I don't own Dethklok. Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha do. It's quietly slashy. But you knew that already. It's also sadly not funny. I am cursed with writing fanfic of funny things in a tragic light. Curses!
Model Planes
Skwisgaar liked to fly. This was not open to debate. He spent more time in the air than most people could tolerate. It was well known that his 'secret' dream was to be a pilot, preferably a fighter pilot in a scary hi-tech stealth gunner. He dreamt of shooting down anonymous, faceless foreign aircraft, watching little explosions ripple up the metal skin before ripping the enemy apart in a roiling ball of black smoke.
If he could have one superpower, it would be flight. He would down his selected drug for the day and rocket out onto his balcony, squeezing between the metal bars of his window, and teeter with his toes barely hanging off the edge of the flagstones, letting the wind press up from the deadly drop below him.
If someone needed to be suspended for a video or a show, he was first in line to volunteer.
No one had ever bothered to count the presents they received daily from fans, but the more favored employees could probably give a pretty accurate count, as they got just about everything intended for the band. The only item Skwisgaar had ever kept, aside from surprise booze, was a beautiful large oil painting of himself as an archangel, barely clad in flowing white silk, sliding forward in the air with feathered wings outstretched. He kept it in a corner, never bothering to hang it, but he could sometimes be found staring vacantly into its depths of sky, plucking idly at his guitar.
Toki had never expressed any interest in flight. In fact, he had a fear of heights so quietly severe that his own room was deliberately claustrophobic, featuring low ceilings and no windows, letting him feel snug and secure and subterranean. No one noticed that he blanched and fell quiet whenever they boarded the Dethcoptors- if they had, he would undoubtedly have been made severe fun of. Toki was not a child, despite his quirks, and he held his fears restrained and silent. When forced onto an elevated stage- and there was ALWAYS an elevated stage- he narrowed his focus to his hands and his guitar and the rest of the band filtered through his earpiece, and Skwisgaar. He had to watch the Swede, not able to depend solely on the sonic information because he knew, he KNEW Skwisgaar would try to throw him off by doing some damned stupid improvisational playing, and if he wasn't watching the blond closely he wouldn't see the sudden smirk, the shift of stance, the quirk of the eyebrow that alerted him that he'd better be ready to go- not just following but staying RIGHT BESIDE the lead, otherwise it would all crash into noise. He hadn't failed at this in years, but Skwisgaar seemed to enjoy the game, and would invariably decree Toki's attempts "dildos" after the show, despite the fact that no other guitarist in the world had ever been able to meet him at his level.
Skwisgaar felt the couch dip slightly just before he smelled the glue. Ah, Toki, undoubtedly ready to present him with a new gift. He stilled his fingers over the frets and cracked an eye at the younger man, who was crouched a couple feet from him, smiling a tiny, hopeful smile, and cradling a newly completed model in his outstretched hands. Not for the first time, Skwisgaar wondered why HE had been chosen as the recipient of Toki's artistic efforts. He never accepted them, although he was sure the Norwegian meant for him to keep them. Instead he always lifted the model out of Toki's grasp, turned it before his eyes, (although he would never admit it, he thought them quite pretty and knew them to be the product of overwhelming work and time) and then he would drop it back into the startled hands of the young man, with a half-assed pseudo-compliment. "Is a planes. So cool. Okay." and Toki would change the dimension of that sad smile, somehow, and make Skwisgaar feel like he'd failed some obscure and ridiculous test again, and would shuffle back to his room to hang the plane with all the rest of his plastic children.
Toki had grown up quietly, in stark contrast to the others, whose families yelled and screamed and fought and laughed and yelled some more. He was the product of silence, and needed a quiet place with focused demands in order to deal with being the person the rest of the band needed, and the person he wanted to be. He was delighted, when they'd first found him, that they wanted him to be a brat, the baby, allowing him special attention and protecting him in a way he'd never experienced. They worried when he was too quiet, or when he sat reading for hours. Somehow, though, if he was reading comics, or silently watching cartoons, it was acceptable to them. They saw him as a child and he was amazed to find that he immensely enjoyed being encouraged to act like one. And if he flipped the spectrum felt especially brutal, well, they loved that too. Usually.
And when he had discovered modeling, he was enthralled. It allowed him quiet, it satisfied everyone as to his activities and whereabouts, and he loved producing miniatures of what-nots and the feeling of power it gave him to be the biggest thing around.
Not many people, not even most of Dethklok, knew that Toki could speak Swedish. When he was still very very new at the whole band thing and could understand maybe three words of English, he took up perfecting Swedish as a means of communication. It was, after all, nearly identical to Norse and thus he mastered it quickly. Skwisgaar seemed to think he himself was the reason Toki had bothered, and really he wasn't far off. The boy was enthralled with him- his blinding good looks, his perfect hair, his long slender fingers and the way they coaxed amazing music out of his instrument. Skwisgaar was the fastest and self-proclaimed best guitarist in the world, and to be worthy in the presence of a god, Toki had to work very hard indeed. Skwisgaar was everything Toki wanted to be- except happy. So Toki perfected his language, and conversed with him, and learned to laugh and learned about Skwisgaar. And learned about flying, and why it was magical, quite different from the terrifying black magic Toki had always perceived it to be.
And over time, not as much time as it sometimes seemed, Toki began to speak English and the initial intimacy between guitarists was lost to a burgeoning band-family, and while Toki remembered nights spent pressed close to the Swede and whispering in the sibilant susurrations of Scandinavian whispers, he was quite sure Skwisgaar had forgotten. Toki remembered other things, too. Skwisgaar forgot.
So he made planes for Skwisgaar, because he couldn't find any way for the other man to truly fly, and Skwisgaar rejected them because he never understood what exactly they'd meant in the first place. The bits of pvc dangling form their nylon nooses hung around Toki's room like a mobile of unwanted Valentines, and Toki slept under them, nightmares of falling and being lost in infinite space haunting him while he wished more than anything else for wiry arms and frozen kisses to thank him for his gifts.
And elsewhere in Mordhaus, Skwisgaar lay miserably awake, wondering what the gifts meant, and why he always felt so bad for not understanding.