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“I didn’t know you listened to our albums.”
Charles raised a brow as he leaned deeper into Nathan’s side. His partner liked to complain about the fact that he had let himself go, but Charles found that he really quite enjoyed his soft shape, although he knew telling Nathan so would probably provoke a tantrum. They sat sprawled on the couch in Charles’ office, enjoying some of the good brandy Charles kept out of reach of the boys. A proprietary hand had settled on his head, black fingernails gently scraping his scalp and ruining his hairdo, though as it was the end of the day, he could not bring himself to care.
“Most of the world does, I think. Besides, I’m your manager. I am at every one of your concerts.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Nathan said. “That you have to listen to it. I just didn’t know you did in your free time.” He glanced at the Dethklok CDs stacked carefully on one of Charles’ bookcases. “I thought you listened to like... Beethoven and shit.”
“I do enjoy classical music, but I also like Dethklok.”
“Huh. We’ll try not to kill the London Philharmonic Orchestra next time we’re there,” Nathan said magnanimously. “But you like our music better, right?”
Charles made a deliberately noncommittal noise that gained him a tug at his short hair. He smiled.
“That classical stuff can be interesting sometimes, I guess. Maybe I could use it for the base of a song,” Nathan said, thinking out loud. “Make it actually cool.”
Charles opened his mouth to suggest a few pieces that might work, though in fact he believed Nathan had a much better ear for such things than him, but might like a starting point in the vast field. In that moment, the door opened noisily. Nathan jolted, his hand dropping down from Charles’ head to his shoulder, pulling him closer. Charles’ fingers tightened over the knife strapped to his thigh under the smooth fabric of his suit. After two large-scale attacks and one prolonged, death-related absence by Charles, they had both gotten a little more careful.
Skwisgaar and Toki burst into the room in a flurry of heavily accented, somewhat slurred discussion.
“- if you actually knews how to plays the guitars I would let you plays my parts on stage, but I’m not wants our songs to sound dildos-”
“You are arrogants! You know this? I cans totally plays if I wants, I will shows you.”
“Oh yeah? Yous gonna shows me right now? Hey Offdensen, gives us the guitars!”
“I don’t have any – why would you think I have guitars in my office?” Charles asked over his shoulder, trying to gently wind himself out of Nathan’s grip, but Nathan’s arm just tightened around his shoulders as his face drew into a frown. Charles gave up his escape attempt.
“Nathans, what’s yous doing here?” Toki asked, staring at him for a moment before understanding dawned on his face. “Ooh... yous were kissing and stuff.”
For how concerned the band was with not appearing gay, they had taken rather well to Nathan’s and Charles’ relationship after a brief adjustment period. The chance to tease Nathan about dating the manager was evidently more important than asserting their heterosexuality, and in the end, Charles had proven to be less disruptive than any outside addition to Dethklok had a chance to be.
“We didn’t means to interrupts,” Skwisgaar claimed, falling down on an armchair.
“Well, you did, so... can you go now?” Nathan rumbled.
“Are you hangings out? You could hangs out in the main room,” Toki said, leaning on the back of Skwisgaar’s armchair in a very comfortable position that indicated he had no intentions of leaving.
“Oh no, we’re not fucking doing that again! No fucking... cooking classes with Charles, okay?” Nathan said, sitting up straight.
“Cooking classes?” Charles repeated, bewildered.
“Those was nice ladies you dated. Not robots. I mean even if we leaves, what are you gonna do, huh? Talks about the finances?”
“Or about the, uhm...” Toki seemed to struggle to come up with anything else that Charles could be doing in his day-to-day work. “About the managing,” he finally said, triumphantly.
“Managings Nathan’s di-”
“Why the hell are you two still in here?!” Nathan growled, but before he’d even gotten to the last word, Murderface walked into the room with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand, which was generously spreading crumbs on Charles’ carpet.
“Is this a meeting? Why don’t we get invited to meetings?” he asked.
“Oh hey, brandy.”
Pickles, who had come stumbling in behind him, picked up the half-filled bottle from the table and took a swig. Charles sighed soundlessly. Next to him, Nathan mumbled some curse under his breath, inaudible but for the word ‘dildos’.
“We were, ah, hoping to have some private time this evening,” Charles said, as politely as he could, quite aware it was probably a futile effort.
“Doesn’t look very private to me with Toki and Skwisgaar here,” Murderface said.
“They weren’t supposed to be here!” Nathan answered.
“Oh, you don’t wants to spends time with us, ja?” Skwisgaar asked.
While Nathan snapped at him, too, Charles’ attention was diverted by Toki, who was playing with his new DeathSmartphone. He wondered if he had ever put it away since Charles had seen him with it this morning. It was always a good idea to monitor the latest obsessions before they imploded in some improbable catastrophe.
“I never really noticed that you had a sofa in here,” Pickles said, apropos of nothing, gesturing at it with the stolen brandy. “It’s kind of cosy.”
“It is. It’s nicer than my sofa,” Murderface complained.
“You could have sofa like this if you wanted,” Charles told Murderface, catching the accusatory tone. “You never told me you’d like to.”
“Well, I don’t want it to be boring like yours,” Murderface said, after a moment of contemplation that seemed to Charles solely designed to find a counterargument.
“Yes, I wants a sofa that has the legs made of guitar necks,” Skwisgaar announced.
“I talked about a new sofa first. What if I want that? I play guitar, too, you know?”
Skwisgaar made a noise as if Murderface’s claim amused and disgusted him in equal amounts. As a customary fight erupted between the three guitarists under Pickles’ drunkenly watchful eye, Charles turned to Nathan, who looked ready to strangle someone, and placed a hand on his leg as he leaned closer to his ear.
“We should perhaps leave this part of the Haus to them and go to your bedroom,” he suggested quietly.
Nathan’s expression brightened a little at the suggestion as he turned to him. A flash went off.
Charles turned to see Toki with two phones in his hand now. The other was Nathan’s, which had laid on the table.
“What are you doing?” Nathan growled.
“I takes the pictures!” Toki announced. “Did you know our new phones can do that? Now you have a cute picture of yous and Charles.”
“Toki, that’s gay. I mean... ugh.” Nathan stopped himself with a frown as he realised his complaint didn’t hold much water in the context. “Give me that phone.”
He took it and swiped aimlessly on the screen until it was back to black before shoving it in his pocket. The spike size had been reduced somewhat for the new model, since the boys did insist on using them themselves and Charles had grown tired of phone-related injuries.
“You know, not that I have a problem with you being all over each other, but PDA is kind of impolite in front of other people?” Pickles noted, after emptying Charles’ bottle of brandy.
“Ja, it’s not really nice when you tryings to have the conversations?” Skwisgaar weighed in.
“I mean, I feel like at least you should know better, Offdensen,” Murderface added.
Before Toki had a chance to make a comment as well, Nathan was suddenly on his feet.
“No one asked any of you to fucking come here!” His voice could have filled a stadium without the help of a microphone. “Out!”
Sometimes, Nathan did project something like authority over the band. At the very least, they slowly scrambled towards the door now under Nathan’s murderous gaze. He slammed the door behind Pickles and turned to Charles with a grin on his face.
“Guess we can use your bedroom after all.”
-
Charles was in the middle of a rapid and ecstatic climb to his peak bouncing on Nathan’s cock when his phone rang on the nightstand. The fact that he was perhaps ten seconds from coming did not keep him from automatically reaching for it; and his own pleasure also did not stop Nathan from immediately seizing Charles’ wrist.
“Don’t,” he grunted.
“Only... ah, only select people have this number. It’s – probably important.”
“If any of the other guys had fucking died, some Klokateer would have run through the door. Nothing else is important enough.”
Charles wanted to disagree, but Nathan snapped up his hips and that was a shamefully compelling argument to him right now. With a voiceless moan, he dug his fingers into his shoulders. Perhaps it was not so critical that it could not wait for a few minutes. He doubted either of them would make it longer than that.
Riding Nathan was always enjoyable, but when he was alert and not too drunk it was as perilous as it was exciting. In his more mellow moods, he would simply lay back and let Charles do the work and there was something undeniably attractive in that lazy, arrogant self-confidence. However, when Nathan was more energetic, like tonight, it was a fight even to stay on top, like a rider perched on some bucking, untamed stallion. They had no rhythm, but their constant clashes were almost that. They grabbed and scratched and pulled at each other. Nathan’s hands were tight enough to bruise on his hips, forcing him down on every inch of his massive cock, and Charles had a fistful of his hair wrapped around his fingers.
It took him every ounce of control he had, but Charles managed to hold on – Nathan came first and Charles sat on his hips the victor. The fact that Nathan, sore looser that he was, used his own quickly-following orgasm to topple him and throw him down Charles didn’t mind anymore. He liked Nathan’s weight bearing down on him, spreading his legs, squeezing his lungs. Nathan’s face rested comfortably in the crook of his neck.
The blissful moment of post-coital silence was disturbed by another ring of the phone. Nathan gave a wolf’s growl muffled against Charles’ throat, but he did not stop him from reaching for the phone this time. Charles dragged his fingertips down Nathan’s spine as he grabbed the phone with the other hand.
Both hands grew very still as he listened to the panicked media team Klokateer on the other end.
---
“Dude, but why did you upload Toki’s picture if you didn’t want people to see?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose! This stupid fucking phone goes to one of those social media… things we have.” Nathan gave a long-suffering sigh. They didn’t bother much with their own accounts, Charles had people for that, but apparently his phone had been linked to it. “I just wanted to shut it off and I clicked the wrong thing or whatever.”
“That sucks,” Pickles mused, taking a swig of beer where he was leaning against the counter.
Nathan had taken up position at the kitchen table after Charles had jumped out of the bed to go deal with the fallout of his mistake. He had a bottle of beer, too, and wished it was something stronger. Even Charles would have a difficult time spinning this one. The picture was pretty obvious – Nathan’s arm around his shoulders, the way Charles’ lips almost brushed his ear, his hand on Nathan’s knee, and Nathan looking for all the world pretty content with the setup.
“I guess it’s not too bad,” Pickles decided.
“How is it not bad?” Nathan muttered.
Pickles shrugged.
“Do you wanna stay with Offdensen?”
“I mean… yeah. He’s kind of a good boyfriend – and he’s not even in a coma. I mean, it’d actually be sad if he were? ‘cause, like, I want to hang out with him. And we’d have to manage ourselves again.”
Both Pickles and him gave a wordless grimace at the thought.
In fact, Nathan was pretty sure that he was actually in love with Offdensen, but that was just too gooey for words, so he didn’t add that.
“So were you just never ever gonna tell anyone but us about it?”
“I guess that’d be annoying,” Nathan admitted, after thinking about it for a moment.
“Now you can go out to a restaurant or hotel or whatever,” Pickles grinned at him, “so we don’t ruin all your dates.”
Nathan scowled at him, but was too distracted to start a fight. Charles was a dude, which had given Nathan a bit of trouble at the start himself and would piss a lot of people off, but then again, when had Nathan ever cared about that? More importantly, he also wasn’t very metal – well, not on the outside –, but when he’d been dating Rebecca, there had been photos of Nathan in pink shirts in Bed, Bath & Beyond, and that was a lot less brutal than your boyfriend wearing a boring suit. Still, he would have to like, talk to his dad about dating a man, and there’d be hundreds of groupie suicides again, which was always fucking weird. Murderface had informed him that the whole internet was already talking about his sex life, too. With a groan, Nathan downed the rest of his beer.
-
“I should have secured these phones better before I gave them to you,” Charles said, sitting behind his laptop on the other side of the desk. “It’s really my fault.”
“Uhm… yeah, if you say so.”
Nathan had thought that he was in for a scolding, but Charles looked only displeased with himself, or maybe whatever was on the screen before him. His fingers flew over the keyboard before he finished whatever he was doing with a decisive press of the enter key.
“I set up a press conference. You can explain that you were hacked and we will release some doctored photos of other celebrities shortly after to make it seem like general harassment. Hopefully, this should convince people, considering we have never been seen out in public together in any other than a professional setting.”
As usual, Charles had found a way to get rid of Nathan’s headache somehow. This was the easy way out, where he didn’t have to have a weird conversation over Christmas dinner or have to beat up any jackoffs who said idiotic things about the fact that he had a boyfriend or deal with a flood of messages from disappointed fans, and things could just go on as before. Nathan liked the easy way for pretty much anything that wasn’t his music.
“Yeah, sounds good,” he muttered.
Charles gave him a firm nod and polite smile.
“I would not want you to feel awkward because of this.”
-
Whenever Dethklok had anything to say, you could usually find enough journalists to fill up a room within an hour, so it didn’t surprise Nathan that Charles had managed to throw together a press conference the next morning. He walked up on stage with his mic in one hand and the paper Charles had handed him in the other. A sea of faces looked up at him.
“Uh, hello everyone,” Nathan muttered. “I’m here to talk about… the reason there’s that picture of me and Offdensen. Yeah...”
He looked down at the paper again, which for once he had read before getting up here. It detailed the hacking incident and photo manipulation and included mentions of all the groupies he had been with in full view of the media, and a small aside that even a girl Charles would obviously not have been his type, either. For a moment he was silent before he stared out into the crowd of reporters again and then crumpled up the speech Charles had written for him.
“It’s cause he’s my boyfriend and, uh, we’re probably going to stay together. So think of one of those dumb... spliced names.” He glanced at a reporter in the first row, who looked especially aghast, and added with feeling: “Fuck you.”
Voices erupted like a hive of angry wasps, but Nathan ignored them, instead marching down a set of stairs and grabbing Charles, who had kept carefully to the side, by the hand. He pulled him behind himself through a door into the back of the TV studio, where they stood alone in a dimly lit, ugly, green corridor.
“Should have probably, uh, asked you before I did that,” Nathan said after a few seconds.
“Generally, I’d like to… understand the, ah, media strategy you boys are following…”
Nathan glanced sideways. Charles looked a bit flustered and very flattered.
“Wait,” he said, perplexed, “you liked that.”
“I’m not asking you to go off-script more often,” Charles was quick to say. “But… yes. In this case. Well.”
Charles was, while more eloquent than Nathan, also not very good at speaking about sappy things. Nathan liked that. If he’d called what Nathan had done ‘romantic’ or anything, Nathan would have had to protest. As it was, he could simply keep holding Charles’ hand and grin.
“What changed your mind about going public?” Charles asked. “You told me you’d rather keep it between us when we started dating, safe for the band.”
“I guess I realised I just didn’t tell anyone ‘cause I didn’t want to have to deal with people. But it’s not very metal to pretend not do something just because it will piss off a few douchebags. Kind of goes against the, uh, philosophy.”
“I see. That makes sense,” Charles decided. “I am, ah, glad we don’t have to destroy all evidence of the picture. It looks rather nice.”
Nathan gave a nod as he dragged Charles onwards. It did. Maybe he would keep it on his phone or something, in some folder where the other guys wouldn’t find it.
“This hallway leads to the lobby. There are going to be a lot more photos if we step out there,” Charles cautioned.
Nathan threw the door open.