yet to speak another
word, but Toki didn’t begrudge her silence.
Gingerly taking her own weight, the pair supported each other, picking their
way through the ravine that ran parallel to the road until the first rays of
the new day burned the night’s sky.
“Can we stop?”
“Um…” They had gotten no nearer to the traffic Toki was so sure was nearby, but
they did put several more miles between themselves and the motel and the half-
dead villain therein. In the weak morning sunlight, Toki could finally get an
idea of just how bad off this girl was: The tank top and running shorts she
wore hung off her, as though her body had wasted away in their shell; the
expanse of exposed flesh was nearly covered in scabs and bruises in various
states of healing; and her face was frozen in an expression of both pain and
sorrow.
If Toki had ever known his own reflection, he would recognize it in this girl.
How long had she been a prisoner of that man? When’s the last time she had a
drink of water? When’s the last time she ate?
Toki remembered the corner of sandwich in his fanny pack, old and soggy but
still edible, and handed it to her. She gave him a single look of thanks and
bit into it, ignoring the blood dribbling from a reopened split lip to work
through the first sustenance she’d had in who knows how long.
When she finished eating, much to Toki’s chagrin, his new charge promptly fell
asleep. He’d gotten used to the company – however incoherent – and was pleased
with the progress they’d made. At any rate, her slumbering form was hidden from
the road, so he decided to take advantage of the burgeoning sunlight to get a
bearing on his surroundings.
Directly opposite their makeshift campsite and stretching along the street in
both directions for as long as he could see were massive mounds of grass-
covered sand. Frowning, Toki dashed across the road and up one of the dunes.
The crashing waves of the Atlantic explained the traffic noise he’d heard all
night but never found. A pang of nostalgia hit him at the sight. Not long ago
he sat by the ocean in Charleston, admiring the relentless movement of the vast
expanse of murky green. Now, it only meant he had one less option for
directions to flee.
It was time to rouse the girl. “Angel,” she said upon waking. Toki knew the
word; it had a fairly similar cognate in Norwegian. He just didn’t know what
she meant. He was far from an angel. 
“It’s my name,” she shared in response to his confusion. “Or at least, you can
call me Angel.”
“Oh! I’ms Toki. Nice to meets you.” It wasn’t, not under these circumstances,
but he didn’t have the words to express all that.
“I’m not from here, either.” She didn’t expand. 
                                      ***
Angel turned out to be a more useful companion than Toki could have hoped. She
interpreted his pilfered roadmap easily enough, navigating them via dinky
commuter bus into downtown Jacksonville. 
The padded seats and relative safety of the bus’s back row gave the pair a
decent enough place to sleep for the 90-minute ride into town proper. Toki was
surprised by how comforted he was by Angel’s sheer presence. He hadn’t been
near many women in his life, and his mother scarcely provided him the warmth
and maternal air that he was only recently realizing he’d craved. Snuggled up
together, two broken and abused seraphim, he also found that caring for someone
else helped divorce him from his own suffering.
 
The slowing motion of the bus as it pulled into its station was enough to rouse
Toki from a peaceful rest. But Angel didn’t wake as easily. In fact, she wasn’t
waking at all.
“Engel?” A disembodied moan was all Toki got in response. He shouldn’t have
made her walk. He should have figured out how to power the car on his own. He
should have stopped for food and water first…
Her sweaty brow and eyes rapidly darting beneath their lids snapped Toki out of
his impending panic attack. Swinging his guitar over a shoulder, he bundled her
gingerly into his arms again and ducked off the bus in search of help. But of
course… he didn’t know where the hospital was. Angel was the one who’d read the
map. She didn’t share the route with him.
“Sykehus? Um… fæn!”(3) 
“Fifty.” The word eked out from somewhere beneath the matted mop of hair
covering the girl’s battered face.
Toki’s mind raced with what it could possibly mean, until his eyes landed on
the glaring orange LED number at the front of the bus they’d just departed.
Taking a chance, he searched for the one with a “50” on it, hopped aboard,
shoved a handful of change in the coffer beside the driver like he’d seen Angel
do earlier.
“You need a transfer?” 
“Sykehus?”
The driver looked the panicked boy and his shivering mate up and down. Fucking
tweekers. But a fare is a fare.
“Or a hospital, I’m guessing?”
“’Hospital!’ Ja!”
                                      ***
It was an excruciating ride, all stops and starts. Every time the bus paused to
let people off, Toki jumped to join the departures. The driver, in some small
decency, held out his hand to keep Toki on board until they reached Memorial
Hospital.
Further frustration met him when they arrived. Toki had never so much as seen a
doctor, let alone been to a large modern medical facility before, but he
figured a young woman in such obvious distress would immediately attract the
appropriate personnel to his aid. Assistance only came when, fed up, Toki
simply unloaded his cargo into the arms of an orderly – along with a litany of
Nordic swears.
The young man in scrubs set her on a gurney, eyes widening almost imperceptibly
when they landed on her face. A few urgent gesticulations summoned a whole
squadron of important looking people in crisp white coats, and the girl named
Angel was whisked away behind swinging double doors before Toki could take a
second look.
He was pleased to she was getting attention. He really was. But an
uncomfortable knot in his chest arose at being told he could not follow. A
nurse inquired, with so much gesturing, whether he wanted some treatment for
the bitten ear he’d completely forgotten about, but Toki waved her off. In
fact, he’d forgotten about most of his aches and pains and cuts and abrasions
in his effort to care for this more fragile creature.
Toki began to wonder obliquely why that was, when he noticed a couple of large
men in dark uniforms and guns talking with the nurse he’d dismissed moments
ago. Police. Police always meant trouble. He’d learned that lesson early in his
American life.
When the nurse pointed them in his general direction, Toki knew it was time to
go.
                                     *** 
Alone again.
He wasn’t sure why it stung so bad this time. People had come into and gone out
of his life with regularity since he left home last year. Some of them were
good. Most of them weren’t. None of them had needed him like that girl in the
trunk had.
It hit him like a ton of bricks. The feeling of being essential in someone
else’s life. Of knowing that if he hadn’t happened upon her – if he hadn’t
happened toher – she might be dead right now. How crushingly novel it was.
Toki doubled over with the sensation, violent sobs wracking his entire body as
salty tears spilled over grimy cheeks. He let himself cry this time, let it all
out on an indiscriminate sidewalk in muggy Jacksonville, Florida. He didn’t
mind the looks from passersby it engendered. It did not feel good, it was not
cathartic, but it was necessary all the same. 
                                      ***
Toki lost track of the days. He slept under bus canopies when there were no
streetlights nearby to betray him. Other nights he lay on bare pavement,
exposed to the temperamental north Florida weather and not caring much about
it. What was rain but a free bath, anyway.
He did have options. An inventory of his fanny pack revealed a wealth of
American bills acquired from the fat rapist he beat half to death – six that
said $100 and three that said $50, a handful of smaller bills and a bunch of
coins. But he hadn’t totally got the hang of currency in this place, even after
more than six months stateside. He hadn’t been around too much of it to get
used to, anyway. Was a hundred U.S. Dollars a lot, like guilder, or not, like
kroner? One of the big bills got summarily rejected at a hot dog stand, so it
couldn’t have been worth that much.
 
Irritated and hungry and aimless, Toki felt like he was back to square one. He
was certain at one point he’d wound his way back to Lillehammer, somehow. But
then, the tiny, cluttered music store he’d found himself before was decidedly
more inviting than Drep Du Selv had been. And the weather was a lot nicer, too.
And the sound emanating from within… it beckoned him like a pie cooling on a
windowsill more than any black metal demo ever had.
Toki’s spirits lifted upon wandering into the little shop. It was crammed with
used CDs and vinyls and old gear and apparel. There were tchotchkes hanging
from the ceiling commemorating more bands than he ever knew existed. Melodic
hard rock blared from a junky boom box in the corner. Toki began to drift
closer to it, drawn by the sound and then by the image of five bona fide rock
stars that loomed on a poster overhead, before he noticed a scruffy shopkeeper
eyeing him from behind the counter.
“What the fuck are you doing here, kid?”
“I has money, I stays!” Toki stood as defiantly as he could muster. He was used
to being kicked out.
But the proprietor merely chuckled. “Nah, I mean people only come to this
shithole shop to unload their shithole gear or find some old LP that ain’t
mainstream. You’re lookin’ ‘round like it’s the goddamn Louvre! So what are you
doing, here?”
“I’ms Toki. Toki Wartooth. I’ms from Norway. Nice to meets you.”
“Uhh. Huh. I’m Gavin. You like Dethklok, eh?” Toki furrowed a brow at him. He
understood half of that word… “Dethklok. It’s who we’re listening to right now.
Florida’s finest unsigned band!” The shopkeep named Gavin tapped his ear and
pointed at the boom box.
“Dethklok.” It’s all Toki said in response. It fit, in his mind: the sound that
drew him into this store, the brutal tones playing out raw on the scratchy demo
CD. It was the musical version of Toki Wartooth.
“Although I guess they’re not unsigned anymore,” the shopkeep continued. “My
boys got themselves a record deal, can you believe it?!" Toki smiled politely.
Yes, he could believe it.
“You play?” Gavin the shopkeep indicated Toki’s guitar, which Toki took to mean
he wanted a bit of a show. He hadn’t played it in too long. It was in such
depressingly awful shape. But Toki gave it a shot anyway, strumming through a
few disconnected chords and wincing his way around some dead-fret arpeggios.
He sighed apologetically and moved to re-sheathe the old axe when Gavin held
out a hand.
“Hey hey hey wait. Lemme take a look at that thing.”
Toki handed over the Flying V, noticing fully the front counter of the shop
that was jury rigged into something of a workbench. Guitars in various states
of repair sat behind the register, and tools and extra strings and all kinds of
devices designed to make sad guitars sing again littered the surface.
“Why do you have a vintage Flying V anyway? Who the fuck are you?”
Toki had been faced with one existential question after another on his journey.
He was only just beginning to recognize them as such – and ponder their greater
answer, when he saw a crappy Xeroxed flyer attached to the big poster of
Dethklok. Five shadowy men resembled the larger-than life ones above, only a
giant red “X” drawn was across one of them. Toki knew, as he surreptitiously
pulled it down from the wall, this flier was telling him something important.
“You wanna hear some shit?” Gavin waved off his own questions as he got to work
snipping the worn old strings off Toki’s guitar. “That guy, the wannabe
Malmsteen looking son’bitch with the douchebag beard, I hear they kicked him
out of the band because he, no shit, stabbed Nathan Explosion right in the
fucking back. Nathan Explosion, that's the front man, the big motherfucker in
the middle there. Florida's own! Went to high school with him!”
He added that last part as though it were a unique mark of accomplishment. Toki
looked at him dumbly. Gavin rolled his eyes, realizing Toki from Norway
probably wasn’t picking up more than every third word, but when he got on a
roll talking about the local music scene, it was hard to stop him.
“Anyways they're back in town looking for a new guitarist. Some suit asshole
came in here the other day to post that flier you got in your pocket." Toki
turned a subtle shade of red. "Don't worry kid, if you could make this beat up
piece of shit Gibson sound that good, just think how it'll sound fixed up a
little bit."
Toki was thunderstruck. "You t’inks... Toki sound good?"
"Sure, kid! You got loads of potential. Um... I mean, keep practicing and
you'll get even better." Toki beamed. Such sure praise had rarely befallen his
ears.
“So you never answered me. What brings you ‘round these parts? You gonna try
out for Dethklok or what?”
“Uhm… I’ms Toki… I’ms froms Norway. I’ms comes to Americas to be…" This much
was true. He came to America to exist – he ran away from home so he could
simply be. Be what, he wasn't sure.
"I wants to plays guitar.”
It didn’t add much to the conversation, but it was the first time he said it
out loud, the first time he even let himself think about what he truly wanted
out of life apart from the essentials of escape and survive. So consumed he’d
been for the last 18 months with merely staying alive that he hadn’t the time
to dream. Now, though… something felt achingly tangible.
Gavin the guitar doctor returned the old Flying V to Toki’s hands, where it
felt brand new. Toki ripped through a few unplugged licks, reveling in the
difference in quality a little TLC could make, before he remembered now is when
money usually exchanged hands. He pulled out a $50, having had no luck with the
hundreds, but the shopkeep immediately waved him off.
“Look, Toki, I'll tell ya two things. First, don't flash that kinda cash round
here. You're just asking for trouble." That's a word Toki definitely
understood.
"Second, that audition is in two days. If I was you, I'd go find a cheap motel,
someplace to get cleaned up and get a good meal in me and a decent night's rest
at least. You get me?"
He did. He did indeed.
After some negotiating, Gavin reluctantly parted with his Dethklok demo and a
Discman in exchange for 20 bucks and an invitation to Toki’s first big gig.
Toki made that a promise.
 
 
Chapter End Notes
     (1) Who are you?
     (2) Sorry.
     (3) Hospital? Um… fuck!
***** What's That Sound? *****
Chapter Summary
     Toki has his first auditions.
     aka, The Duel Chapter.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
A decent meal and a hot shower were in order. The Route 29 Motor Lodge provided
one of those, at least.
Toki’s only experience with flophouses like these had been negative to say the
least, but the price of $29.29 per night that burned in neon out front, even in
broad daylight, fit his budget.
The lady at the front desk gave him a room for two nights in exchange for 84
dollars and 98 cents. Toki had never had formal schooling, but he was great
with numbers, and those didn’t add up. Fees and taxes, the lady explained. And
why don’t we round it up an even hundred, and I’ll throw in international
calling at no additional expense, sounds like you have some folks back home
might want to hear from you, eh son?
He didn’t have the capacity in English to protest, yet, as he parted with one
of the big green bills.
 
Toki spent half an hour in front of the vending machine trying various
combinations of coins with English written on them. There wasn’t anything
decent about this meal, but he wound up with a respectable haul of the
brightest colored snacks available – some expired Funyuns, a couple packs of
Skittles, three surprisingly tasty bags of off-brand Cheetos, and a Raspberry
Psychic Lemonade Fruitopia.
Toki was relieved to find the interior of the room didn’t remind him at all of
the one he'd escaped farther north. This place had a relatively pleasant beach
motif running throughout, with hues of blue and beige coloring the walls and
pineapple-shaped lamps adorning the bedside tables. The soap in the bathroom
even came in the shape of little shells.
For the first time in months, Toki felt himself relax. Standing under the
scalding hot shower stream, his racing thoughts calmed, and his mind drifted to
that girl, Angel. With a pang of guilt he wondered if she turned out okay. It
had been a couple of days, maybe a week since he abandoned her at the hospital.
How could he just leave her like that? But he’d gotten her there in the first
place! But he left her with those cops… But cops are usually good for women,
right? Women are the ones who call police. Men are the ones who get arrested by
police…
The water grew tepid by the time Toki made up his mind. Angel was better off
for knowing him, and then not knowing him anymore.
Now that he wasn’t surrounded by his own funk, Toki realized how horribly
offensive his clothes smelled. How lucky he’d been in Amsterdam, where Tilly
would just toss his meager belongings into the laundry with her things.
Cleaning clothes wasn’t even one of his chores back home. This simple task was
so completely foreign to him.
It wasn’t the labor or the stench that eventually overwhelmed him, but rather
the flood of memories associated with every rip and tear and stubborn blood
stain on his shirt and pants that drove the colorful assortment of snack foods
out of his stomach and into the toilet bowl. 
Toki left the garments in a bath tub full of shampoo he would deal with
tomorrow.
                                      ***
There was something about being naked in a bedroom, safe and warm and with no
immediate threats or cares. Toki was exhausted, but that was more a permanent
condition of his than any present concern. As his hand wandered south, his mind
wandered to that singular lesson his caretaker in Amsterdam taught him.
He’d grown up a lot in the intervening months, and had begun to understand sex
as raw sensation rather than concept. Half-naked girls like the ones in the red
light district were more than titillating curiosity now that he – and his
pituitary gland – had figured out what they were for. But through lack of
opportunity or energy, he hadn’t explored these developments much over that
time.
Now, though, as fist closed around stiffening penis, he couldn’t purge from his
mind the images of similar anatomy attached to other men, forcing themselves on
him against his will. Toki dry heaved, once, and shouted in anger, but also in
frustration that there was nothing he could do about any of it.
So he reached for his guitar and played his fingers raw, careful not to break
the skin if they were going to be in any shape for an audition the day after
next, and fell asleep with the lights on.
                                     *** 
Toki could always think better in the morning.
He rinsed and wrung his clothes, pleased with the fruity, floral smell they
gave off now, and treated himself to a breakfast of leftover Skittles. His
stomach protested; he’d need to venture out as soon as his clothes were
remotely dry. For now, though, he’d give this TV a whirl.
Toki was no stranger to television; although his parents never owned one, he’d
been permitted to watch a simple, innocuous children’s show with clowns and
pink bunnies at the home of a parishioner when he went on house calls with his
father. A crucifix was ever present in the background of that program, which in
retrospect is why Toki figured he’d been allowed to watch, when so much TV is
so very damning. 
But now that he was alone, he could watch as much of the damning variety as he
liked. Flipping through the channels, Toki’s surfing stopped dead as soon as he
saw her. The lower third read “HEIRESS RESCUED,” but those letters didn’t seem
right. That wasn’t her name. Her name was Angel. And it looked like she was
okay.
More importantly, it looked like that fat fuck who abducted her had been
caught. A smile crept across Toki’s face as he took in the image of the man’s
still bruised one, and his mind ran wild with fantasies of what he could do to
that inhuman monster now that his hands and feet were bound by metal
restraints. The marks on Toki’s back were evidence of his many options.
The images that had last night thwarted Toki’s efforts at self stimulation were
replaced today by ones that rocketed him to a violent – and altogether
satisfying – climax, twice over.
  
Checking out the next day, Toki begrudgingly handed over a $50 checkout fee; he
had the distinct sense this bitch behind the counter was taking advantage of
him, but things were looking up, and he wasn’t in the mood for anger. After she
drew a crude map for him with directions to the audition venue on the back of
his flier, Toki bid her adieu with a cheery, "Fuck you!" 
He was becoming a real American. 
                                      ***
Panic set in as the sun sank lower in the sky. Toki had been wandering for
hours and yet seemed no nearer his destination. Had that nasty woman at the
motel just been putting him on? Or was he screwing up, as usual…
This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he was missing it. The giant
digital clock on the corner read 4:04PM, two hours after auditions were
scheduled to begin, one hour later than last time he’d passed it. Frustrated
and with limited options, Toki decided to take off full tilt in the opposite
direction. Maybe he’d been holding the map upside down. Maybe he didn't know
how to read a map.
Something had to give.
At last, he happened upon what had to be the place. Soul-sucked guitarists
streaming out of the faceless loading dock wasn’t the most encouraging sign,
but it was a sign nonetheless. It had to be the place. It had to be. He just
hoped they would still give him a shot.
After five solid minutes of banging at the door, it finally lifted open.
In person, these four men were larger than life. The utter necessity of being
accepted by them struck him the moment he stepped inside. Knowledge of his
purpose in life had been murky at best for his entire 16ish years of existence,
but it all crystallized in this moment. In this very moment. The energy flowed
through him, and he knew this band, and all their future held, was his destiny
too.
He just wasn’t sure they knew it.
Cap in hand, he begged the judgmental trio standing at the front of the stage,
pleaded with the aloof guitarist reclining nonchalantly on a stack of cases.
Skwisgaar Skwigelf rose to his full, intimidating height before addressing the
newcomer, breeze from the open dock catching his golden hair in its lofty
embrace. What he had to say wasn’t exactly welcoming. 
“You seems so nice. It’s a shames you must go downs this way.”
The glowing god picked up his guitar. So he wanted to play! Toki was encouraged
for exactly half a second before the electrifying pick slide pierced the air.
Before this blond Adonis launched into a solo fit for a king. The sheer toneof
the arpeggios was unlike anything Toki had heard before, nothing like he knew a
human being was capable of playing. 
Toki didn’t know what to expect – he’d never been to an audition, after all –
but it certainly wasn’t this. A little scared, a lot excited, the little
Norwegian unsheathed his guitar on auto-pilot and parroted the riff right back.
Jaws dropped to the floor at his effort, his ability to process what was thrown
at him over and over again and form it into his own, moulding it with his own
flavor and coloring it effortlessly with the raw brutality that in turn shaped
him.
What began as a “Catch Me If You Can” duel of skill rapidly morphed into
something more aggressive and more beautiful than anyone in the room could have
dreamed. When the kid began battling back in his own right, Skwisgaar was
forced to up his game – something he hadn’t had to do in any of the countless
bands where he’d been a guitarist. As he muscled over lick after lick, the
thought occurred to him that being the best meant beating the best – and he’d
never even come close, until now.
Their guitars falling into sync threw him for another loop. The way this random
kid from Norway predicted what the other man would play, the notes and scales
and grounding rhythms dancing together – the only way to describe these
harmonies was natural. Toki naturally understood chord progressions like none
of the guitarists Skwisgaar played with had before, and certainly not like any
of the dozens he’d summarily dismissed at auditions today. This kid got it,
with no pretension or apprehension, and what’s more, he pushed Skwisgaar to be
better than he already was.
This could be a problem.
Breaking out into a sweat and a nasty progression, Skwisgaar had to put this
thing to bed. He was the best. The fastest. The lead. Nobody would challenge
him. Nobody could.
The kid faltered. Skwisgaar was satisfied. His crown was safe.
The three onlookers took the failure to mean Toki from Norway had lost. They
had loved every minute of the duel. They saw what Skwisgaar saw. But a deal was
a deal.
“It’s time for you to go,” said the one with a lisp.
 
To say he was heartbroken would be an understatement. Toki had set store by
this dream panning out. He had never before allowed himself to believe in
anything, to hope anything would work for him. Nothing ever had. Even escaping
the torture chamber that was his ancestral home had led to nearly two years of
suffering and hardship, with very few bright spots between. If he wasn’t wanted
here, in this place where he knew he had talent, where he was sure the skills
he possessed were valuable, how could he be wanted anywhere?
How could he beanywhere?
After a moment, Toki composed himself. He wouldn’t cry. Not in front of these
men. He would just turn his back and go.
“But befores you leaves…”
The tall blond in his gleaming white outfit was waiting outside for him. He
said something to him. Something confusing. With a smile.
Toki was wanted, after all.
Chapter End Notes
     I can’t tell you how many times I listened to and watched The Duel
     (and then played it over and over in my head) to figure out how to
     put words to it, and still couldn't do it justice. Brendon Small, you
     are a constant source of inspiration, God bless you sweet man.
***** Prafectly Clear English *****
Chapter Summary
     Now that Toki has a roof over his head and a purpose in life, the
     wisps of a new dream begin to form -- and the shape they take bears
     striking resemblance to the blond guitar god he's just met.
Chapter Notes
     In which the consensual part of Toki’s sex life commences.
     I should take this opportunity to discuss the time frame I'm working
     with, and by proxy, underage consent. In this story, Toki runs away
     from home at around 14 years old. By the time he joins Dethklok, a
     little over 2 years have passed, putting him around 16 or 17 years
     old. Working backwards from the start of the series, where I figure
     him to be mid-20s, this makes sense. So does Skwisgaar being 23ish in
     “Some Time Ago” which, again, I place at ~10 years before the start
     of the series. In Florida, that age gap is legal. In short,
     understand that here, Toki is old enough to say “Yes,” in case things
     like that bother you. If sex with persons under 18 is a problem for
     you, you may want to look away. As with similar points in this story,
     I've tried to veer away from smut -- although I've allowed this
     chapter to be more titillating than any other. Everything that
     happens here is important to the development of not just Toki's
     character but Skwisgaar's too (FYI you get a lil more Skwis POV
     here).
     All that said, this is a work of fiction, about a work of fiction,
     and as an author I retain poetic license. I have been stressing out
     about this, because I want this comm to be happy, but this is how the
     story goes. Please enjoy it!
See the end of the chapter for more notes
The man in the suit who made him sign papers was named Charles Foster
Offdensen.
Toki found that strange, an Offdensen without an accent. Americans are weird,
he thought for the thousandth time, as he was formally introduced to a guy with
the surname of Explosion, one called Murderface, and one who only went by
Pickles – like herring.
Among this motley crew, Skwisgaar Skwigelf was the only person who made sense. 
Toki had never been across the border to Sweden, but odd distant Swedish
relatives were known to visit his home outside Lillehammer from time to time,
and they always spoke their odd distant relative language.
So beyond being the one who asked him to join this new family, Skwisgaar’s
accent gave Toki the comfort of familiarity, and he found himself drawn to the
man instantly.
Noticing this, or perhaps accepting that they were both foreign and both
guitarists, Nathan Explosion summarily assigned Toki to Skwisgaar for just
about everything. They would be roommates in the cramped 2-bedroom apartment
they called "Mordhaus" – Murderface had to suck it up and move in with Pickles
down the street, since the living room was their de facto practice space – and
Skwisgaar would have to teach the kid some goddamn English for fucks sake.
“I’s knowings English!” Toki argued unconvincingly. 
“Ah it’s ams alrights littles Tokis, I takes you unders my flippers, teaches
you de English and de guitars, ja?”
“I knows de guitars too!” Who did this blond asshole think he was, anyway?
“Look, you guys can save your dictionary fight for later. Right now, Toki needs
to learn all your old rhythm parts, Skwisgaar. And, uh, I’m not gonna teach ‘em
to him, so that’s on you.” Nathan Explosion saw himself as a tough but fair
dictator.
“And he better get fucking good fast cos we’re in the studio in two weeks.”
                                      ***
Time was money. Yet another odd concept, since, for years, Toki had endless
time and no money. Skwisgaar Skwigelf proved a harsh taskmaster, seeming to
prefer negative reinforcement over positive feedback in his teaching technique.
For all the physical pain Toki had endured over the years, he hadn’t suffered
much verbal abuse – save for biblical condemnations he didn’t take too
seriously. Some of his new superior's criticisms shook him deeply; was he
really terrible? Had he been kidding himself all this time? 
But when the whole band came together to rehearse, Toki saw the fruits of his
effort pay off in the soaring melodies of his lead guitarist. Skwisgaar sounded
better than that Magnus guy had on the demo CD, and they both improved from the
beginning of a session to the end. Toki felt to the core the effect his music
had on Skwisgaar’s, and that was enough to buoy him from the inside when the
Swede tried to tear him down on the outside.
 
English lessons went about as well as guitar. Skwisgaar’s grasp of the language
was middling at best, due mostly to a lack of desire to improve his vocabulary.
Swears, musical terminology, and a few Camus translations – the basics were all
he cared to know. But he nevertheless agreed to serve as little Toki’s walking
Norwegian-(to Swedish)-to English dictionary, when he could stand it.
Ten minutes before Toki’s first live show, he could not. 
“How you says, ‘Det er på tide for showet’?” (1)
“‘Toki ams dumbs dildoes.’”
“Skwisgaaaaaaar!”
“Tokiiiiiiiis!”
The Norwegian thought for a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot with
raw energy while he watched Skwisgaar down the last of his pre-show beer, eyes
transfixed by the rhythmic bob of his Adam’s apple.
“OK, den how you says, ‘Jeg har aldri vært så glad i mitt liv’?”
“‘Toki ams…’” Skwisgaar paused his instinctive sneer as he parsed through
Toki’s accent. The sentiment tugged at this nagging thing in his chest that had
been acting up over the past few weeks, since around the time this kid showed
up at that old practice space about a mile away.
“You says, ‘I has nevers been sos happies in my lifes.’”
  
The show itself was a blur. 
Toki recognized his friend from the music shop in the audience with a smile –
he’d made sure to instruct Charles to hand deliver the concert promo flier to
“Gavins at de littles musics store,” never mind that there were at least 50
“littles musics stores” in the greater Jacksonville area.
But his attention was focused on keeping up with Pickles’ bruising rhythm. The
drummer played a half step faster live than he did in rehearsals, owing either
to the adrenaline or the amphetamines.
He watched Murderface put to the test his newest gimmick – slap bass a la wang.
Toki thought with a chuckle it would sound better if the guy’s dick were
bigger, but the crowd seemed into it all the same.
He watched as a sea of people mimicked Nathan’s headbanging, regarding with
only mild shock a young man who seemed to break his neck trying to match the
front man’s brutality. 
And he watched with wonder as his lead guitarist and de facto mentor rolled
through sweep after sweep, windmilling his long golden hair around in an arc
through the rhythm sections and standing stock still, eyes closed, as his very
heart sang into every solo.
In that moment, Toki dreamed a new dream. 
                                      ***
Every day Toki felt he was getting closer to this new intangible.
Recording sessions expanded on the high he experienced at that first show.
Sure, they were more tedious and disconnected than playing with the whole band
together, feeding off the vibe of a live audience, but he thrived on the
knowledge he was building something amazing.
When Skwisgaar joined him in the booth to lay down duets, the feeling only
intensified. Yet, he still couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, this
new thing he wanted now that the basics of food and shelter seemed fairly well
secure.
 
The guys didn’t often chill at the apartment they called Mordhaus. It was too
confined a space for the kinds of debauchery they were capable of getting into,
so Murderface, Nathan, and Pickles excused themselves to a dive bar shortly
after recording finished for the day. But the flat worked fine for extra
practice space, as far as Skwisgaar was concerned, and Toki needed all the help
he could get, so they begged off party time.
Not that Toki minded. He wanted the Swede alone tonight, anyway.
  
“Okay, how you ams says de lyrics for ‘Face Fisteds’ in English?”
Skwisgaar inwardly congratulated himself for devising such an ingenious lesson
plan. Teaching Toki English via Nathan’s relatively simplistic song lyrics,
while he simultaneously learned and practiced the rhythm guitar parts, was
killing two swans with a single boulder. 
So Toki played and barked the lyrics, interrupted periodically by a laugh at
his efforts to mimic Nathan’s gravelly growl – and by a check for
comprehension, like a good tutor would – while Skwisgaar sat back and sipped
sherry. Toki wondered absently what it tasted like on his lips, then wondered
why he wondered that.
“OK, no mores de songs. You tells to Toki somes t’ings in English.”
Skwisgaar held out his glass in taunting offer. Toki reached out before
Skwisgaar withdrew and downed the rest of the fortified wine, smirking. He
didn’t know why he did it.
“Ja, ja. What’s you be wantin’s to know tonights? ‘Which ways to de ladies
rooms?’”
Toki shook his head, ignoring or ignorant of the slight.
“How’s abouts… ‘Jeg trenger virkelig et nytt par sko’?”
He’d developed an awful habit of sucking the levity out of a relaxed room. Or
maybe he was always like this…
“It ams, ‘I’s reallies needs a new pairs of shoes.’”
“Ah! OK. ‘I’ms reallies needs a new pairs of shoes.’”
“A wholes news wardrobe I ams t’inkins…”
“'A wholes news wars-drolbe…’?”
“Ehm… don’ts worries ‘bouts it.” Skwisgaar wanted to ask how he could live for
– he didn’t know how long this kid was on the streets, alone, homeless,
surviving God knows what kind of weather and whatever other horror, and with
just one set of clothes? Skwisgaar couldn’t go 12 hours without showering and
changing at least once, more frequently if he’d made the acquaintance of a
female or two.
The bums he invariably saw around the many cities he’d called home pushed carts
full of every belonging they’d ever owned. They stunk to holy hell, but they
were probably at least warm under all those layers of shit-reeking garments.
Toki had to have some kind of fortitude to make it all that time with just
pants and mukluks and a threadbare t-shirt and that comical little hat…
Toki wasn’t sure what he’d said to make the other man fall silent. The slight
frown on Skwisgaar’s brow concerned him. The increased proximity intrigued him.
“Du har vakkert hår.”
This time Skwisgaar’s response was thrown off by an unexpectedly elegant
Norwegian hand threading through the ends of his blond locks. 
“Um… ‘You has bee-yootifuls hair.’” 
The hand slowly worked its way to his scalp, combing through with each pass.
Toki’s pale eyes bore into Skwisgaar’s as he let himself be pet. How much they
must have seen.
“Jeg vil kysse deg.” 
“’I… I wants to kiss you.’” The words were barely audible over the knot in his
throat.
“Nå.”
“Toki…?” 
“I don’ts t’ink dat’s right.”
Toki leaned in and pressed their lips together. He wasn’t sure what else to do;
placing his other hand gently on Skwisgaar’s chest, he could tell by the
thunderous rhythm beating below that this was enough, for now.
Skwisgaar didn’t pull away. He didn’t engage in the kiss, but he didn’t pull
away. It was as though he was frozen in sexual limbo. Toki didn’t want to press
the issue – he’d been on the receiving end of amorousness by force more times
than he cared to remember – but he also knew if Skwisgaar was remotely
interested (and available signs indicated he was), this was the moment. 
Toki withdrew his lips from Skwisgaar’s but left them mere millimeters away.
His forehead rested against his counterpart’s, his hands still caressing chest
and mane. The Swede’s quickened breath breezing his damp lips sent him reeling
to the point of madness when firm, calloused fingers closed around his. 
"'Now.'"
Toki’s body responded to the open invitation before his brain could catch up.
Mouth connected with mouth, body pressed into body, grips tightened reflexively
as if to confirm the other man’s very physicality. Skwisgaar uttered a short,
desperate moan into the kiss, sending a shock of reality into the Norwegian’s
core. He never knew being this close to someone could be so affirming. He’d
scarcely even experienced a touch of chaste affection; more likely, bodily
contact with Toki Wartooth was painful or violate or both.
But this man’s thumb was stroking his cheek in time with the gentle probe of
his tongue. His other hand trailed downward tentatively, haltingly, as though
he were savoring the progress toward the younger man’s most delicate area. He
was enjoying himself, and Toki was too, and that was new.
For his part, Skwisgaar couldn’t remember the last time he wanted something so
badly. He didn’t know from where this desire stemmed; he’d never felt a
physical attraction to another man to this degree. Perhaps because it wasn’t
just physical…
Toki’s gentle breath as deceptively strong arms encircled him calmed his
trembling hands, allowing his fingers to deftly unbutton those worn old pants.
Skwisgaar quickly decided all those grungy clothes needed to go immediately,
tearing and biting at the ratty shirt even as he fumbled with the shoes that so
needed replacing.
And Toki let himself be manipulated. It wasn’t like the other times, he
thought. It was so much better. So much better. So much better.
Hot lips against the thin cotton covering his crotch shook him from his
reverie.
An audible gasp shook Skwisgaar from his.
“Does… You wants dis, ja? Because…” Unspoken yet communicated by the fingers
that dug into the young man’s bare thighs was the end of that sentence. 
Toki could see the yearning in those bright blue eyes.
“Fucks yeah.”
                                      ***
Toki was sure he was going to die. He’d never felt anything like this before,
never knew it was possible to feel anything like this, short of taking your
last breath and passing on to the afterlife. 
Skwisgaar moved in a consistent, tortuously slow rhythm, leading with his
tongue down, drawing in his cheeks, closing his eyes and bobbing unmercifully
before slowing yet again.
Over and over he repeated this process. Toki had been reduced to mewling
incoherence long ago; the raw passion in his reactions in fact had much to do
with the Swede’s unbridled need to savor every moment. But it wasn’t to last
much longer.
 
What an amazing difference it made for both parties to be engaged, Toki
thought. Sex to this point in his life had been merely a service rendered by
one person for the benefit of another. It’s what he discovered in Amsterdam,
what he’d been forced to learn firsthand on the Atlantic crossing and in every
encounter since. But this was so much better. So much better.
So if whatever was happening right now did kill him, Toki decided, at least he
could die with that deeply personal clarity at hand.
Of course, he didn’t take his last bow that night. It was nearly painful in its
intensity, too many nerve endings firing all at once, but it was only a little
death.
“Helvete!Skwisgaar!” He came with a start, and a scream. Skwisgaar just kept
sucking, transfixed by the effect he had on the odd little Norwegian and,
frankly, enjoying the flood of earthy flavor.
He made sure to extract every last delicious drop before pressing his lips to
Toki, whose tired eyes flew open at the little surprise on his tongue. Needless
to say he hadn’t an occasion to know what he tasted like, and it was riveting.
Fingers dug into the back of Skwisgaar’s skull as his tongue searched for more,
his enthusiasm a surprise in kind.
The Swede was flipped swiftly onto his back, that calming strength now
decidedly more intimidating. Toki’s hands were frantic in ridding the man of
his remaining garments, and manic eyes yearned for what they would reveal.
“Slows downs.”
“Knulle meg.”
Ordinarily such a request would be heeded without further ado, especially with
hips grinding so enticingly against his, but Toki didn’t seem in a fully right
state of mind. And unlike the faceless sluts that had been making his
acquaintance after shows lately… Skwisgaar found he actually cared about this
kid.
“Fuckings shit." The swear was not directed at anyone but himself. "Tokis—"
“Please!” 
Toki attacked his mouth with a kiss to suit the plea. But Skwisgaar held firm,
working the hand he was dealt. Long, gangly arms pulled into a bear hug as
Skwisgaar rolled them onto their sides, peppering every inch of the Norwegian’s
face with delicate kisses. Diligently he kept at it, gradually letting one hand
loose to tenderly paw the back of Toki’s head. The combination eventually
dissolved the sexual aggression that had given him such concern moments
earlier.
When finally Toki pulled back, he wanted to apologize. He didn’t know quite
what came over him, apart from blinding desire. Proper bedroom behavior was
still something of a mystery to him; he wondered obliquely how people, like
Skwisgaar, figured this stuff out, and when, and how he possibly could have
missed out on somuch, and what else he had left to learn. As he leaned into the
hand stroking his head, Toki fervidly hoped Skwisgaar was still willing to
teach him – and that he could muster the courage to verbalize how thankful he
was for all the lessons thus far.
But then a better way to express his gratitude poked him in the leg. With a
much softer kiss, he trailed the knuckles of his talented left hand down
Skwisgaar’s torso, enjoying the little flinches and shivers the movement
sparked in the other man, until fingers wrapped around the prize they sought.
Eyes widened almost imperceptibly – almost – at the handful. The proud smirk
vanished from Skwisgaar’s face as Toki’s hand got to work, deftly jerking him
back to full mast in a matter of seconds. The Norwegian pressed his elder
gently onto his back, taking a moment to run his hands over Skwisgaar’s stomach
and torso in reassurance before dipping his head below.
                                     *** 
“Oh mine gods, Toki…”
Skwisgaar did not expect him to swallow. Frankly, he didn’t know what to
expect. The kid – in his mind, and often to his face, he kept calling him a kid
(although Toki had told Offdensen he was 18, without any sort of ID or official
paperwork, and with such a baby face, Skwisgaar was fairly certain that was
bullshit), but now that they’d had sexy time he should probablymake sure he
wasn’t headed to jail in the morning, although without any sort of ID or
official paperwork it’s not like the cops could make much of a case, and the
kid’s parents were probably ten thousand miles away, or dead for all he knew…
“Ja?” For the second time tonight, Toki’s bright tone of inquiry sent welcome
ripples into Skwisgaar’s disturbing stream of consciousness. 
The Swede propped himself up on an elbow and looked over at the mousy-haired
Nord beside him with a frown.
“Uhhhh… oh. Whats I does wrongs?” 
“Where de fucks how you learns to does dat sos goods!?”
Toki went red in the face, more at the praise than anything else. He could
think of a few places, of course. But they didn’t stay front of mind too long.
Not now. Not now that he was wrapped up in warm blankets on a comfortable
enough mattress, snuggled next to a bedmate who wasn’t inclined to pay to kick
him out.
Knowing nothing of Toki’s internal monologue, Skwisgaar softened at his
external disposition.
“Neversmind. I goes takes showers. Bes rights backs.”
 
Skwisgaar planned to make Toki take a turn when he was done. He even shaved
down his usual Half-Hour Power Shower to a lean 20 minutes to save some hot
water. But that thing in his chest gave another aching twinge at the sight that
lay before him when he returned to the room: Little Toki Wartooth, out like a
light, dressed in an ancient pair of plaid pajamas, a gift from Mama Skwigelf
Skwisgaar thought he’d duly buried in the back of the closet somewhere.
Yelling at the kid for rummaging through his belongings could wait 'til the
morning. He couldn’t very well wake him to go clean up, could he? And it
probably wasn’t the best idea to kick him out of bed to the sleeping bag he’d
called home for the past several weeks, not now that he was warm and
comfortable and so, so cute...
Skwisgaar shoved all those thoughts to the back of his mind like so much
forgotten flannel, pressing his naked body to the sleeping form beside him.
                                      ***
In spite of Nathan Explosion’s arguments to the contrary – it’s not the right
thing to do artistically; the album is supposed to be a whole experience, no
skipping, no shuffling, and if you don’t listen to the whole thing at every
sitting your guts will rain down in a storm of penance; I will murder you to
death – “Guts Punch Balls Throw-up” went out as the band's first single.
Before they could blink, five young men went from aspiring metalheads to bona
fide recording artists. Ones who quickly became familiar with the concept of
“huge fucking royalty checks.”
“What the fuck, it’s just a bunch of zeroes!” William Murderface said in his
barely intelligible lisp.
“Ah, if you look more carefully, Murderface, you’ll note a ‘one’ in front of
those zeroes. That’s why in the middle line there it says, ‘one hundred
thousand dollars and, uh, zero cents.’” The suit man must have a lot of
patience to deal with these morons, Toki chuckled inwardly. 
“But ams dats a lots or nots a lots?” Toki inquired, totally serious. American
money was still a thing of relative mystery to him.
The CFO named Charles Foster Offdensen took a calming breath and turned to Toki
with a smile. “It’s a lot, Toki. Enough to buy a house, in some places.”
Toki’s whole demeanor lit up at that. In his hand, on this single piece of
paper, he had the power to put a roof over his head… forever? He looked up in
wonder at the spectacled suited man before his eyes flitted, briefly, over to
Skwisgaar.
“Dens… cans I buys hoes news wars-drolbe?”
                                      ***
He had this sudden, intense urge to show Toki the world even he had only ever
seen in dreams.
 
They all flew to Miami on a private jet – which they summarily trashed – to
celebrate becoming hundred-thousandaires, and the first stop for Skwisgaar and
Toki was Bergdorf Goodman.
Even at that fancy department store, the English lessons went on unabated.
Skwisgaar would only let Toki buy something if he could tell him the name and
color in English. Which is how Toki Wartooth wound up with a news wars-drolbe
comprised of 20 “pant, brown?”, 20 “shirt, blue!” – “eh, ams mores a navies, I
t’inks, but I lets yous haves it” – and 20 “boots, blacks, I knows blacks…”
When in Rome – or Bergdorf’s, at any rate – Skwisgaar figured, you may as well
do a little shopping too, so he picked out a new ensemble for himself that
better fit the (soon-to-be) most brutal death metal band on the planet. And,
though he would never admit it, complemented that of his fellow guitarist.
Greytones and a studded leather belt worked quite well, if he did say so
himself.
Perusing the undergarments section made his palms uncomfortably sweaty. Not
because the Swede preferred to go commando, although the idea of tight binding
underwear usually did send him into a mild claustrophobic panic. Now, rather,
it was lewd images of Toki’s cock twitching beneath the alluringly thin
material of whatever boxer or brief he held up and named triumphantly that
caused the flush to bloom up from beneath Skwisgaar’s collar.
Urgently he snatched the latest pair from Toki’s hand.
“You’s needings to tries dese on.”
He pushed a curious little Norwegian toward the nearest fitting room,
instructing the handful of trailing roadie servants to stand guard at the door.
You know, keep watch for paparazzi and all that.
Checking but at this point not really caring that the rest of the stalls were
empty, Skwisgaar shoved Toki into one farthest from the entrance, latching the
door behind him.
“Why’s you ams so pushings?” Toki’s face was still frozen in a scowl when
pillowy lips met his. 
The kiss was feverish and unexpected, two things he’d come to accept about
Skwisgaar. His own lust exploded like an atom bomb; two hands held Skwisgaar’s
ass firm as he ground greedily against his hips.
Skwisgaar pulled back. He was always surprised at the kid’s evolving strength.
It turned him on in a perverse way; Toki was ravenous, and he wondered in
moments like this if Toki would just… if he just let him… 
“Toki.” The deliberately salacious whisper in his ear was enough to make the
young man’s knees – and grip – go weak.
“Toki, listens to me very carefullies. I ams goings to eat you’s cock rights
now, and den we ams goings to de hotels, and I am goings to fucks you, again,
and again, all nights long, and we ams not leavin’s dat hotels unstil they
drags us out dead to de woirld.”
In that moment, the roadie servants understood why they were paid so well.
                                      ***
Skwisgaar decided to take the gamble he’d been pondering in that dressing room
earlier. 
They forfeited one of the rooms Charles had booked in exchange for an upgraded
deluxe suite on one of the highest floors. If Offdensen or anyone else asked
questions, Skwisgaar had a load of excuses about needing to practice, even on
vacation – and Toki being a baby who couldn’t sleep alone – at the ready.
It was all he could do to keep his hands to himself until they were alone.
Sharing an elevator with three burly roadies laden with their department store
purchases was a poor decision. Toki’s body was pressed against his for lack of
space, and, despite what these employees may have heard transpire in the
dressing room, Skwisgaar thought it inappropriate to so much as peck him on the
cheek, let alone mash the emergency stop button and pound his ass into the
wall.
When at last they reached the 47th floor, those black-clad servants took an
eternity locating the closets and ensuring every pillow and sheet and
complimentary bottle of champagne in the suite was to the liking of their
masters.
“Ja! Now gets de fucks… ‘masters’? Whatsever, gets outs. I ams tireds.”
His annoyance abated at finding Toki in the great room, nose glued to the
window, silly little cap in hand, peering down at the Technicolor world below.
“Vi kan se hele havet herfra! Ser!”(2)
“Ja, ja, I sees it Tokis. But yous ams makings me look bad.” Skwisgaar
approached with a false scowl, one tainted by licentious desire. Toki regarded
him with concern. What now? 
“I ams de English teachers, ja?”
“Ja… ehm… yes.” Toki wasn’t certain what he was on about. They’d been
practicing the language constantly. He thought in English. He dreamtin English.
Sure, he had a lot left to learn, but like the guitar, he’d say he was doing
pretty goddamned well, thanks.
“Yes. And you ams still speakin’s de Norwegian, uh,” his eyes flicked toward
Toki’s mouth, “tongue arounds me.” 
Oh. Was that Norsk? Toki flushed.
“Sos I makes you deal. Alls dis ams for yous.” His hand swept grandly around
the luxurious suite and landed, pointedly, on his own chest. “Anyt’ing you
wants does, we does. Buts – we does ins English, ja? Ands I gives to you de
quizzes, and if you don’ts do goods, den you don’ts gets no treats.” His hand
swept grandly down his body and landed, pointedly, on his waistband.
Toki’s eyes followed the trail the hand led as he processed the offer. It was
tempting, to be sure. But he got hung up on one thing.
“All dis… ams for me?”
It was an overwhelming gesture greater than the underlying promise of sex – a
fraught act in itself, the gravity of which Skwisgaar had no way of knowing and
which Toki barely understood himself. As Toki took another glance down 500 feet
to the gleaming white beach below, the crystal blue water, colors mirrored in
the flesh and irises of the man standing before him, he saw the potential
abatement of lifelong feelings of inadequacy and utter worthlessness.
It had been building for a while, actually, this sense of being wanted and
valued. Everything he needed so badly right now, had needed so badly for more
than 17 years and would continue to need until the day he died, was embodied in
this man, standing in front of him in a hotel room 47 stories above Miami,
Florida.
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Skwisgaar, pressing their chests
together, their hearts, willing him to feelhow ecstatically grateful he was.
After a second of shock, Skwisgaar joined the hug. He didn’t mean to be so nice
to the kid. It honestly, genuinely wasn’t his intention; he just evidently
couldn't help it. He didn’t know how to intend to be nice. It was foreign to
him. It made him feel like crying, and it made him feel like smiling. It made
him feel.
But before long, Toki’s gentle embrace devolved into something beyond chaste
gratitude. The tuneless rhythm he’d been swaying their bodies to took on a
raunchier tone as he began grinding his hips into the other man’s, picking up
where he left off earlier. 
“So what’s you wants, littles Toki?” Skwisgaar whispered into the crown of soft
hair, fighting against his urge to strip the kid bare and fuck him right there
against the window for all to see.
I want to hold you down and fuck you until you beg me to stop and then I want
to keep fucking you until you can’t see through your tears.
That wasn’t right. It’s all he knew. But it wasn’t right. And it definitely
wasn’t what he wanted.
Choosing his English carefully, Toki tried to put his deeply affected need into
words.
“I wants to has de sex wit you,” he opened, haltingly, before pulling back and
looking up into heavy lidded eyes. Toki frowned and thought about the dynamics
of it for a moment. “I wants to fucks you. Toki nevers fucks no ones.”
He didn’t know how to tell Skwisgaar about what happened to him, about any or
all of it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to; he didn’t really care to say the words
out loud to himself.
“And… I wants you… I needs to feels you insides me. Vær så – please.”
Skwisgaar was taken aback but turned on nevertheless. So the kid wanted it all.
He could easily accommodate the second act. The first part – well, how hard
could it be? Gay guys did it all the time, right? He was no stranger to tongues
and fingers, after all, but they were exclusively of the feminine persuasion.
He wondered with a shudder of delight what rough masculine digits would feel
like, what a dick would feel like…
“Alrights.”
 
Toki was on him in an instant, pushing his tongue past those pouty lips and his
body into full unadulterated contact. Shed clothes led a guilty trail from the
antechamber to the nearest bedroom – if anyone were looking. For all these two
knew, the rest of the band were out day drinking and picking up cheap sluts in
South Beach, and that was just as well. 
But once he had the door closed and Skwisgaar naked before him, Toki became
paralyzed by stage fright. The Swede’s bare flesh was intimidating in its
unblemished pallor, yet painfully alluring.
The trepidation was obvious, even to a dense pituitarial Neanderthal like
Skwisgaar. Gone was the voracious horny teenager who ripped his old white tank
in half just moments ago. In his place stood a nervous little boy who needed
some guidance, and who would assuredly be Skwisgaar’s ruin.
“Comes here, littles Toki.” The diminutive was instinctual, but he immediately
regretted using it; he was already trying to keep his mind out of the gutter,
and his corpus out of habeas. 
Toki didn’t seem to notice, anyway. His deep sigh at the contact with
Skwisgaar’s outstretched hand constricted into a gasp at the contact with
Skwisgaar’s stiffening dick. The elder couldn’t resist a smirk at the reaction
as he guided Toki’s hand down his shaft, up over the head, down again, a little
firmer now.
“Dat’s it,” he breathed into the Norwegian’s ear, abandoning Toki's hand in
favor of something more pleasurable. 
There the two stood, slowly stroking each other, kissing each other,
illuminated only by waning sunlight bleeding around the shutters, casting them
in a silhouette that would have been comical to them both only weeks earlier.
Rough hands suddenly closed on Skwisgaar’s midsection, evoking a squeal of
surprise or laughter or something else shocking and overly effeminate in equal
measure. Toki looked up at the beet-red face; that was not his intention, but
now that he knewSkwisgaar was ticklish…
“Don’ts you fuckings dare—” 
This time the angelic expression on Toki's face was entirely feigned. It was
for the best. The mood in the room was entirely too serious. They needed some
levity.
"TOKIIIIIhehehehehehehehe!!!" Toki's fingers were fast in their work. Skwisgaar
tried to remain stoic, but the giggling was reflexive. Skwisgaar tried to
escape, but that deceptive strength in the younger man limited his flight path
to the bed, where Toki gave willing chase. 
"Okay, enoughs!" Skwisgaar was laughing and kicking and swatting halfheartedly
at Toki's hands, which had finally begun to show mercy.
His smile is fucking radiant, Toki thought, taking advantage of his proximity
to the Swede to straddle his hips.
His smile is fucking radiant, Skwisgaar thought, as the beaten down boy from
Norway climbed on top of him.
"Waits a second." The teacher twisted his body to the side, still giggling,
stretching to reach one of the nightstands he'd given those roadie minions
strict instructions to stock with—
"Ahh. Okay. Dis ams lubes. Makes t'ings, uh, move more easies. De ladies loves
it. But we amment's ladies! But we uses it anyways…" He didn't know why he was
having such a hard time explaining this shit. He had sex like regular people
drank water! That nagging thing in his chest was weighing the room down again,
and he wasn't a fan. The only heavy Skwisgaar liked was metal.
Giving up the narrated tutorial, Skwisgaar just squeezed a dollop of the stuff
into his hand, warming it for a second before gently placing his palm atop the
head of Toki's dick.
"Ohh…" Toki breathed, thrusting subtly into the loose, tingling fist. Until it
closed tightly around him.
"Ams you ready?" The Norwegian nodded feverishly as Skwisgaar shifted beneath
him, spreading his legs wide and trying to ignore the thundering heartbeat that
threatened to break his ribs apart.
Guided by Skwisgaar's hand, Toki positioned himself at the threshold and pushed
forward.
Nothing happened. They looked at each other blankly, each expecting the other
to offer a solution. Skwisgaar wracked his encyclopedia of past experience.
Girls who'd let him try the back door were usually well travelled in that area.
They were usually the ones who suggested he come knocking in the first place.
He was in virgin territory, in every sense of the word.
"Tries again."
Taking a deep breath, emptying his mind of lingering worries about pain and
reputation, yielded a modicum of success. 
"Oh fucks!" Breaching the intimate space of another for the first time, Toki
nearly lost himself. He wanted so badly to plow into this body, to fuck to his
heart's content. But a combination of acute memory and resistance stayed his
hand.
"Yous ams okays?"
That's a great question. There weren't adequate words to provide an answer, not
that speaking was especially practical in this moment. So Skwisgaar simply
grabbed his face and pulled it toward his own, biting at his lips and lapping
at his tongue and relishing in the sheer closeness. 
When eventually he relaxed, putting aside thoughts of "Maybe we should've
worked up to this" and "Holy shit I'm never going to be able to walk or sit or
stand ever again," he found the sensation of Toki inside him quite pleasant.
For all the strength the kid possessed, for all the raw youthful energy,
Skwisgaar was surprised by how tender a lover he was. His movements were fluid
and graceful; he couldn't believe Toki was a virgin. Compared to his own jerky,
greedy, uncoordinated first time, Toki seemed like an old pro.
Of course, Skwisgaar had no way of knowing that Toki was working against
countervailing experience. What he did now, every roll of his hips, every grasp
of pale hair or flesh was an action diametrically opposed to what he had
endured in Skwisgaar's position all those months ago. Harsh memories
contributed to his stamina; he wished they wouldn't.
Skwisgaar sighed placidly, content to lie back and let Toki fuck out his
virginity. Until a slight shift of position brought the next thrust across a
bundle of nerves that set his lower body on fire.
"WhaaAA!?" Still, no words. None coherent, at any rate.
Taking the cue, Toki focused his coasting pace on finding that spot again, the
one that made his senior shout out like a madman.
"Eeee GAH!" Toki marveled as Skwisgaar's hips bucked reflexively upward. He
grabbed them, held them, biceps bulging impressively with the effort to
maintain the beautiful new angle. 
"Oh Gods! Ja!Fuck me!Fuck me, Toki please, please—" Skwisgaar bit his lip in
effort to shut the fuck up. This was beyond anything he'd anticipated, beyond
what he'd thought possible, beyond that comparatively juvenile experience he'd
had with teasing groupies and their weak girlish efforts, and his reaction
surprised him.
It was only when he felt the flame build to an inferno that he made conscious
effort to pull himself back from the brink, in deference to Toki's progress.
Teeth worried the loose skin on his lower lip and eyes fixed on the face above,
waiting, wanting.
His patience wouldn't be tested.
Watching this god of a man become so thoroughly undone by his touch had
affected Toki in kind.
“Skwisgaar… Skwisgaar I’ms...”
The Swede could do no more than feverishly nod his approval. Toki dutifully
increased the pace of his thrusting, hips pounding out a cacophonous rhythm as
his partner loudly sang their praise. Now that he was close, now that they were
both so close, he could let go. 
The orgasm was unlike any of the thousands he'd experienced before. This much
he could say for certain. Skwisgaar's entire body tensed as he came, pelvic
floor spasming violently as his legs shook. He wanted desperately to watch
Toki's face, but he could register nothing beyond the inside of his eyelids and
the raw, blissful, warm sensation radiating out from his core. The room could
be frozen in a block of ice right now and he would be none the wiser.
A guttural moan cut through his euphoria, bringing him somewhere closer to the
land of the living.
"Helvete! Min Gud!" Toki's body quaked then stilled above him, before the
entire mass of young Norwegian collapsed onto his sticky chest.
They lay in this position for barely a minute before Skwisgaar gave the hair
he'd begun petting a firm tug. 
Uh oh. That look again. 
"What's I does now?"
"Wells Tokis, dat was good. Not greats." Skwisgaar regarded him with that odd
post-coital expression of wry disappointment. Toki could never tell if he was
serious or not. It was starting to get annoying.
"Next time you comes like that I expects it to bes in English. Lankwich ams
emoshgunal." He had the audacity to waggle a finger at Toki. Gorgeous skinny
prick. "I t’inks you maybes just needs mores practice."
Toki paused to consider the feedback. Consider his options. Consider biting the
finger that tapped his nose.
"'Skwisgaar' amn'ts English."
                                      ***
From this angle, he seemed so incredibly small. 
Much as he enjoyed cuddling in the cummy afterglow of a mind-blowing romp,
Skwisgaar Skwigelf could only go so long without a shower. Cleanliness was next
to godliness, and Skwisgaar was a god, after all. He'd all but dragged the
sleepy little Wartooth out of bed to one of the suite's other bathrooms – being
clean only served a purpose insofar as those around you maintained your
pristine bubble – and Toki's rudimentary routine returned him to a snuggly spot
under fresh sheets in a new bed well before Skwisgaar had finished.
In the California King – twice as large as any scuzzy futon they slept on in
Jacksonville – curled away from the door, he looked like a scared kid hiding in
mom and dad's bed. Skwisgaar's idiot dick couldn't help but twitch at the bare
expanse of skin that faced him, terminating suggestively at the crisp white
cotton just covering the crack of his ass. Whatever. He was already going to
hell.
But there was something else. As he drew nearer, he saw it. How could he not
have noticed before? The deep, red gash that ran across Toki's back from
between his shoulder blades to just above his left kidney stopped him cold. I
couldn't have scratched him that badly, he thought in idiot panic, glancing
briefly at stubby fingernails that had indeed left no marks of passion on the
boy. 
What the fuck happened? How long had it been there? Who didgive it to him?
Skwisgaar was in bed with his lips pressed to the scar's angry edge before Toki
even noticed he had company.
"Skwisgaar—?" 
"Shhh." An inexplicable rage welled up from that place in his chest that had
been twinging for weeks. This was done intentionally, a mark designed for
someone like Skwisgaar to see. He threaded an arm under Toki's shuddering body
and held firm, kisses trailing delicate sweep of fingertips down the gnarled
flesh.
"Skwisgaar, please."
Closer inspection revealed yet more scars, little white ones and larger red
ones committed to his flesh by at least one sick individual and myriad
apparatuses.
He had no right to ask. There was nothing he could do about it. Still. "Who
dids dis to you?"
God.
"Far." (3)
Taking it into both of his, Toki unspooled the fingers of the hand Skwisgaar
had clenched to his chest.
"Ams okay."
"Ams not." 
"Is why I runs away froms Norway. Is why I ams in Dethklok." Skwisgaar could
hear a smile through the tears. He breathed deeply against Toki's shoulder,
ceding him the point. 
This conversation was far from over. But for now, Toki's mouth against his
fingertips would have the last word.
                                     *** 
For their second romp, Toki bit his tongue, not exclusively in adherence to his
senior's admonition.
He was deep in his own thoughts as Skwisgaar rocked into him, chest still
pressed to back, lying on their sides in the massive bed like two spoons in a
bare cupboard. And he relished what he could observe in his silence. All the
tiny sounds Skwisgaar made, the sighs and involuntary whimpers into his ear,
the shocked cries of unadulterated pleasure, the pleas for Toki's body, he
could hear them loud as an amplified axe the quieter he remained.
Experience proved useful this go 'round; Skwisgaar took time to work him open,
marveling at the sensation as tender muscles clenched and released around his
fingers. By the time he'd worked in a third, wondering in silent thrill whether
the kid could take a fourth and fifth, Toki was already reaching back for the
real thing.
Much as he'd wanted it, or thought he'd wanted it, Toki wasn't sure he liked
the intrusion. The slide of Skwisgaar's dick inside him was pleasant enough,
once he got over the initial shock and expected discomfort, but he realized
he'd been more excited by the idea of this man sharing his space so intimately
than by the actual movement.
Where was that eye-popping moment of pure bliss that Skwisgaar had had when
Toki was on top? Was he not capable of feeling it? Did he not have that same
spot inside him?
Had it been broken by the walrus-faced man who treated him so callously?
Tears streaming silently down his cheeks made Toki grateful for their current
position. "Harder."
"Shh, Toki." 
"Fucks me!" Toki's voice cracked so sharply it was a wonder his entire body
didn't split in two. The motions behind him ground to a halt as Skwisgaar
peered over his shoulder.
"What's ams wrongs wit you?"
"Not'ings, just fucks me, please."
Toki's efforts to bury his face in the mountain of pillows betrayed him. Even
in the dim evening light, Skwisgaar could make out the wet spot on the fabric.
"Ams you cryings?!" He loomed over the kid, pulling out in a panic. He'd ruined
him. He was sure. What kind of fucking piece of shit was he anyway…
Toki smiled up at him, wiping his eyes with the back of a hand. Such concern on
those angelic Swedish features. Even if something was broken inside, they could
maybe try to fix it, together.
"I's okay. Is just, last times…" He still wasn't ready to open that can of
worms. "Eh, I t'inks maybe I just likes bein's on top more."
Skwisgaar's features contorted into a Cheshire cat grin.
"You wants bes on tops?" He rolled flat onto his back, knees bent, stroking
himself. "Den gets on tops." Toki puzzled out what he meant with a flush of red
to his face, then scrabbled over to straddle his senior.
"Dat's right. Sits on it."
The Norwegian complied, mouth dropping open the deeper he went. This was so
much better. So much better. His head lolled over one shoulder as he began
raising himself up and down, up and down, in control and yet utterly wild. 
Something delightful had just begun to build when he felt a hand close over his
dick, pumping furiously. 
Skwisgaar's eyes were two orbs of pure animal lust, and they were locked on
Toki's.
"Come for me, Toki." 
He realized, then, fleetingly, that he hadn't inquired exactly what was meant
by "come" in this situation. The Swede's tone and relentless motions provided
useful context. 
"Skwisgaa--?" 
His third climax in as many hours was unique in its own way. Never before had
he experienced such intense currents of pleasure ripping through him, deep
inside, even as he spilled outward. One round of bucking, as Skwisgaar reached
his end below, and Toki collapsed forward, a mirror of their earlier position.
Only this time the exhausted boy clung to his elder as though he were his only
anchor to this earth.
"Don'ts lets me go." 
Skwisgaar Skwigelf was surprised by how constantly surprising Toki Wartooth
was.
"I…" His arms closed reflexively around the panting, trembling being above. As
fingers found the nasty ridge of flesh, his lips formed a promise he knew he
couldn't trust himself to keep. "I won'ts, Toki. I won'ts." 
                                     *** 
A brief examination in the bathroom mirror late the following day revealed
evidence more damning than a bloody glove: bite marks and scratches and hickies
and just-fucked hair that wouldn't straighten out no matter how much they
brushed. Skwisgaar gave up and tied his blond mop into a messy bun, cursing the
cheap hotel conditioner as he settled in to the in-room Jacuzzi.
This superstardom thing definitely had its perks. 
"How's you feels?"
"Dis ams reals nice!" Toki let himself sink deeper into the water opposite
Skwisgaar, hot jets soothing a thoroughly tested young body.
Skwisgaar fought the urge to roll his eyes. It was becoming increasingly
difficult with this kid and his cloyingly sweet – and seemingly deliberate –
naiveté.
"Ja it ams. But I means how ams you... wit' everything... what's we does last
night?"
"Oh." Toki's eyes grew moony, a calm, contemplative grin spreading across his
features. If he didn't know better, Skwisgaar could've sworn he was blushing.
Must be the hot water.
"Dat ams reals nice too." Toki demurred a moment, wondering if he should or
even could go into detail about the cacophony of emotions and raw sensation
that still coursed through his being. 
"I t'ink I prefers you bein's de ladies doh."
Skwisgaar's flush had nothing to do with hot water.
"I AM NOT A LADY!"
The Swede beat his fists into the bath like a petulant child, splashing water
up and over the sides and onto the startled Norwegian before him.
"Jeez okay!" Toki held up two wrinkly hands in submission. "All-d'oh... you
do's gots reallies beautifuls hair like de ladies—"
"Toki..."
"—and you ams tickles likes ladies—"
"I swear to God..."
"—and you does, um, how you says 'raserianfall'in English?" (4)
He sprang out of the tub like a water beast hunting its prey, seizing the
giggling Norwegian with two slippery arms and dragging him back into the
depths. 
Toki beat on Skwisgaar's leg for mercy, challenging as it was to simultaneously
laugh and hold his breath. The Swede eventually acquiesced, glaring menacingly
into the grinning, sputtering face before him. 
"Ams not a lady."
"I knows," Toki coughed. "Ladies don'ts gots de real big dick like what's you
got." In the minute fracas Toki had gotten ahold of that favored appendage,
sidling up beside Skwisgaar as he began to stroke it to life. 
Much as he wanted to remain sour, Skwisgaar couldn't protest the attention.
Toki made short work of his orgasm, smirking with superiority and newfound
confidence that had only grown the more time he spent with this man.
"Mine gods, Toki…" Skwisgaar sighed, pawing dazedly at wandering hands. "I
t'inks we gots one beds left."
"Neh, I's kinda sore." Toki shrugged, sloshing away to the far end of the tub
again. He cocked his head, deep thought playing out across his simple features.
"Maybe I can has de guitar solos instead?"
If Toki had learned anything in more than two years on his own, it definitely
wasn't English from Skwisgaar. People who had the power to give you what you
want could be persuaded if you had something theywanted.
But Skwisgaar was having none of it. His jaw nearly dropped at the sheer nerve
of this kid. A few admittedly earth-shattering tangles in the sheets (and in
the tub, and the fitting room, a couple of bathroom stalls, that one quick
handy in the parking lot outside Charles' office…) and he was trying to horn in
on Skwisgaar's territory?
"Heh heh, fucks off littles Toki." Skwisgaar rose to his full height, six feet
of bare, glistening porcelain skin practically designed to intimidate. "I am de
leads guitarist. Ends of disgusgion."
Certainly not, if Toki had anything to say about it, and that he did. But he
could wait. Toki was good at waiting.
                                      ***
Five sore, hungover husks of men reconvened at the general aviation airport
south of Miami the next morning. 
In reality, it was two in the afternoon, but when one rolled out of bed at
onein the afternoon, two felt like the ass crack of dawn. Thank the rock gods
for late checkout.
"Whats you guys gets up to?" Skwisgaar said by way of greeting. 
"Me and Nathan hit this Cuban club, right, rum and sluts like you would not
believe." Pickles the Drummer raved about some kind of "gin-you-wine" Cuban
cigar laced with crack cocaine that he'd "gifted" to Murderface. Which would
explain the bassist's current walking comatose condition.
"Like the new duds, man!" Pickles gave Toki's hair an affectionate scruff
through his hat, with which he'd been unwilling to part, at least not yet.
"Looks like you two got up to some pretty wild shit too, eh?" 
"Oh yeah, Skwisgaar founds me great big sluts, talls and blonds and
everyt'ing!" The Swede tried his best not to look affronted. Toki noticed. Toki
was staring right at him. "A reals freak, too, he lovedsit in de ass—"
"Uhh… 'he'?" Murderface's hypersensitive gaydar finally clued in through the
haze.
The fucking balls on this little shit. "Tokis mean, 'she,'" Skwisgaar said
through gritted teeth. "Him's English is ams dildoes."
"I guess my teachers is ams dildoes." Toki shrugged with a smile as he boarded
the plane, content in the chorus of laughter his dig earned from these newfound
brothers.
He could get used to this.
Chapter End Notes
     (1) It’s showtime!
     (2) We can see the whole ocean from here! Look!
     (3) Father.
     (4) Tantrum
***** I Believe (Coda) *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
No album in the history of record sales had gone pentuple platinum in its first
week.
No album, that is, until the “Dethalbum.”
In an era of alt rock and boy bands, the feat was especially miraculous, and
the world embraced Dethklok as a cultural phenomenon unlike any musical act or
movie star or famous tartlet who was famous for being famous.
Toki Wartooth, teenage runaway, kid on the streets, became a multi-millionaire
literally overnight. All of the physical and psychic scars that ran deep
through him were still there in the morning, but so too was the promise of a
future that would not leave any more.
He watched as a veritable army of roadie servants – someone decided to dub them
Klokateers, which he could never pronounce – built a literal castle for them to
call home, the Mordhaus Nathan and Pickles and Murderface and Skwisgaar had
pretended to see in their crappy little apartment come to life. 
Toki, however, didn't care for the largesse. He was pleased just to have a
space all his own, a little room that fit a bed – a real bed, not a canvas bag
stuffed with straw and fleas, not a dusty couch or slab of concrete. It took
some getting used to, not having to ask permission to turn the lights on, not
excusing himself to use the bathroom or confining himself and his worldly
possessions to three square feet of bedroom floor. But Toki could breathe, and
that's all he ever really wanted.
 
At first that was all it was, the reason he didn't visit Skwisgaar after the
new house was complete. He relished too much the idea of his very own room to
spend appreciable time in someone else's. Skwisgaar had made his continued
desire for the young man known, in his own way. Savage insults and derision
were the best way he knew to communicate affection and need. But Toki knew
others, and he declined, though not in so many words, to share his bed with the
sort of person Skwisgaar had become – and probably always was.
The few sweaty nights they'd spent together, calling out for God and present
company, helped in their way to dislodge and repair painful memories Toki had
made on his road to Dethklok, and for that he would be eternally grateful to
the Swede – not that he could ever know.
Eventually the trickle of female faces that frequented the lead guitarist's
quarters began to flow in earnest, and Toki figured without pressing the matter
further Skwisgaar had found the companionship he needed.
Which is why he was surprised to find, one night after a slog of a band
practice, another body in his bed. Only this one was about 10 inches tall,
covered in velvety fur, with an adorable fuzzy face and a long, pointed tail.
"Hej mitt namn är Deady Bear!"
There was no signature on the little note taped to the stuffed bear's head, but
if the Secret Santa was hoping for anonymity, writing it in Swedish was
probably not the best decision. Toki smiled as he tucked the note carefully
between two books on the shelf behind his bed and climbed in with this new
bedmate clutched firmly to his chest.
Toki marveled, for a second, at the notion. It would never get old.
His bed.
He was home.
 
                                    THE END
Chapter End Notes
     Thank you all SO MUCH for reading and giving me all the feedback and
     sweet notes! This was my first multi-chapter, and I loved and
     agonized over every word of it. I am @calliopinot on Tumblr; hmu if
     you wanna talk about this story or writing or the show or anything
     else!
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