Your name is Skwisgaar Skwigelf, you are thirty-two years old, and you are suddenly and unexpectedly beginning to miss the man whom you had been under the impression that you hated the most.
God, he was annoying. Always following you around, never giving you time to yourself, watching you play the guitar doggedly like somehow that would help him improve. Always trying to usurp you as the world's fastest guitarist, a position that you had been working to achieve for your entire life. Idiot. How the hell did he expect to do that without practicing at all? Hell, how did he even play the guitar without practicing at all? Stupid little diabetic Norwegian.
And yet, ever since his disappearance, you've felt off. Maybe it was something about seeing a twenty-five year old guy who you'd been living with and playing in a band with for five years get a knife shoved between his ribs, and maybe it was something about that goddamn helpless facial expression which he'd had up until it had twisted into one of terrible pain.
Fucking Magnus. Did he have to go for Toki? Did it really have to be him?
Now everything is wrong, everything. When the five-four!-of you eat meals together, there's always the one empty chair. In the living room, the general arguments feel incomplete without his childish contributions, and no one feels much like arguing, anyways. His guitar lies untouched in the recording studio. And this time you know that his absence is not because Toki's too busy building his latest model plane or gambling with his life by spending time with Dr. Rockso, it's because he could possibly be dead and none of the people that Charles has put on his case have a fucking clue where he is.
On this particular night, the seventh day since Toki has gone missing, you are eating in brooding silence, your long hair hanging around your face to hide your facial expression. Your guitar is not with you-in fact, you really haven't got a clue where it is. You push your food absently around your plate, trying not to make eye contact with any of them. When you do look around the table, you see a host of exhausted and saddened faces.
Distantly, you remember the naïve agreement that you all made to not care about each other, and smirk humorlessly.
Pickles catches you looking around, and gives you a little half-smile, but there's no happiness behind it. It's just the twisting of a muscle. When you glance around to see what the others have to offer you, they don't even bother trying to put on a show.
Suddenly, the pressure in the room is too much for you. Instead of screaming, like you so desperately want to, you violently shove your chair back from the table and, swiftly standing, exit the room as fast as possible. Once in the hallway, your fast pace breaks into a run, and you make your way down to the recording studio like a bat out of hell.
"Where's ams my guitars?" you yell. Then, louder. "Wheres ams it? Gives it to me!"
Out of the shadows, a Klokateer appears and hands you your guitar. You accept it, your chest heaving. Then you throw the strap over your head and begin to play, like you haven't in almost a week. Your hands fly across the guitar's fretboard, effortlessly creating a combination of notes which literally no other human being in the world is capable of playing. At first, it's good-it releases the tension which has been building up in you for days. But eventually, the feeling begins to taper off, and is slowly but surely replaced with a new feeling of despair. Frustrated, you play even harder. If your hands weren't so calloused from your years of playing, you're sure that they would be blistering. Fuck. What the hell? You're playing everything perfectly. Why does it sound so wrong?
Eventually, you realize it's because you're playing by yourself. The complicated notes of your lead guitarist parts just seem like hollow skeletons without the foundations of Toki's strong rhythmic chords to back them up. The notes bounce meaninglessly off the walls of the studio.
With a scream, you rip the guitar strap over your head and throw it aside in disgust. It bounces with a noise that previously might have sickened you and one of the strings pops loose, but you could care less. You sink to your knees and put your head in your hands, your chest heaving and your shoulders shaking with dry gasps and sobs. You refuse to let yourself actually cry-you haven't done that since you were twelve years old, and you aren't planning on it any time soon. Instead you just fight the tears that are stinging the back of your eyes and confine your weakness to dry sobs and whimpers. In that moment, you are ashamed of yourself, and you hate yourself more than you've ever hated anyone else.
"Skwisgaar...?"
Your head snaps up and you gasp, quickly scrambling backwards and staring up that person who has walked in on this with wide eyes. It's Pickles. Of course. Who else would it be?
You tear your eyes away from his and cast your eyes to the floor. "Go aways, Pickle!" you say, not even having the energy to yell. The redheaded drummer doesn't leave. He doesn't even look away. He just continues to stare at you with a look of pity, and it makes you want to throw up. You hate pity. You're Skwisgaar Skwigelf, the lead guitarist of Dethklok. The lonely little boy who needs pity has been left far behind.
Right?
Pickles has crossed the room and is now kneeling in front of you. You sit where you are, your long blonde hair hanging around your face as your chest heaves, unsure of whether to kick Pickles in the face or to let him continue with whatever the hell it is he's after.
"You, ahm...you miss him, huh?"
That small statement of the obvious is enough to completely dissolve any and all barriers which you had up. You collapse into sobbing-real, wet, heavy, wracking sobs. You're crying for the band, and you're crying for your mother, and your nonexistent father, and for Pickles' drinking problem and Murderface's self-hatred and Nathan's childhood trauma. But most of all, you're crying for Toki. Toki, who might be dead, who you ridiculed mercilessly up until the very day that he was stabbed in the ribs, who you never got to tell how much you-
"Hey, man, uh. Come ahn. Come here." Pickles seems uncomfortable, but at this point, you're too incoherent to care, you just allow yourself to be taken into the embrace of the smaller man.
"Pickle, he's probably ams dead, he's ams dead, Pickle-"
"No, don't say that, you don't know that. The guys from the church said-"
"Bullshit!" you snap. "Whats the hells do theys know?" After a pause to gasp for breath, you continue. "I ams so terribles to hims, Pickle. I's ams knowings that's he's havingks problems because of his parents, ands I ams still ruthlesslys makings funs of him, anysways. He's probablies goingks to dies thinkings that's I ams hatings hims!" You sit up and grab Pickles from the front of his shirt. "I don'ts hates hims! I don'ts, Pickle!"
Pickles looks slightly scared. "I know, Skwisgaar, no one thinks that you hate him, all right? Least of all Toki."
You laugh hollowly. "He ams writings a book about whats a dicks I ams which almost ruins my career."
"Well...so what? You helped him out at the concert which he almost bombed, didn't you?"
You let your hands drop from the front of Pickles' shirt and cast your eyes to the ground.
"I loves him, Pickle."
"You...you what?"
"I ams lovingkst Toki!" you say, again, with more fervor in your voice. You look up and level your eyes with the drummer's. "And's he's ams never goings to know."
For a moment, Pickles looks shocked into silence. But after a moment, he bows his head. "Feck," he mutters, placing one of his hands on the bridge of his nose. "Feck. Now we really gotta find him."
"Whys?"
"Because..." Pickles looks up at you with a helpless look in his eyes. "The kid was head over heels for you, too. He was always telling me about it, and probably that assfuck clown, too, but he would never let me tell you or anyone else, for that matter. He said he wanted to do it himself."
You open your mouth, then close it, then open it again, and at first no sound comes out. Eventually, however, you manage to form one word. "Whys?" And then you seem to remember how to speak. "Whys? I's was always so awfuls to hims."
Pickles shrugs. "Look, man, I don't know. The guy's got feckin' issues. I don't know what goes on his head. It probably had something to do with how much he idolized you."
You try to say something in reply, but all you can do is sob. You feel as if someone has just driven shards of glass into your heart. Pickles' skinny white arms are there, around your broad shoulders.
"We'll find him, Skwisgaar. We'll find him. I promise."
When you are cried out, the two of you go back upstairs to where Murderface and Nathan are sitting in silence. Your eyes are red from crying, and Pickles is a little too close to you for the situation to be considered "metal." You imagine the ridicule you would have gotten before, back when everything was okay.
But until you find Toki, nothing will ever be okay again.