#oc.posting

Everyone jumped at Freak’s loud outburst, silence falling over the tiny boardroom they were all piled into as they looked at him. He was massaging his forehead, a grimace clear in his expression.

Glancing at the screen of his phone, Gareth flinched as he realized they had been sitting there for forty-five minutes, and forty of those were dedicated to Eddie and Chrissy arguing in circles. Jeff had had his head on the table before Freak’s shout, and his mouth was still a tense line.

“You’re right, Eddie. This is our band, and that includes Chrissy,” Freak said pointedly, and Eddie actually had the grace to glance away, shame-faced, his mouth snapping shut. Seemingly satisfied, Freak said, “Stop being a dick and let her actually finish what she was saying.”

“Thank you, Freak,” Chrissy sighed, sitting back in her chair at the head of the table. “Now, as I was saying, the label can’t have us canceling shows if we’re headlining.”

“Gee, thanks, Chris,” Eddie bit out, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.

“It was different when we were openers,” she continued a bit shakily, shrugging a shoulder, “but we’re about to start what the label’s anticipating being a sold-out arena tour.”

Jeff’s expression went slack, and Gareth knew his own eyebrows had disappeared behind his fringe.

“Sorry, can you repeat that?” Jeff asked, tilting his better ear toward her. “Did you say sold-out?”

“Anticipated, yes,” Chrissy replied, smirking just a bit smugly about it.

Gareth scoffed incredulously. “Fuck ‘sold-out’, did you just say arena tour?” He looked around the table. “How the hell did we score an arena tour?”

“Between your explosion in popularity and the docuseries deal…” Chrissy said, trailing off as she looked at Eddie a bit sadly. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I know how much you wanted to make this the tour you were back for, but canceling two of our appearances and needing a sub on guitar at the end of Ghost’s tour has the label spooked.”

Gareth sneered at the mention of the sub they were saddled with. When he looked over at Eddie, though, his chest squeezed at the way his oldest friend was staring up at the ceiling and blinking rapidly. All the fight had left him, and Gareth could tell he was resigning himself to the decision. Jeff leaned over to wrap a hand over Eddie’s shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly.

Eddie sucked in a sharp breath. “Whoever we bring on better be good,” Eddie bit out eventually, his voice thick as he turned a flat look on Chrissy. “We’re not slowing down for them.”

At that, Chrissy actually broke into a grin and clapped her hands together. “Well, you’re in luck because I’ve already brought someone on and he’s ridiculously talented,” she said in a rush, and they all just blinked at her. There was a sinking feeling in Gareth’s gut about the whole thing.

“He should actually be here soon to talk to you— oh, that might be him,” Chrissy continued, hopping up when there was a quiet knock at the door. When she opened it, she smiled politely and said, “Yeah, just send him back.”

Turning back to them, Jeff gestured for her to elaborate. “Are you going to tell us who it is?”

Chrissy frowned and put her hands on her hips. “Oh, c’mon guys, don’t act like you don’t know who it is,” she deadpanned, rolling her eyes dramatically.

Gareth immediately thought of the smug behemoth that subbed for Eddie’s guitar parts and grimaced, crossing his arms over his chest petulantly. At the same time, however, the rest of the band’s faces lit up excitedly, even Eddie’s. Of fucking course Eddie would be fine with being coddled, babied— nay, treated like a fucking invalid if it meant some hot, overrated giant was going to be around more often.

There was another knock on the door and Chrissy immediately opened it with a grin. “Morgan! Welcome back,” she said brightly, and the name threw Gareth off just enough that his shoulders relaxed and dropped down from around his ears.

He didn’t know a Morgan, he didn’t think, but that was fine! At least it wasn’t—

“Ugh, that’s the name the lawyers use for me,” came an impossibly deep, slightly accented voice as Chrissy stepped back, staring up at the man coming into the boardroom with nothing short of awe.

Sure e-fucking-nough, in walked the very giant Gareth had hoped wouldn’t be returning. The asshole actually ducked his head under the door frame is if it was too fucking low for him to clear it.

“Please, just call me Tig,” the man said before looking around the room with a giant grin, his blue eyes pausing on Gareth just long enough to wink at him.

It had been months since the band saw Tig last, and Gareth hated that he looked good. His hair was a vibrant pink at that moment (very much not the blue it was when he was touring with them) and with complete and utter dismay, Gareth realized he had a new fucking tattoo on his throat. It was almost a blackout tattoo, but on the front of his throat it looked like a honeycomb. The pattern faded into proper blackout where it wrapped around the column of his neck and up to the line of his jaw. It was distracting, and Gareth just wanted to chew that shit off.

Tig had been brought in as quickly as possible at the end of Corroded Coffin’s tour with Ghost when Eddie’s nerve pain flared up to the point that he could barely perform, let alone play his guitar. Despite being unable to play and upset about that, Eddie and Tig immediately hit it off. They had been nearly inseparable, between Tig’s (admittedly genius level) skill on guitar and Eddie’s passion for finding the ugliest, grossest, and scariest bugs imaginable. What was worse was that Tig had the ugliest, grossest, and scariest bugs imaginable tattooed all over his body.

Even Freak had taken a shine to him, actually finding his fucking childish antics hilarious. Jeff barely even hesitated about returning Tig’s over-the-top flirtations, too.

Gareth couldn’t fucking stand him.

Across the table, Freak was looking at him with an eyebrow raised and a little, smug smirk. Gareth flipped him off before crossing his arms and slouching back in his chair.

The first problem he had with Tig was that the man was so goddamn tall. It honestly hurt Gareth’s neck to meet his eyes most of the time, and then the dick went and wore fucking platform boots as if he needed three more inches. Whenever he did that, Gareth was practically eye-level with Tig’s goddamn bellybutton (and the man’s stupid fucking piercing there) which filled him with something that could only be rage with how hot he felt all over. Hot like flames were engulfing him, flames of anger and shit.

The second problem was that Gareth was, apparently, Tig’s fucking fan.

See, Tig used to be part of a masked, anonymous band named Rake as the lead guitarist and unclean vocalist. Their whole get-up, especially in the last era of their career as a band, were full suits and bird-themed masks, leaving only enough skin visible for the guitarists to play and the vocalists to sing. Rake was up there in popularity, even for a metal band, somehow making it big while maintaining their anonymity. That was until, of course, a fateful music festival in Nevada during a record-breaking heatwave.

Gareth was a huge fan of Rake— they were literally his favourite band, so when he found out Corroded Coffin was going to be playing at the same festival as Rake and they were scheduled perfectly so he was going to be able to see Rake perform? He was ecstatic and he weaponized his elbows to get to the barrier.

Their entire aesthetic looked fucking rad but watching them perform in triple-digit weather really put it all into perspective.

Mid-set, it was obvious that the lead guitarist was suffering. Somehow, Tig was still hitting all the correct chords and nailing every single one of his lines, but between songs he was guzzling water, pouring it on himself, turning his back to the crowd to lift his mask up off his face even. He had already shed as many layers of his costume as he could just short of showing off skin. The other members were also having a rough time, but none of them seemed nearly as bad as Tig.

(Since meeting him, Gareth had come to learn that Tig is just annoying and dramatic, especially in any amount of weather hotter than 90 degrees.)

Eventually, Tig swayed unsteadily enough that the other vocalist had to grab his arm to keep him from eating shit. There was a moment where they were clearly arguing, though it was hard to tell with the beaks of the masks being in the way. Eventually, Tig began to roll up his sleeves, exposing very distinctly tattooed forearms that had more than a few audience members shouting in excitement.

The thing was, Gareth recognized the tattoos, but where he recognized them from was escaping him. The tattoo that stood out to him in that moment was the Lichtenberg figure that started on his thumb and crawled up his arm, branching out into a perfect mess of lines and angles. It had been almost thrilling to have that moment of knowing, that split-second where he knew who was under that mask even if he couldn’t actually immediately recall who it was.

But then there were gasps in the crowd, and people began shouting something that Gareth couldn’t quite hear properly, and Tig’s shoulders drooped a bit. Looking around himself, Gareth took in the sea of people around him and noticed that a few of them had their phones out. The girl next to him at the barrier was on Twitter, frantically scrolling through the people she followed.

Upon realizing that his favourite guitarist (after Jeff and Eddie, of course) was apparently Twitter famous, Gareth was pissed. It just felt ridiculous that a metal guitarist would be famous on the fucking bird app without their music as the reason. It felt like they sold out, like some influencer was behind the music.

Then Tig stepped up to the microphone and— in an impossibly deep and slightly accented voice that Gareth absolutely fucking knew in a way that had him blushing in the middle of a crowd of metalheads— he said, “well, I guess the cat’s outta the bag now.”

See, Gareth knew on some level that the members of Rake were probably recognizable in some way other than their looks off the stage because none of them ever spoke. They would go on stage, perform their set, and leave. It wasn’t that weird, given their entire gimmick with the masks, so Gareth really didn’t think too much about it. Now that Gareth heard that voice and recognized it immediately as one that frequently featured in his horniest daydreams, the gimmick made a whole lot more sense.

The thing was that Gareth knew that voice and those tattooed arms— and, yep, the man was unbuttoning his shirt to reveal the massive and distinctive tattoo of a cicada across his chest— and they belonged to the one OnlyFans creator he was fucking subscribed to.

“Let’s get back to the show, then,” Tig growled into the mic, and the music immediately picked back up as if a quarter of the crowd didn’t just get their shit rocked.

Later that night when he was back at his hotel, Gareth pulled up Twitter and sure enough, there was a new post from xX-Tamer Tig-Xx. It was a selfie of Tig standing in front of a mirror, completely naked while he held his iconic plague doctor mask over his cock. Black body paint was still on his hands, throat, and around his mouth, as if he just stripped and took the selfie after the concert. It was posted with a caption that read, “So, big news incoming 😳 IYKYK 😏”

The ensuing chaos the news threw part of the metal scene into was nothing short of fucking batshit insane. Gareth and Eddie were eating it all up as they watched YouTube reactors express their opinions on the matter. They watched the way Rake blew up on TikTok now that it was known that at least one of the band members was already a well-known “accountant” on the app. After about a week, the rest of the band unmasked too, and it turned out all of them were sex workers by trade.

It was shortly after that when Rake announced that they would be permanently disbanding now that they were unmasked, which was devastating for Gareth. He mostly understood, of course, because the anonymity was ultimately important to them, so their sex work and music was wholly separated. Plus, Rake was very vocal as an entity on their socials that they were always intending to complete a trilogy of albums and they achieved that. It just felt wrong, as if their hands were forced to announce it early, or they were robbed of their chance to just quietly disappear forever without revealing anything.

After a couple months, Rake sat down for a full profile piece for an article about them unmasking, their feelings about it and the end of their careers as Rake. All five of them seemed happy with the way the band was ending things, that they could finally be more open about their friendships with each other, even outside of their working relationships. Hell, the drummer and the lead vocalist were fucking married. Like, real-life married, and they had to hide that on stage. In the interview, they said they were most excited to be able to actually interact with their opening bands, and something in that made Gareth realize how much that anonymity probably felt very isolating. Thinking about how much Corroded Coffin got to learn from the bands they were opening with and for, he couldn’t imagine that lack of collaboration.

The article itself had images of all the members unmasked and in various states of undress. Tig’s photo was the most provocative, with him standing in profile and completely naked except for his platform boots, one leg bent just enough to keep his modesty. His arms were held up, hands tangled in his own hair, but he was looking directly at the camera over the muscled curve of his biceps.

Despite being subscribed to his OnlyFans, Gareth still saved that image to his phone and told himself that was completely normal behaviour. He had lots of photos and videos of Tig naked on his phone. It wasn’t weird.

Plus, he foolishly thought, it wasn’t like he was ever going to fucking meet the man, especially since Rake was breaking up and none of them had immediate plans to return to the stage, even as a solo act.

Gareth jumped as someone knocked on the table to get his attention, and he glared at the heavily tattooed hand that was there. Turning his sneer up at Tig’s face, he felt something squirm in his gut as the man just smirked knowingly.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Tig crooned as he sat down, leaning close to Gareth to ask in a conspiratorial stage-whisper, “miss me?”

“Like a fucking toothache, Slenderman,” Gareth spat, and Tig only grinned broadly at him, showing off all of his perfectly white teeth. They weren’t perfectly straight, but they were so fucking white, it was ridiculous. Unfair. Disgusting even.

“I missed you, too, sweetheart,” Tig sighed before turning his attention to Chrissy as she stood back up to start going over the details of him temporarily joining Corroded Coffin.

This was going to be the worst, Gareth thought— nay, he knew.