Chapter 2: evacuate the dance floor

Halfway through, Volstagg barged in on them, snorted, and sat down to watch.

"Manager said we weren't allowed to do this anymore," he said, as Hogun swore and jerked up into Fandral's mouth. "He said it was bad for our image."

"Considering the amount of time his cock spends up Balder's arse or down Balder's throat, that it is stunningly hypocritical," Hogun snapped, arching backwards.

Volstagg looked at him askance. "Hogun."

He was right. It was never fair to rip on Balder. He'd probably just killed a fairy.

"S…sorry," he managed, as Fandral withdrew almost entirely to punish him, suckling on the tip of his cock like it was a globe of ice-cream atop a cone. It was probably a bad sign that he could interpret his bandmate's moods and reactions based on the different ways in which they chose to suck him off. Pathetically, he whined until Volstagg snickered.

"He's sorry. Let him off the hook," Volstagg said, reaching over to stroke Fandral's hair. Accordingly, Fandral relinquished and deep-throated him, drawing a heartfelt groan of satisfaction from W3's least popular member.

Hoisting him up, Volstagg positioned his body so that he was leaning against the other man's chest, his head pressed back into his red beard. Volstagg had been bullied in school for being red-haired and fat, and had gotten his revenge by becoming fatter, and growing as much hair as he could. Hogun had snipped a lock off one night while he slept, and kept it in his pocket as a good-luck charm. He was fully prepared to acknowledge that his superstitions were warped. But when Volstagg had found out he'd chuckled and kissed Hogun's cheek, so he was pretty warped too.

Starting the band had been Hogun's idea, although he'd let Sif think it was hers.

They'd all grown up in the same shabby street, and they been practicing and trying out new songs together since they were fourteen. The band had not been a big project, but another aspect of their friendship, evolving as they did. Volstagg was the only one of them with any formal training, gleaned from night classes paid for with various summer jobs.

Years passed. The others had had boyfriends and girlfriends, none of them ever serious. Sif had been accepted into the local university alongside Hogun; she had majored in Maths, he, in Archaeology. Fandral had had a raging fight with his parents and stormed out, Volstagg's mother had beaten the shit out of him and called him an ugly fat slug one too many times, and it wasn't even a question of whether Hogun would take them both in. Nor was it ever in doubt that Sif would get fed up with her college roommate and follow shortly behind them. The apartment had been small, but they'd split the rent, and they'd never been bothered by having to sleep in the same room, often huddled together like hamsters when it had been cold and they couldn't afford heating. And they never, ever got on one another's nerves. Oh, they'd fought, and bitched and moaned at one another, but that was just another aspect of being friends. Like the band.

Hogun had found himself at twenty-two, living with three of the loudest, most slovenly people on earth, and realised that they were the only people he'd ever loved.

And, more worryingly, had realised that he was alone in this predicament. The rest of them loved easily and often. He didn't. He'd had no girlfriends, no boyfriends. It took him years to form intimate attachments, whereas someone like Fandral seemed able to do it in the course of two glasses of cheap box wine.

He couldn't lose them. They didn't realise how important they were. And he didn't have much time, he told himself, because soon enough one of them would find a soul mate, or maybe Sif would finally decide to go work for the United Nations in Paris as she'd always wanted, and then the group's cohesion would be lost. Slowly. The rest of them would break away too, until it was just him, with no more friends, and no particular passion in life beyond playing the drums.

The point at which Hogun had reached this conclusion had coincided neatly with the point at which they started taking the music thing seriously, and the band actually became a band instead of four friends playing about.

"More," Hogun whispered, squeezing his eyes shut until red spots danced before them, and Fandral took him deeper.

Success had ambled their way far sooner than they'd thought it would, largely due to Loki's involvement. Hogun planned to keep them successful as long as possible. As long as they were successful, they would stay together.

His father, a pharmacist of good standing, had hoped he would go into medicine. "You've got the right personality, boy," he'd said when he was trying to sell Hogun on the idea. "You're soft-spoken, thoughtful, and perceptive. You've got steady hands."

Hogun loved and respected his father, and therefore refrained from pointing out that he had spent every one of his eighteen years listening to him talk about how much he hated physicians, scorned psychologists and thought surgeons were 'avaricious pondscum.'

It was just as well, because playing the drums was all he was good for, much as gyrating obscenely in front of an audience was all Fandral was good for.

Together, they made one hell of a band.

Volstagg continued to plant tiny, distracting kisses on Hogun's forehead and eyelids as Fandral finished up, licking him clean and tucking him away. As always, Hogun felt within himself the inclination to cling, to make one or other or both of them stay like this for longer. Fortunately, Volstagg saved him that embarrassment by nudging his shoulder and saying, "And now you can do me, Kakihara, to make up for the dreadful things you said about Balder."

Only Volstagg still called him that. It was funny, the way they'd adapted to their new names.

0

They had doublechecked, then triplechecked their stuff by the time they rolled out of Budapest- no one wanted a repeat of Paris, when Volstagg had left his stuffed pig behind and insisted they go back to get it.

Mountains and hills rolled by the windows, the view only occasionally broken up by a herd of goats or, once, a deer.

"Listen, I've had this idea for merchandise," said Volstagg, whose hangovers always went away first. "Helmets."

Sif, who was curled up next to Hogun's leg with a wet flannel over her forehead, said, "Helmets? What, like Viking helmets?"

"Yeah. Only bigger. You know how pissed off you always get when people depict Vikings with nasty great horns, that sort of thing?"

"Yes. It's a totally inaccurate and insulting preconception that I don't particularly want the band to enforce, Volstagg."

"I know, I know," he said, waving a hand. "But here's the thing; we take that, and we run with it. Run AWAY with it. Highlight how bloody stupid it is by wearing helmets that… wait, I've drawn a sketch, let me show you…"

He tossed her a notepad, which she flipped through until her eyes landed on the illustration in question. Hearing her gasp, Hogun craned his head to look.

"Jesus, Volstagg," he said. "You can't be serious. You could put someone's eye out with those."

"Look at them," Sif breathed. "If we actually made these, and wore them, they'd graze the ceiling."

"Great, isn't it?" said Volstagg, clearly pleased with their reactions. "The manager's always talking about 'brand recognition' and doing something to distinguish ourselves. I can't think of anything that would distinguish us more than going on stage wearing something like that."

"We'd look like a herd of buck," said Hogun.

"They'd laugh, you idiot," said Sif. "They'd throw fruit at us. If they didn't have fruit on them they'd go and buy some just to come back and throw it at us. Can you really imagine performing in them? What if they fell off?"

"Can you imagine what Fandral would say," said Hogun, quietly, "if we told him he had to wear one?"

From the Cheshire cat smiles that spread over their faces at that image, he could tell that the idea had gained instant ground. Fandral spent an hour prior to every performance perfecting his hair.

"Or the manager," said Sif, with a giggle, checking over her shoulder to make sure he wasn't listening. "God, can you imagine him wearing that?"

"Be good for him," Volstagg grunted. "He needs to lighten up badly. I'm going to take that sketch to Balder, see if he can't come up with something."

Hogun nodded. Fandral was normally their costume designer, but he'd immolate himself before agreeing to construct those.

After Sif finished her catnap and their hangovers had relented, they ate lunch- coffee from a flask, cheese and tomato sandwiches prepared before they'd left, and a box of vanillekipferl- curving biscuits that tasted like hazelnuts, coated in powdered sugar, which Fandral had purchased, insisting that they try at least one national dessert from every country they visited.

Loki was in the vicinity, ignoring them as he spoke into his phone, as he generally did unless they were complaining about something. He spent ninety percent of his waking life with his cellphone glued to his ear, speaking in fast, clipped sentences in twenty-eight different languages. On one occasion, he'd slipped into French, which Sif had studied for a semester at university, and she'd whispered to them that she'd been able to discern the words 'police', 'arrangement' and 'threshing machine.'

Once, they'd stolen his phone, and had discovered a list of promoters, venues, industry contacts and lawyers that would have been fifty pages long if printed on paper, in Times New Roman Font Size 8. There had also been one pet food shop, and God only knew what that was doing there.

He hadn't been angry when he'd found them with it. He never got angry at them. At Balder, sometimes at people on the phone, but never at them. Hogun had never met anyone with such a bottomless well of patience for their shit; he would have found it comforting if he had thrown things at them once in a while.

Hogun could never shake the feeling that their manager, for all his talents and useful contacts, saw them as livestock.

Sif swapped places with Balder, to give him a break. She wasn't legally qualified to drive a bus, but she'd driven her father's truck since she was thirteen, and it wasn't as though there was anyone on the road with them. When Hogun showed Volstagg's sketch to Balder, he looked thoughtful, and said he'd see what he could do.

"You'd need a material that wouldn't be too heavy," he said to himself. "Making it wouldn't be too hard, the challenge would be getting it to stay on. And you want it to look…"

"Halfway between epic and ridiculous," supplied Hogun. "Don't tell Fandral, he'll wet himself."

"Yes, yes. I understand."

Why did Balder annoy him?

It wasn't that he was an idealist; Sif was an idealist. Nor was it his agreeable temperament; Fandral was agreeable, accommodating to a fault. Balder possessed all those character traits that Hogun found most worthy of admiration, yet actually interacting with the man set his teeth on edge.

"Can I ask you something?" Hogun said.

"Of course!"

He was a positive puppy. So happy to have the barest of overtures made in his direction. Maybe his parents hadn't hugged him enough?

Hogun cocked a finger at his head, like he was aiming an invisible gun. "Your hair. It looks awful."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose it does," Balder agreed, patting his ash-white coiffure.

Jesus. He wasn't human.

"Does he make you dye it that colour?"

A pink flush rose in Balder's cheeks and he fell to blustering. "He? You mean, ah, Loki I presume? No, no, I… I know he likes it, so… that is, he's never MADE me do anything. It makes him happy, and it doesn't matter to me what my hair looks like."

"Huh," said Hogun. "You want a biscuit?"

"… I'm sorry?"

"A biscuit," Hogun said, impatiently. "Fandral brought them. They're sugar-coated. There aren't many left."

"I… no. Thank you. I'm diabetic."

Satisfied that he had done his good deed for the day, Hogun nodded, and departed.

The next town was fine, nothing special. A bigger crowd than Loki had anticipated, so maybe their Myspace account was doing its magic thing. They got to splash out on a night's stay at a Holiday Inn; given that Loki booked one room for them, and another for Balder and himself, they all agreed it was because he wanted to fuck him in a bed. The bus was big, but it wasn't much for privacy, and Balder, Hogun said, looked like a screamer. Sif had scolded him for that, and made him ride her like a pony as penance for his sins.

The first problem- the first of their many, many problems- came the day after, as they were rehearsing. The bus stopped suddenly, and Fandral went to the front to investigate.

When he returned, ten minutes later, his plucked brows were furrowed.

"Um. Bit of a problem," said Fandral, biting his lip.

"Don't tell me Balder wants to stop for another hitchhiker," Sif asked. The last one had tried to get them to autograph his balls.

"No, it's a roadblock. Apparently there was an avalanche. We're going to have to turn back and take the long way round."

They groaned. Hogun swore, and kicked the seat in front of him. "How much time will we lose?"

Their schedule was so tight, Hogun thought, how were they going to make up the time? They were booked solid in Romania.

"None. Loki's worked out a quicker route. Um…"

"What?"

"You're not going to like it," said Fandral, and held up his hands in a placatory gesture that seemed, Hogun realised with alarm, to be aimed at him, "but I've looked at the map and it really will be faster. We just…"

"Fandral. What?"

"… we'll need to cut through Latveria. No, Hogun, wait!"