Scandinavian Heartstrings, in Drop D.

Chapter 7.4 After Glow

Skwisgaar lay on Pickles's bed, a sore and sticky mess. He rolled onto his side, away from the light that was following him across the bed as the morning passed. Closing his eyes against the brightness, he hugged one of the pillows to him tighter. That stupid prick of a Norwegian; maybe Skwisgaar had crossed the line but this reaction was overkill. He understood the concept of fucking someone in anger, but he couldn't recall a situation where he had actually been angry with the woman below him. The truth was, lovers were so easy to manipulate, all it took was a little affection. Just that little bit of validation and Toki had fallen in line and danced to the same tune as the others. Skwisgaar was a bit disappointed by his victory but he couldn't quite figure out why.

He sighed internally. He had started it, though. He always started it. He just loved to see Toki riled up, it was so damn easy, but the lack of a challenge didn't make it any less appealing. He liked to argue with him and tease him, he liked it when Toki got mad at him and made those ridiculously indignant faces. Even when they got into physical fights, he somehow felt closer to him afterwards, like they understood one another just that little bit more, like they had forged another small link between them in some subterranean space.

However, he didn't like Toki to be upset by anything other than him. Not understanding why he was angry, sad or anxious made Skwisgaar very uncomfortable. It crossed over from their private tug-of-war to the outside world, to the real world. The few times Toki's demons had reared their ugly heads they had utterly shredded the force field of conceit Skwisgaar surrounded himself with, and this had frightened him.

Toki could bring down his wall. He had brought down his wall, that's why his rejection had hurt so much. Skwisgaar had attempted to seal the wound with his guitar. He had used music to extract the poison, to flush Toki from his system and rebuild his wall, brick by brick. He had played until he was exhausted but the feeling wouldn't leave him, so with chemical help, he had forced himself to continue. He had picked furiously at the strings, but they never became hot enough to cauterise his punctured heart.

Each riff was a series of stitches trying to mend the fabric of his tattered ego... and that little fucker had attempted to play them. He had smeared the wet paint of Skwisgaar's soul and inflamed the wound again. That music wasn't created for Toki, it had been created because of Toki! If he wanted to be that close to Skwisgaar then why had he recoiled from him? So, drunk and brooding, Skwisgaar had followed him into the recording studio to make him feel what it was truly like to be close to him, adding in the head fuck just to be malicious.

He rolled onto his back and put his wrists to either side of his head. He hoped they wouldn't bruise too badly, that could really fuck up his recordings. He closed his eyes again and could feel Toki's grip around them, his animal fury pressing them hard into the bed. Whatever he had stirred in Toki, whatever demon of hate that had taken him over, it had been a raw, old, darkness. The kind that had sat festering at the bottom of a well for centuries. A brooding, brutal Balrog that had laid dormant at the very centre of the earth until his incessant digging had disturbed it. The hate Toki had just shown him was the purest he had ever experienced. Even more than his own.

Skwisgaar believed he had reached a point of technical purity; his precision was unmatched and his music was as pure as the driven snow so he had taken to wearing all white as a personal symbol of reaching Nirvana.

The five of them had been at some dive bar in downtown Tampa where the bar tender had taken one look at Nathan and decided he didn't care that Toki was only nineteen. They were still riding the high of the success of their first album and so sat at the bar drinking away their first royalty cheque.

"I'm not sayin' somethin' like you're nawt a feckin' amazin' guitarist," Pickles said to Skwisgaar who sat a the end of their row.

"Dats 'cause I ams." Skwisgaar waved his beer in affirmation.