When Charles Ofdensen was growing up, there were a few things he had to learn the hard way.

One: Never let your guard down. He had let it down once, fully allowed someone to get under his skin when he was younger, only to be beaten and left bloody in an alleyway when he was a teenager. He had been called weak. He had been called a pussy, a fag, they were all the names in the book children were supposed to be taught not to say. But when you're lying in an alleyway, curled up in the fetal position in your own blood and piss, you tend not to feel anything other than weak.

At age 14, young Charles had decided that he couldn't be so trusting anymore. He couldn't be weak. At age 16, he started to actively go to the gym more, and by age 18 he had enlisted in the army. By age 24, he had left the Army a hardened man for reasons he never mentioned again, making sure to keep his contacts just in case.

Two: Never show someone else your true motives. Once he had gotten out of the Army, he was able to continue his education (thanks to military money and the courses he took while in the Army), and by age 25, had gotten his Masters in Finance. He had decided that if he was going to no longer be weak, as he had been when he was younger, he had to hide in plain sight. Make himself blend in. So his first job, it was easy to get into. He was a good accountant, and that was that.

So when he was given a folder from an unknown source claiming that the CEO of the company was an old acquaintance of his, Charles knew what he had to do. By his second year of working for the company, it was the CEO who was now lying in the alleyway, curled into a whimpering ball of limbs, finally realizing that he was being punished for the acts he had done as a teenager, by the same teenager the CEO had beaten up.

The CEO resigned and appointed Charles his successor, and Charles Ofdensen was suddenly the fastest climbing businessman in the country. The world was his oyster. All he had to do was exact revenge to get it. No one saw it coming.

Three: Trust your instincts. As he aged, the regular business world had started to get boring. He was good at it, and he had countless contacts throughout the world, but there was only so much he could do running an accounting firm. He left to start a new career, and when he heard a local band play one night shortly after he resigned, he knew what he wanted to do. Something was pulling him towards the young men on stage, and going into music management wasn't something he was particularly familiar with, but he'd make do. He was a fast learner. It helped he was a fan of the band.

Making a very calculated move on his part, he bought the band drinks and convinced them that if they were going to live up to the potential that he saw in them, they'd need a manager to help them along the way. It might have been tricking them slightly on his part, but Charles always knew a good opportunity when he saw it, and Dethklok - as risky of a chance that it was - seemed to be that opportunity he was waiting for.

Turns out, he was right.

Four: At the end of the day, work is what keeps this world going. The years Charles spent working for Dethklok really proved to be the best work of his entire life. He had never had to work so hard to make sure things ran smoothly, and while that would have been torture for most people, for him it was fun. He grew attached to the band, attached to the life he lived, and attached to being in the position that he was in. He went from Manager to CFO, to everything else that the boys needed him to be.

In a way, it was like the family he never had. He would do anything for the boys, and he had. He disposed of another manager trying to get in the way. He destroyed anyone who tried to download music illegally. He wasn't above cold and calculated brutality, because he would protect his boys at all cost, and no one was allowed to fuck with his bread and butter. He would die for them.

Or, in his case, have his soul separated from his body for them. Disappear for nine months and follow around the military for them. Discover a prophecy that he was destined to help see through for them. Come back just in time to save their careers, and fix everything that they had messed up while he was gone.

What he had never expected, was that once he came back to Dethklok and to Mordhaus, that the things that he learned and lived by were no longer applicable.

Because with Nathan, he had let his guard down completely, which was something he never allowed himself to do before. Following their first night together, it had become a well-kept secret, and only Charles' personal assistant knew about it (simply to help keep things organized and hidden), and even he didn't know fully what was going on. In the month that followed, it wasn't unusual to see Nathan go into Charles' office at night for 'meetings' and not leave until the early morning. Sure, the guys joked and teased Nathan about it, but the teasing usually stopped once Charles got them to focus on something else – or tried to, their attention span had never been good to begin with.

The other issue was that as the month went on, Charles started to subconsciously show his true motives when it came to Nathan. He got more protective over him, so when the comedian at Toki's birthday roast in Tokyo called Nathan "Tonto", and Charles saw the reaction that it got from the front man, Charles quickly acted and had the comedian taken out. It was part of the act, people were later told, because they didn't need to know the truth that you didn't want to fuck with anyone that Charles Foster Ofdensen was close to.

His instincts though, those he still held onto. They were as quick and as sharp as they had always been, but now they were clouded with judgment. When Charles noticed warning signs before when it came to his personal life, he usually obeyed them. This was no longer the case when it came to Nathan. There had been no real agreement on their parts on what was going on, but all Charles knew is that they saw a lot of each other, that he woke up each morning with Nathan asleep next to him in his bed, and by the time he got out of the shower in the morning, Nathan was gone. They'd go about their days, and eventually would find their way back to each other that night. It worked. There was no reason to fix something that wasn't broken. The problem was that the warning signs he should have been paying attention to were being ignored because of his involvement with Dethklok's lead singer, and he didn't realize it. His work was not suffering, but his personal character was.

But with his work not suffering, there was still one thing that was standing true in his code. Work was what kept life moving. It was what kept Charles going from day to day, and it was what gave the boys the life that they had. He had to keep them on task, because he worried what the prophecy would mean if it happened, when it started. He had his part to play, but the problem was that he was having doubts. He had things to live for. He had things in life he needed to see through to the end.

Life had to progress as normal though, because Ishnifus warned him that things needed to play out on their own. So Charles booked shows, including a huge upcoming international one, scheduled interviews, kept himself booked throughout the day, and kept the boys focused. Life went on, because it had to. He couldn't change the prophecy, but he could continue working.

He could continue living his life as he wanted to.

And he could continue to spend each night in the arms of someone he was getting dangerously close to.

He just didn't know the dire consequences that would have.

Dead men weren't supposed to love.