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At the heart of it all, underneath all the bullshit, theirs is a love story. It might not be a typical love story, but, and now here is a secret: no one's ever is.
It didn't start off being about love because life is no fairy tale. Cupid doesn't come by and strike with a bow and arrow, and let's face it, with Dethklok around this is a good thing. Cupid probably would have missed and decapitated somebody. The rest of the world didn't fade into to the background the first time they met and the music didn't swell. Well, the music did swell a little, but it was a Dethklok song, which hardly counts.
Charles thought Nathan was a brutish drunken lout the first time they met and Nathan thought he was a pompous dork with a bad haircut.
It wasn't like one of those romantic comedies were the main couple hate each other and bicker constantly till halfway through the movie where something illogically convoluted happens and suddenly they're madly in love. They were both smart enough to be professional around each other. There were no heated words or petty arguments. Charles was coolly polite when the situation warranted it. Nathan may have joined in in called him robot but it was never malicious.
They worked together and made a lot of money doing it.
Things really changed after Mordhaus. The band had always lived in each other's pockets but suddenly Charles was part of that too. True, he was never one of the guys but without the distance of his own place to go home to he became one of the pack. He moved in their lives not just as their manager, but their babysitter, problem solver, therapist and alarm clock. They integrated so thoroughly that they became no longer separate entities but gears working together in the same machine.
So slowly he didn't see it happen, Nathan was no longer that boorish idiot he had to work with but someone who had a talent for finding poetry in brutality. He wasn’t exactly a drunken lout but a guy that liked to have a good time. Nathan’s opinion of Charles changed too. He wasn’t just a pencil pusher anymore, he was the guy with mad skills at making money. He was someone with a million interesting talents and every day he found something new.
It was subtle. They went from only being the same room together when they had to be, to lingering after band meetings. Nathan would come up with stupid questions and smile a little every times Charles did something unexpectedly metal.
Before they knew it, they were friends. Nathan would come to him for advice not only because he was their manager but because he trusted what he had to say. Charles started doing little things for Nathan, not because he was a client, but because he liked to see him happy. He brought the laser pointer to meetings whether he needed it or not, just so Nathan could steal it and laugh while he blinded some poor klokateer.
There were casual touches at first, a pat on the back here and steady shoulder there. Before Nathan knew what was happening he was blowing off perfectly good bimbos because they didn't sigh and adjust their glasses just right when he did something stupid.
Charles started looking forward to being ignored at band meetings because it gave him the opportunity to sit back and watch while Nathan talked.
Neither of them would have called it love, but really, they should have.
There was no defining moment, no sudden dramatic realization. They went from sitting on opposite sides of the desk when reviewing expenses to sitting next to one another. One day Nathan got up to grab himself a beer and grabbed one for Charles too. Their fingers lingered on the neck of the bottle as it passed from one hand to the other and it wasn't a bolt of lightning but a sense of familiarity. They didn't even notice it had happened till Charles got up to get the next round.
Despite the rumors of his operating on motor oil, Charles really did eat. Each night at nine, tired from a long day of work, he'd slip into the kitchen to find whatever Jean-Pierre had made for him that day. It wasn't a great big secret, all the boys knew where to find him and if they got hungry at the same time they were always welcome to join him. More often than not, Nathan would wander into the kitchen at roughly the same time and before you knew it, they had a standing date.
They talked about stupid stuff, Nathan would tell him about some new documentary he'd seen and Charles would explain that they really can't shut fans up in iron maidens as part of a show, no matter how brutal it would be. They talked about the stupid shit the band had been up to, how the new album was coming along and what new rulings Charles had gotten passed the UN. They talked about nothing important but somehow it made all the difference.
Nathan stopped sleeping with bimbos all together and Charles lost the number to his favorite escort service.
One night, when they'd stayed up late going over the plans for the next concert, Nathan leaned over and kissed him. Bells didn't ring, birds didn't sing and fireworks didn't go off in the background. Charles blushed a little and told Nathan if it makes him that happy to have lasers, they could have one in every show. At the end of the night he didn't get up to leave, and Charles never asked him to.
Nathan's stuff started to gravitate toward Charles' room and Charles' toward Nathan's. The band’s only comment on finding the two of them asleep on the living room couch one morning was to say "about god damn time." Well, Murderface called them gay, but he called the little umbrellas that Pickles put in his drinks gay.
The press had a bit more to say on the subject, but that is neither here nor there.
They woke up each morning, or mid-afternoon in some cases, made music, did paperwork, ruled the world, killed people quite often and made life just a little more metal. At the end of the day they ate together, talked through their stupid shit and fell asleep exactly where they wanted to be.
It wasn’t earth shattering, mountains didn’t move and ballads weren’t written, but maybe they should have been. With all the billions of people that walk the earth, the two of them had found each other and that was something worthy of recognition.