Chapter Text
Nathan had initially been reluctant to agree to another island holiday. They'd had amazing ones in the past, renting private islands with villas built over tropical oceans. This is how they usually go: he spends the bulk of the day just floating on his back in the water, while Pickles throws him beers from the deck and experiments with combinations of pills, mushrooms, weed, and LSD. It's a perfect balance of personal time and palling around. Pickles spends most evenings passed out, but he flirts with manic when he wakes up and for whatever reason this usually translates to him compulsively cooking. They'll have a fully stocked kitchen for this reason and sometimes he’ll bake three white cakes in a row “to get it perfect”, and then a plate of nachos with everything. He has always been an incredible cook, in Nathan’s opinion; though these days they employ dozens of the world’s finest chefs back home.
When Nathan's done wallowing in the ocean for the day he’ll come in, eat, and join Pickles to drink and pass a joint back and forth under the trees, or on the deckchairs looking over the water. He always feels like he could stay forever, but the issue is that Pickles gets antsy after a week or so. No work on holiday has always been a rule for the band as a group - no instruments; Skwisgaar gets the only exemption because they're all pretty sure he'd snap on day one without something to keep his hands busy. Nathan finds this rule easy to observe, turning off the part of him that produces lyrics like a light switch. Pickles, on the other hand, he thinks, gets weird after too long without his drums. Even an acoustic guitar would probably do something for him, but there specifically won’t be any on their time off.
Because he wouldn't relax properly if there was! Something about being on vacation sends him into this frenzied state where he'll sit with a guitar for hours and hours frantically writing out chord progressions and lyrics which are completely removed from anything Dethklok would ever produce, and they're frankly unusable anyway. And he won't let Nathan take the guitar off him, either. He gets snippy and they inevitably end up yelling at each other: Pickles throws things, will start breaking shit. It only had to happen a handful of times before the lesson was learned: no instruments on holiday [Swedes excluded].
And Pickles doesn't like swimming the way Nathan does. He can stay in the water sun up to sun down, floating on his back, and when that gets old, he can just pop a mask and snorkel on and watch what's going on underneath the surface. Tracks the reef sharks, the turtles, schools of fish. The sound of the reef life calms him in a way nothing else does. He doesn't even have nightmares on these trips: just imagines himself under the cool blanket of the ocean, returning to the chorus of thousands of parrotfish biting at coral.
In any case, this holiday was just for them. The others can fuck themselves; Nathan's sick of dealing with their crap lately and is excited to just spend some time with Pickles, who he can actually stand being around for more than a few hours at a time. It's been great already so far. He's in the water, just like he planned. Without other distractions, Pickles is approaching his own sort of spiritual awakening on the villa balcony. Which basically involves getting beyond high and doing yoga or meditating or whatever you want to call it.
In the sunken hot tub later that evening, they both have a solid buzz going. It’s still warm; the sun low in the sky.
"You got anything stronger?" Nathan wants to know, finishing the last of his current beer and letting the bottle roll away. Pickles has been mixing himself drinks, but tosses him a little plastic bag from amongst the junk he's got over by his side of the pool.
"What's in them?" He holds the bag up to have a good look; ten or fifteen small pills pressed into the shape of four-pointed stars. Unmarked; something Pickles has had made up to his own specifications.
"Good stuff,” Pickles says, matter-of-factly: distracted, pouring something. But he then elaborates. “Mostly molly, uh, a bit of. Clonazepam, to round 'em out. Some other shit."
"You having some?"
"Yeah, I will."
Nathan nods and shakes a couple out.
"Start with one, man," Pickles tells him, and Nathan does. He always has a pretty good idea of what Nathan can handle. Pickles take the other two out of his hand and Nathan watches him chew them eagerly, chasing them down with an enthusiastic drag of his cocktail.
"Pretty good day," Pickles says eventually. He breathes loud through his nose and leans back with his cheek against the edge of the tub. Nathan, similarly positioned, is close by. Everything reeks of coconut. Between the sunscreen and the amount of rum that Pickles has spilt in the hot tub already, that's not gonna change anytime soon. It’s hard to tell, but Nathan guesses he’s slightly more sober than Pickles. Or maybe not. The point is, he's already drunk and the drugs start to hit him fast, like they’re meant to, probably. He feels warm, good, calm, relaxed. Pickles starts to look softer, more restful; he’s almost always fucked up on something anyway. But it starts to feel like they've spent ages just sitting next to each other and staring dreamily into the distance.
Nathan rubs the bruise just over his ribs from earlier, when Pickles thought it would be a good idea to yell hey asshole and launch himself off the deck right at him. Nathan had thought it was another beer he was throwing for him and hadn't looked for the other's attempt at a cannonball; had taken the impact straight to the solar plexus. They'd both come up coughing and spluttering, Pickles crowing about Nathan trying to break his ankle. The memory makes him laugh; he wasn't even angry at the time. He thinks about Pickles swimming in circles all around him with a big goofy smile, splashing him from all directions. He's still got that cheeky, lopsided grin plastered over his face. Nathan can see the top of his forehead’s burnt. God, he's super fucking gay, looking at Pickles like he's trying to spot new freckles coming up on his skin. But he can feel the same energy as when they were back in the ocean, Pickles cackling each time he soaked Nathan with a good splash. Screaming and trying to climb onto his shoulders when Nathan pointed out the reef sharks idling below them. He blinks slowly.
Pickles sighs and runs his hands down the side of his face. "Feel it?"
"Yeah," Nathan agrees.
"Nice?"
"Yeah."
"You wanna know what I'm thinking about?" He says, smirking his stupid self-important smirk.
"Yeah."
Pickles takes a last long draw from his glass. "Maybe..." He shifts slightly, ghosts one hand across Nathan's chest, brushing the edge of the bruise his foot had made. Nathan catches his arm under the water and pulls him closer, earning a nervous laugh in response. "Maybe you already know what I'm thinking about."