Fic: The Two of Us are Dying (1/?)
“The Two of Us Are Dying”
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing, Drugs, PTSD
Pairings: None
Beta: Khronos Keeper
Characters: Charles, Dethklok, Crozier, Selatcia, Stampington
Summary: Charles Ofdensen has a lot of demons to deal with, both figurative and literal.
Author’s Notes: This is a sequel to my previous story, “ Home for the Holidays,” but is considerably darker. It takes place a few months later. The previous story is not totally required for this if you don’t want to go back for it. Charles has a married sister who’s a surgeon in California. That’s pretty much all you have to know.
Considerable beta work was done by Khronos Keeper for the first half, but I am looking for other proofreaders if anyone wants to volunteer. Mostly looking for typos and consistency. This is a long story, just so you know what you're getting into. Probably 20 or so chapters.
I can haz fic tag?
Chapter 1 - Prologue
“If you’ll look on page twenty-six ... Pickles, what are you doing?”
Pickles looked up from his color binder. “Sahrry, I thaught dey were scratch ‘n’ sniff.”
“The quarterly reports are not scratch ‘n’ sniff. I will add, however, that that is your copy, and you can, ah, scratch and sniff it all you want, but I can’t recommend it.” Charles Ofdensen, Dethklok CFO and leader of a board meeting comprised of mental 8-year-olds, didn’t blink as he continued. “As I said, page twenty-six has some charts that indicate trending levels of - “
As usual, Nathan Explosion was oblivious to the fact that he was cutting in. “Is it like markers? For white-out boards. Can you get high on those? Because they smell awesome.”
“Merch!” William Murderface was also eager to find new avenues of income, especially since the latest Forbes magazine put him at #5 on the list, behind the other members of Dethklok. Usually he beat Toki for the #4 slot, but Toki’s line of sugar-free gummi bears were flying off shelves as all the kids who got diabetes from his first line of candy bought them. Charles, as usual, was #6, though sometimes he was #7 if George Soros or Rupert Murdoch beat him out. “Dethklok markersch! Schkools will have to buy them. Can you make schkools buy them?”
“Den kids can gets high in sku-ool, nots arrested, everybodys win,” Skwisgaar, who hadn’t had the decent to open his own binder for appearance’s sake, strummed on his guitar.
“I know for a fact you cannot get high on dry-erase markers,” Charles said, hoping that wasn’t followed up by a question of how he knew that. “They are in fact very corrosive to the cartilage in your nose. However, a line of markers could be very marketable - “
“That’sch mine! I called it!”
“What’s is carts-il-edge?” Toki said. He was currently coloring in his already color-printed binder, filling in the parts that were still white.
“It’s why when you punch a shark in the nose, it’s all squishy,” Nathan said. Given the circumstances and Charles’s general opinions of the boys, the explanation was actually quite impressive. And said a lot about Nathan’s childhood in Florida. “Uh, idea for a song title. Punch the shark.” He turned off his recorder. “Is this meeting ever going to fucking end?”
“There’s a lot to cover, Nathan, and I would like to remind you that you were all very insistent on being regular informed about Dethklok’s finances - “
“We wanted ta know if we were makin’ money or naht!” Pickles tore out the current page in his binder. “What da hell is this?”
“It’s a pie chart, Pickles,” Charles said. “Now, as soon as we finish this overview - which, I assure you, is just an overview of the last quarter - you can all get back to recording the new album. On the fold out in the back of the binder I have a very detailed schedule - “
There were collective groans all around.
“ - which I’m sure you will of course be, uhm, adhering to. William? Do you have a question or are you just brandishing a knife at me with your arm raised?”
“It’sch a dagger,” Murderface said. They were going to have to shuffle seats again if anything was going to remain of the table, because the wood in front of him was giving out. “Don’tsh you know the differensch? ROBOT!” The last bit, Charles was pretty sure, was just for good measure.
“We takes backs everyt’ing!” Toki squealed. “We don’ts cares about finanshi-ul t’ings, we promise!”
“Yeah and if we stay here any longer we’re going to have to buy another table,” Nathan said. “That’s FINANCIAL. Can we go now?”
“Dood, I don’t think he can hold us here,” Pickles suggested. The boys were getting desperate. The only surprising thing about that was it took them a full hour to reach that state.
“Jas, arents you ours employee?” Skwisgaar said to Charles. “Goes now, dos our bidding.”
“Technically, I’m fulfilling - “
“Guys, let me handle this,” Nathan said, assuming control. “Charles ... um, as your employers, we think that you should, uh, get back to us with a report. On ... something that will take a long time to find out. But we don’t actually want to know what it is. So find out ... and don’t tell us.”
Charles stood up, straightened his tie, and said in a very irritated tone, “Well, for the record, I tried.” He even left the binder behind when he slammed the door behind him. While Dethklok sat triumphant on the other end of the door, Charles maintained his mask of frustration all the way to his office, where he went straight to his apartment, locked the door, and basically fell over and landed on the sofa. “Oh thank G-d.” On any other day he would have stopped himself from saying it, but this was not an ordinary day. “Thank G-d they are so fucking stupid.”
Everything had gone exactly to plan. The boys were thoroughly over-managed and would want nothing to do with him for at least a few days, maybe weeks if they could manage to at least keep themselves out of mortal danger without his help. They would never notice he was gone, not in a million years.
His hands were shaking as he reached into the cabinet and pulled out his decanter, the one he hid even from Dethklok. If he was ever going to have a drink, now was definitely the time. The tiny suitcase lay open and he didn’t have the will to pack it, or really know what to pack it with. Definitely not business clothes. Not business casual, either. Nothing that looked like you could golf in it. That really left him with very little options.
More important was what not to pack. He removed his Tag Heuer custom watch, which was almost entirely black and, of course, had spikes in key areas. It also had Facebones painted on the watch face, because if you made the Forbes top ten list every year, Tag Heuer would take requests. Charles replaced it with the Swatch he used for swimming and security missions, which at least didn’t look expensive. There was some amount of standing over the sink and staring at his electric razor, wondering if he could take it. It was totally harmless as far as he was concerned, but he wasn’t the one making the call. The Dethphone had to go with him for the ride there and back, but he jotted down some key numbers he had yet to memorize off the screen and onto a pad for emergency use.
And there were drugs. Legal ones, all with nice prescription labels. He couldn’t take any of them, so he knocked back some Loxapac for good measure. There was no way else to get through the rest of the day that he knew of.
His assistant 3201 was waiting outside his office. “The helicopter is ready for you, sir.”
Charles was very glad he couldn’t see his assistant’s face, and that they had only the slimmest of emotional connections, because he fucking hated sympathy, especially when it came from people beneath him. They were supposed to respect and fear him, and if at all possible, die for him, and nothing else. Granted, 3201 didn’t know where her commander was going, just that it was no place good. Charles didn’t say anything until they reached the helipad, when he handed over a post-it with a number on it and nothing else. “If I’m not in touch in six days, call. Otherwise, you don’t dial this number unless a demon army pierces the walls and literally has the boys’ necks under cloven hooves.”
“Yes, sir.” There were no further questions. Charles didn’t expect there to be.
He didn’t do great on the helicopter ride - definitely went heavy on the brandy while he could enjoy it - but the Loxapac hit him hard and he didn’t really give a damn that he was nauseous as hell for the entire trip. He could handle anything, as long as it didn’t require him doing all that much. The helicopter dropped him off somewhere for him to catch a cab to the facility, so even the Klokateer wouldn’t know where he went. Their leader did secretive things and they were used to it, as he basically expected them to be. Good gears didn’t make waves.
Perhaps the most humiliating thing was they made him wait. He didn’t expect VIP treatment or anything, but he was stuck in an empty fucking waiting room, staring blankly at an overly-loud daytime talk show while the receptionist did whatever she thought was more important than moving the process along. The last time he checked, it was her nails.
Charles thought he was OK with it. He agreed to do it of his own fucking freewill, for Christ’s sake. That should count for something. The admitting nurse gave him the mistrustful once-over anyway as she went through his things.
“That’s a phone,” he said when she was skeptic about the Dethphone. “It really is. I can turn it on and you can call Japan if you want to.”
“You know I have to confiscate this. Because it’s a phone and a weapon.”
“I know.” He just shrugged as she dropped his one-of-a-kind Dethphone in a plastic bin that had seen better days. She went through all of his clothing, prying into the pockets with her glove-covered fingers, then emptied the bag itself so she could further inspect the lining.
G-d. He told himself he was ready for this but he was completely lying. Lying to himself was a force of habit at this stage of his life, but it usually didn’t come back to bite him so hard.
“Do you have keys?”
He took them out of his pocket and dumped them in the dusty bin. She didn’t believe him when he said his pockets were empty and checked herself. He didn’t think he could hide a switch blade on himself that she couldn’t find, and he was pretty damn good at hiding things. Then the floor doctor arrived, bearing even more forms. He had a folder, which was just blank pages aside from the page Charles filled out in the waiting room. They went over his meds, regular and irregular, and drugs, legal and illegal. Fortunately he could only claim a mild contact high from excursions into the hot tub room at Mordhaus as his worst habit. “I work in the entertainment industry.”
“Prior addictions?”
“Cocaine - but it was brief and I kicked it over fifteen years ago.”
“Alcohol?”
“I have a glass of brandy or wine at the end of the day. Usually with dinner.”
“Do you smoke?”
“Very rarely.” All things considered, he was a pretty clean guy. “A couple times a year, maybe.”
The last form he read very carefully, because it was a contract and he was signing it.
“There’s a five-day minimum for voluntary hospitalization,” the doctor said. “Your doctor told you that, right?”
He nodded, and continued reading. He wondered how anyone unfamiliar with contract language could understand what they were signing away. At that moment, he sort of wished he didn’t, but he signed on the dotted line, and the doctor gave him a hospital band that read CHARLES F. OFDENSON. Everyone spelled his name wrong.
Charles wanted this to be over. The whole thing entirely, or just this moment. He would take either one, but the doctor just handed the clipboard back and said, “You have to put down the reason for admission.”
Charles grumbled, and write PSYCHOTIC BREAKDOWN in the blank space.
Onto Chapter 2...
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing, Drugs, PTSD
Pairings: None
Beta: Khronos Keeper
Characters: Charles, Dethklok, Crozier, Selatcia, Stampington
Summary: Charles Ofdensen has a lot of demons to deal with, both figurative and literal.
Author’s Notes: This is a sequel to my previous story, “ Home for the Holidays,” but is considerably darker. It takes place a few months later. The previous story is not totally required for this if you don’t want to go back for it. Charles has a married sister who’s a surgeon in California. That’s pretty much all you have to know.
Considerable beta work was done by Khronos Keeper for the first half, but I am looking for other proofreaders if anyone wants to volunteer. Mostly looking for typos and consistency. This is a long story, just so you know what you're getting into. Probably 20 or so chapters.
I can haz fic tag?
Chapter 1 - Prologue
“If you’ll look on page twenty-six ... Pickles, what are you doing?”
Pickles looked up from his color binder. “Sahrry, I thaught dey were scratch ‘n’ sniff.”
“The quarterly reports are not scratch ‘n’ sniff. I will add, however, that that is your copy, and you can, ah, scratch and sniff it all you want, but I can’t recommend it.” Charles Ofdensen, Dethklok CFO and leader of a board meeting comprised of mental 8-year-olds, didn’t blink as he continued. “As I said, page twenty-six has some charts that indicate trending levels of - “
As usual, Nathan Explosion was oblivious to the fact that he was cutting in. “Is it like markers? For white-out boards. Can you get high on those? Because they smell awesome.”
“Merch!” William Murderface was also eager to find new avenues of income, especially since the latest Forbes magazine put him at #5 on the list, behind the other members of Dethklok. Usually he beat Toki for the #4 slot, but Toki’s line of sugar-free gummi bears were flying off shelves as all the kids who got diabetes from his first line of candy bought them. Charles, as usual, was #6, though sometimes he was #7 if George Soros or Rupert Murdoch beat him out. “Dethklok markersch! Schkools will have to buy them. Can you make schkools buy them?”
“Den kids can gets high in sku-ool, nots arrested, everybodys win,” Skwisgaar, who hadn’t had the decent to open his own binder for appearance’s sake, strummed on his guitar.
“I know for a fact you cannot get high on dry-erase markers,” Charles said, hoping that wasn’t followed up by a question of how he knew that. “They are in fact very corrosive to the cartilage in your nose. However, a line of markers could be very marketable - “
“That’sch mine! I called it!”
“What’s is carts-il-edge?” Toki said. He was currently coloring in his already color-printed binder, filling in the parts that were still white.
“It’s why when you punch a shark in the nose, it’s all squishy,” Nathan said. Given the circumstances and Charles’s general opinions of the boys, the explanation was actually quite impressive. And said a lot about Nathan’s childhood in Florida. “Uh, idea for a song title. Punch the shark.” He turned off his recorder. “Is this meeting ever going to fucking end?”
“There’s a lot to cover, Nathan, and I would like to remind you that you were all very insistent on being regular informed about Dethklok’s finances - “
“We wanted ta know if we were makin’ money or naht!” Pickles tore out the current page in his binder. “What da hell is this?”
“It’s a pie chart, Pickles,” Charles said. “Now, as soon as we finish this overview - which, I assure you, is just an overview of the last quarter - you can all get back to recording the new album. On the fold out in the back of the binder I have a very detailed schedule - “
There were collective groans all around.
“ - which I’m sure you will of course be, uhm, adhering to. William? Do you have a question or are you just brandishing a knife at me with your arm raised?”
“It’sch a dagger,” Murderface said. They were going to have to shuffle seats again if anything was going to remain of the table, because the wood in front of him was giving out. “Don’tsh you know the differensch? ROBOT!” The last bit, Charles was pretty sure, was just for good measure.
“We takes backs everyt’ing!” Toki squealed. “We don’ts cares about finanshi-ul t’ings, we promise!”
“Yeah and if we stay here any longer we’re going to have to buy another table,” Nathan said. “That’s FINANCIAL. Can we go now?”
“Dood, I don’t think he can hold us here,” Pickles suggested. The boys were getting desperate. The only surprising thing about that was it took them a full hour to reach that state.
“Jas, arents you ours employee?” Skwisgaar said to Charles. “Goes now, dos our bidding.”
“Technically, I’m fulfilling - “
“Guys, let me handle this,” Nathan said, assuming control. “Charles ... um, as your employers, we think that you should, uh, get back to us with a report. On ... something that will take a long time to find out. But we don’t actually want to know what it is. So find out ... and don’t tell us.”
Charles stood up, straightened his tie, and said in a very irritated tone, “Well, for the record, I tried.” He even left the binder behind when he slammed the door behind him. While Dethklok sat triumphant on the other end of the door, Charles maintained his mask of frustration all the way to his office, where he went straight to his apartment, locked the door, and basically fell over and landed on the sofa. “Oh thank G-d.” On any other day he would have stopped himself from saying it, but this was not an ordinary day. “Thank G-d they are so fucking stupid.”
Everything had gone exactly to plan. The boys were thoroughly over-managed and would want nothing to do with him for at least a few days, maybe weeks if they could manage to at least keep themselves out of mortal danger without his help. They would never notice he was gone, not in a million years.
His hands were shaking as he reached into the cabinet and pulled out his decanter, the one he hid even from Dethklok. If he was ever going to have a drink, now was definitely the time. The tiny suitcase lay open and he didn’t have the will to pack it, or really know what to pack it with. Definitely not business clothes. Not business casual, either. Nothing that looked like you could golf in it. That really left him with very little options.
More important was what not to pack. He removed his Tag Heuer custom watch, which was almost entirely black and, of course, had spikes in key areas. It also had Facebones painted on the watch face, because if you made the Forbes top ten list every year, Tag Heuer would take requests. Charles replaced it with the Swatch he used for swimming and security missions, which at least didn’t look expensive. There was some amount of standing over the sink and staring at his electric razor, wondering if he could take it. It was totally harmless as far as he was concerned, but he wasn’t the one making the call. The Dethphone had to go with him for the ride there and back, but he jotted down some key numbers he had yet to memorize off the screen and onto a pad for emergency use.
And there were drugs. Legal ones, all with nice prescription labels. He couldn’t take any of them, so he knocked back some Loxapac for good measure. There was no way else to get through the rest of the day that he knew of.
His assistant 3201 was waiting outside his office. “The helicopter is ready for you, sir.”
Charles was very glad he couldn’t see his assistant’s face, and that they had only the slimmest of emotional connections, because he fucking hated sympathy, especially when it came from people beneath him. They were supposed to respect and fear him, and if at all possible, die for him, and nothing else. Granted, 3201 didn’t know where her commander was going, just that it was no place good. Charles didn’t say anything until they reached the helipad, when he handed over a post-it with a number on it and nothing else. “If I’m not in touch in six days, call. Otherwise, you don’t dial this number unless a demon army pierces the walls and literally has the boys’ necks under cloven hooves.”
“Yes, sir.” There were no further questions. Charles didn’t expect there to be.
He didn’t do great on the helicopter ride - definitely went heavy on the brandy while he could enjoy it - but the Loxapac hit him hard and he didn’t really give a damn that he was nauseous as hell for the entire trip. He could handle anything, as long as it didn’t require him doing all that much. The helicopter dropped him off somewhere for him to catch a cab to the facility, so even the Klokateer wouldn’t know where he went. Their leader did secretive things and they were used to it, as he basically expected them to be. Good gears didn’t make waves.
Perhaps the most humiliating thing was they made him wait. He didn’t expect VIP treatment or anything, but he was stuck in an empty fucking waiting room, staring blankly at an overly-loud daytime talk show while the receptionist did whatever she thought was more important than moving the process along. The last time he checked, it was her nails.
Charles thought he was OK with it. He agreed to do it of his own fucking freewill, for Christ’s sake. That should count for something. The admitting nurse gave him the mistrustful once-over anyway as she went through his things.
“That’s a phone,” he said when she was skeptic about the Dethphone. “It really is. I can turn it on and you can call Japan if you want to.”
“You know I have to confiscate this. Because it’s a phone and a weapon.”
“I know.” He just shrugged as she dropped his one-of-a-kind Dethphone in a plastic bin that had seen better days. She went through all of his clothing, prying into the pockets with her glove-covered fingers, then emptied the bag itself so she could further inspect the lining.
G-d. He told himself he was ready for this but he was completely lying. Lying to himself was a force of habit at this stage of his life, but it usually didn’t come back to bite him so hard.
“Do you have keys?”
He took them out of his pocket and dumped them in the dusty bin. She didn’t believe him when he said his pockets were empty and checked herself. He didn’t think he could hide a switch blade on himself that she couldn’t find, and he was pretty damn good at hiding things. Then the floor doctor arrived, bearing even more forms. He had a folder, which was just blank pages aside from the page Charles filled out in the waiting room. They went over his meds, regular and irregular, and drugs, legal and illegal. Fortunately he could only claim a mild contact high from excursions into the hot tub room at Mordhaus as his worst habit. “I work in the entertainment industry.”
“Prior addictions?”
“Cocaine - but it was brief and I kicked it over fifteen years ago.”
“Alcohol?”
“I have a glass of brandy or wine at the end of the day. Usually with dinner.”
“Do you smoke?”
“Very rarely.” All things considered, he was a pretty clean guy. “A couple times a year, maybe.”
The last form he read very carefully, because it was a contract and he was signing it.
“There’s a five-day minimum for voluntary hospitalization,” the doctor said. “Your doctor told you that, right?”
He nodded, and continued reading. He wondered how anyone unfamiliar with contract language could understand what they were signing away. At that moment, he sort of wished he didn’t, but he signed on the dotted line, and the doctor gave him a hospital band that read CHARLES F. OFDENSON. Everyone spelled his name wrong.
Charles wanted this to be over. The whole thing entirely, or just this moment. He would take either one, but the doctor just handed the clipboard back and said, “You have to put down the reason for admission.”
Charles grumbled, and write PSYCHOTIC BREAKDOWN in the blank space.
Onto Chapter 2...