Note: Set immediately after FatherKlok. Characters belong to Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha, of course.
Skwisgaar knew things hadn't really been the same since he'd come back from Sweden. Oh, they still sounded great in practices. The music had come back easy, not that he'd been gone very long.
It was the carefree attitude he'd had with the others that was lost. No matter what rules they had, spoken or not, the rest of the band had come to find him. That wasn't supposed to have happened. They all knew it.
And Skwisgaar's mood had been shit, anyway, even without this new, added awkwardness.
He knew his place in the world now. He knew his destiny, and a taste of the normal life had been enough. But he had failed in his one goal: finding out who his father was. Maybe his father was a god, or maybe he was just someone who wouldn't come forward, but not knowing was frustrating.
He could tell that the others knew something was still wrong, from the way they'd try to draw him into conversation at dinner, or the glances occasionally sent his way. He ignored them, and acted like everything was normal.
So he was shocked when Pickles and Toki cornered him in the hot tub a few days after he got back.
He had been glaring up at the TV, not really paying attention to what was on, his fingers dancing over the strings of his Explorer as usual, when Pickles dropped into the tub a few seats away. Toki had come in, too, and sat cross-legged on the floor nearby, his eyes pinned to whatever game he was playing.
Both men seemed to be ignoring him at first, but something about their body language told Skwisgaar he was the center of attention. He started to get out of the hot tub.
"Naw, stay here, Skwisgaar. We gotta talk," Pickles said, and took another swallow of his beer. Skwisgaar glared at the drummer, then glanced at Toki, who kept his attention firmly on the game.
He sat abruptly. "So talks."
"I know you didn't find your dad, Skwisgaar, but that ain't so bad. You know none of us care if your mom's a slut, right?" Pickles slid a beer over to the guitarist, and Skwisgaar took it with narrowed eyes.
"I don'ts thinks I wants to talks about this," he said.
"Yeah, well, too bad. While you were gone, Nathan said something, that we were a, uh ..." The drummer frowned, trying to remember.
"Fucked ups, dys- dys-fuck-shun-alls family," Toki supplied, stumbling over the longer word, and Pickles nodded.
"That's right. A fucked up, dysfunctional family, but we're still a family," he said.
Skwisgaar mulled this over. "Nathans saids that?" He looked down at his guitar, but didn't play anything.
"I'm not sayin' you have to start treating Murderface like your dad or nothin'," Pickles said, and when Toki snickered a little, that smartass grin flashed across his face for a second. "Thought that can be fun. But you gotta know there are worse things out there then not havin' a dad, and we're your family. If you ever need one."
"This is maybes too sappies for me," Skwisgaar said, but he was thinking about this. Not having a father sucked. But he knew, from the Snakes 'n Barrels documentary, that Pickles had run away from home at 16. Maybe having a father didn't fix everything.
"You lucky, Skwisgaar," Toki said suddenly, fiercely, setting his game aside for the first time. "Maybe you gets a dads like Nathans has, a good one, but probably not. Maybe better nots to have a father than haves a bad one." Those ice blue eyes bored into his. Pickles was nodding again. Skwisgaar looked away.
Was he? Lucky? He'd never thought so. He'd never had a mother like other kids'. A mother who made snacks and cookies, who bandaged his knees and kissed the injuries to make them better, who tucked him in and read him goodnight stories. Maybe she cared about him, a little, but not nearly as much as she'd cared about herself. And he'd never had a father at all.
But his friends — brothers? — were right. He hadn't been lucky, he decided finally, but none of them were. And despite their histories, they were all here, the biggest band in the world. Maybe if they'd been happy children, they'd never have met, and Skwisgaar had gotten a taste of normal life.
Things could have been better, but maybe they could have been worse, too. Nothing would make up for the things missing from his childhood. But he did have a family, sort of. Maybe they weren't perfect or even close, but it was enough.
He stilled his fingers on the strings and glanced at Pickles, then Toki out of the corner of his eye, and nodded very slightly. Toki picked his game back up and started playing again, and Pickles looked at the TV. "What is this shit?" he asked, and looked for the remote.
Skwisgaar fought to keep the smile from his face as he picked out another few notes, and for the first time, the tension he'd been feeling for the past few days — no, for weeks — eased.