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“Dude.”
“What?” Pickles asked, as he hung upside down on the couch. “You said we needed new couch stuffing. So I stuffed it!”
“Is...is it all weed?” Magnus asked as he cocked his head.
“Smells like it,” Nathan noted, lifting his nose into the air. “How did you afford all this?”
“This is just my current stash,” Pickles said. “Had it in a box in the corner before. I thought you guys knew?”
“Honestly, I didn’t wanna know what was in it,” Nathan said. “I figured it was either drugs or like...body parts or something. I figured I would just let you deal with it.”
“You were gonna let me stay in the band if you found out I was choppin’ people up?” Pickles asked.
“You have that much weed and you haven’t shared once?” Magnus scoffed.
“Hey, hey,” Pickles said. “No. Because it’s my stash; we can’t smoke it all up right away!”
“But...there’s enough to stuff a couch...” Magnus faltered. “How...how much weed have you been going through that we haven’t noticed?”
“And where did the couch stuffing go to begin with?” Nathan added.
“Truth be told,” Pickles replied. “A lot. And I don’t know. I was really high, and I think I sold it to a dude and told him it was Skwisgaar’s hair...he wanted to sell it to fans outside our shows or some shit.”
Magnus and Nathan shared a look. It was a good thing Skwisgaar was out downstairs, holding one of the guitar lesson sessions he had started doing to make them extra money. Had he heard any of this, he would have been not just grossed out at the idea of fans wanting his hair, but pissed that someone was now out there trying to sell shitty couch stuffing and claim it as his hair.
“So...can we smoke some of the couch with you now?” Nathan asked.
Pickles curled himself back up onto the couch and sat up. “Fine, but only cause I like the two of ya, or something.”
They laughed and gingerly settled beside him on the couch as Pickles took a pocket knife to tear open part of the couch and retrieve not just a bud, but a fully prepared joint.
“Is...is the couch just pre-rolled joints?” Magnus asked, slightly in awe as he pulled a lighter from his jeans pocket.
Pickles stood and bowed with a flourish as he took the lighter from Magnus. “Took me like twelve hours, but yeah, it is.”
“That’s actually fucking awesome,” Nathan laughed. “Y’know, the chair is falling apart too...”
Pickles lit up the joint, puffed, and passed it to Magnus. “Gimme two more of those, another eight hours, another box of weed, and I can do it.”
Nathan smiled as he took the joint from Magnus. “Awesome.”
They still didn’t have much. Groceries, not as often as they should have (and it showed whenever they went shirtless onstage.) A working shower, only some of the time (the landlord swore it was getting fixed this time, really, truly.)
But they had a roof, and now they had furniture literally stuffed with weed, and it was silly but it felt like a step towards Something Bigger. It was something a ridiculously famous metal musician would do, and someday, that would be them.