The alarm goes off and it is early but Charles is long used to the forceful embrace of consciousness. But, lo and behold, there is something warm next to him. Something breathing softly, sighing and then sighing louder because it is also something quite annoyed with the alarm. Well, Charles knows there are few people this person could be, and all five- no, scratch that, four- of those people don't often wake before three o'clock on the best of days.

But then Charles remembers the fourth of the four he could think of would never have snuck into his bed for the sake of being the little spoon. He is far too proud. So, three then. Three possible suspects.

The next mode of investigation is his sense of smell. Which is detecting tequila on his compatriot, and knowing one of his three cannot have tequila, knocks off all but two. He tries to surmise further, but his alarm is still blaring and then his bedmate groans a drawn out "dood" and smacks the snooze button.

Charles grunts, annoyed that his detective skills couldn't figure it before the culprit made himself known, but also smiles, because of who said culprit is.

He slides his hand, which had been resting on the other man's shoulder, down his arm and pulls the freckled hand to his hip, grasping it gently and pecking the back of a similarly freckled neck. He realizes he should have taken the sensory information from his grip on the shoulder before anything else, and the lack of giant muscles as well as the being the little spoon would have let him figure it out.

"Morning." he says in a voice like the croak of a toad slipping out of an echoing cavern.

He rubs his thumb gently over the freckled one. He wonders how much more of this the other man will take before calling him a fag and leaving, like he always does, like they always do. And he will again and again wonder why they come to him in the night like this, why they come while he is in the dead of sleep, why they come and climb into his bed, why they come and press their bodies against him and rest and why they come and then in the morning they leave and why they come and then act as if it had never happened.

Charles chooses to stop thinking about it and instead think of how lucky he is that the person tonight was not Murderface, who has yet to come and who will likely never come, and who would never treat Charles the same again and who would make moments like these impossible to ever have again as he alienated the rest of the boys, of Charles's boys, against him.

Ah, but this train of thought is even worse. He loves his boys, he does. He loves this peaceful little thing they started with him and the seeming comfort from it they derive and the entirety of each instance. He feels whole, when they do this. He feels not like Charles Ofdensen, CFO and he doesn't feel like he has a member of Dethklok sneaking into his arms at night. He feels like him, but him with no worries and no pains and no responsibilities except the one he wants, the one he has to the person in his bed. It is comforting, to Charles, like a glass of the finest brandy in the dead of night after he checks on his boys as they sleep, to make sure they're safe and to oust the dirty whores they had planned on sharing their beds with.

The other man in his bed lets go of his hand and shifts away from him. He sits up and his movements are groggy. He kicks off the blankets and he stands. Charles gets up as well, for he has work to do. He notices that like on some rare nights where he was woken up by someone drunk and crying, the other is naked.

Charles swallows and puts a hand on the other's shoulder in a comforting gesture. The hand is shoved off, and a homophobic slur is grumbled before that one of his boys stumbles out of Charles's room and out to do god knows what.

But Charles smiles and gets dressed, like last time and like every time and every day and every future day, to get to work making life easy for his boys.