Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When Sam finally opens his eyes to find that fucking alarm clock and smash it against the wall, the ceiling above him is spinning.

It goes in circles, then brakes, returns to the starting point and starts spinning again. The first sign that the alcohol hasn’t left his system completely. Fuck that, it probably hasn’t left at all, and he’s still drunk, even though he needs to be at Nick’s in an hour.

But right now, he doesn’t give a shit about Nick or any urgent bullshit and just follows the spinning ceiling with his eyes, feeling his pupils refusing to focus. If he tilts his head to the side, chin down and closes his eyes a bit, the spinning becomes less obvious. Sam does exactly that, blindly kicking his phone off the couch with his foot so it can scream somewhere on the floor where it’s not as loud.
That fucking Apple melody. With all the money they have, you'd think they could come up with something better.

Five minutes that feel like eternity later, Sam emerges from another doze because the alarm is interrupted by an incoming call.

Swallowing thick saliva and wincing, he lifts his eyelids to take another look at the old-fashioned alarm clock standing on the suitcase that serves as his nightstand.

7:06. Only one person in the whole world would call him this early, and that person needs to be answered no matter what state he’s in, even if he’s half-dead.

He untangles himself from the blanket, immediately gets tangled in the throw blanket tossed across it and forgotten, then in his own pulled-down pants, which still have dried cum from last night’s drunk and very wimpy act of self-help. Awkwardly waving his arms, Sam crashes to the floor, landing on his right elbow, which is immediately pierced by hellish pain from a suddenly pinched nerve.

“Fuck!” he huffs, trying to figure out where the sky is, where the ground is, and where the hell his phone is. When all points are more or less resolved, he catches his breath and looks at the screen. The call ends, only for the alarm to bitchily start up again.

“I’m gonna tear you a new one right now, you cunt,” he grandly promises his old battered iPhone 12 and opens the call log.

Honestly, it’s a pretty pathetic picture. In the short list of calls there are only three names — Diana, his stepmom, local delivery, and Jerry, his childhood friend and source of occasional side gigs. The rest of the numbers aren’t saved and mostly belong to other musician buddies and the shitty jobs connected to them.

Blinking at the screen, chipped at the corner, he pokes the name Diana and throws his head back so it falls onto the mattress and stabilizes a little. He feels nauseous.

“Sammy!”

The other end comes alive after the first ring, proving that Mikey hadn’t let go of the phone even though his useless older brother wasn’t answering.

“I drew fish! Yesterday! And today I’m taking them to class. Say, cool? I’ll ask Di to send you a photo. Am I cool?”

Despite the total shitshow, Sam breaks into a wide smile, the one he knows makes dimples appear on his cheeks. The only thing he and his brother have in common.

“Cooler than all the cool kids, buddy. How are you? Did you eat? Promise me you’ll eat before school.”

“You didn’t pick up”. The accusation slips into Mikey's voice, and then he goes quiet.

Sam sighs and glances again at the merciless numbers on the display. 7:15. He needs to hurry if he doesn’t want to run into the wrath of his psychotic boss. He clamps the phone between his shoulder and ear and yanks off his pants, wincing at the crusty residue and his general condition — both outside and inside. Then he gets up and, trying not to groan too loudly, shuffles to the bathroom, finding his toothbrush lying in the sink.

“Sorry, sunshine, you know what a sleepyhead I am. At least you helped me not oversleep work.”

“I helped?” the spark returns to Mikey’s voice, right where it belongs.

“Course. What would I do without you?” Sam starts scrubbing his teeth at the speed of sound. “Listen,” he spits out the toothpaste and splashes water from the tap onto it. The tiny mirror reflects his own wide, unshaven face with puffy red eyes. What a fucking beauty. Nick will have to deal with this look today, no time to shave anymore. “Be a good boy, okay? And listen to Di...”

“I drew fish because we were told to draw our pets,” Mikey says matter-of-factly. Sam grabs the fridge handle, swaying as a sudden wave of guilt hits him harder than nausea.

“We don’t have any, but I thought it would be cool to get fish. When I move in with you. Fish are good. They don’t need much care. And they don’t eat much. Doesn’t cost a lot of money. Right?..”

Before Sam can form a coherent answer that doesn’t end in mumbling and pathetic dumb excuses, clicks sound on the line, and his little brother’s voice moves away. Instead comes the familiar wheezing.

“Eyup, Diana,” Sam more states than asks, pulling out a random can of beer that was lying around and prying the tab off with his nail.

“From the sound of it, that’s definitely not Coke Zero,” his stepmom croaks in reply.

There are many things he hates about Diana. One of them, and probably the biggest, is that she somehow ended up with his dad and got knocked up at forty-two. No, not even that — she decided to keep the kid that nobody needed and wasn’t budgeted for. Especially a kid with special needs, and especially in their family. Or rather, in its absence.

But setting everything else aside, one thing he respects is her bluntness.

“Hungover, huh?”

Sam takes a fucking glorious swig and feels the helicopters slowly lowering their rotors.

“Let’s not do this,” he slams the fridge with his damaged elbow and winces from the stab of pain. “How is he?..”

Di makes a grunt that sounds more like the final horn of the Titanic.

“Still raving that his brother will come galloping in on a unicorn surrounded by flamingos and take him to the land of magical fairies where you don’t have to study and gold coins fall from the sky. How the fuck do you think he is? As usual. He doesn’t know that his Sammy is a fucking idiot of the highest order, and his magical land is three spliffs smoked one after another. You sending money?..”

“Look, I remember, I know I promised. I’m literally heading to Nick’s right now.” Why do all shirts play “smell which one of us stinks the most” when you need them? Sam digs through the pile of unwashed clothes and finds a relatively decent one with a peeling Periphery logo. “He promised some article, I’ll ask for an advance...”

“Nick?” Di spits loudly, her low smoker’s voice buzzing so hard his speaker vibrates against his shoulder. “That piece of shit? Listen, kiddo, not that I give a fuck, but I told you and I’ll say it again. Your Nick is a tosser. Wanna know how I know? Cause I smell my own kind from a mile away. He’s gonna fuck you over.”

“Di, please, we’ve already talked about this. You want money? Well, he’s exactly the guy who’ll get you a couple of pounds.”

“Then fucking find someone else who’ll get me a couple of pounds, you idiot, just like your dad. And it’s not ‘me’, it’s ‘us’. You’ve got a brother 'ere with me, in case you forgot.”

He’s glad Di lowers her voice so Mikey, whose yapping he can hear in the background, doesn’t catch that last line. His ears are burning.

“I need to shower, I’m late. Keep an eye on him, okay?..”

“And what the fuck d' you think I’ve been doing before this, charity work? Fuck ye!” The stepmom shuts him down in her usual manner, though there’s no real heat in her voice. When short beeps sound in the receiver, the phone bitchily switches back to the alarm, reminding him he has half an hour to wash up, fly out of the apartment and bike his ass to the house of his infamous employer, personally immortalized in Diana’s parables.

Squeezing into the tiny shower stall where he has to fold himself in half so he doesn’t break everything to shit, Sam leans his forehead against the tile and allows himself to think about nothing for exactly two minutes out of the ten allotted for the shower.

But the thoughts still rush to join this ride of unprecedented generosity and pour through the holes in his self-defense fortress.

When he moved to London from Harrogate two years ago, Mikey was three and a half and still didn’t understand concepts like “I’m leaving but I’ll call you” or “I’ll definitely come get you from here.” He understood that when the clock hand moved three marks, his brother would come back from teaching drums and they could sit together or draw or ask to be flipped upside down in the air and then squeal loudly while dad wasn’t home. When dad was home, you could still squeal, but not from joy.

He shamefully bailed and left Mikey with an unstable and harsh mother and an absent gloomy father. Mikey, who needed to draw exactly fifteen drawings a day so he wouldn’t drive himself and everyone around him insane. Who dreamed of a dog, but most of all of not having to count three marks on the clock anymore. That Sam would always be with him.

Well, buddy, I fucked up, you know. I lied to you hard and thoroughly.

Sam startles in the shower when he sees a huge black spider lurking in the corner near the drain.

He and the spider stare at each other for a while. The spider is philosophical, Sam is with growing panic.

Spiders are supposed to bring news, but the only news he’ll accept is winning a hundred million pound jackpot so he doesn’t have to live in this Bromley shithole anymore.

“Aaaah, fuck!” he yells, ripping the shower head off the mount and washing the uninvited neighbor down the pipe. No spiders on his shift. Anything with more than four legs shouldn’t exist in the same plane as him.

He washes up somehow, then rubs himself with a towel and hastily shoves his head into the found shirt. Three more gulps of beer instead of breakfast, black jeans with worn knees, keys, last glance at the studio — twenty-five square meters of completely cluttered space, five of which are occupied by the bathroom, another five by the drumkit. He needs to clean up and buy groceries, but that’ll be later. First, let’s hear what the hell Nick wanted so urgently that he has to drag his ass to the middle of nowhere to meet in person instead of online.

Sam promised that London would bring him money that he’d send to Mikey so he could feed him properly, dress him in something other than rags and maybe even take him to some creative class. Well, London lied to him too. He did send money, though. Not a lot, but the joy on his little brother’s face made up for the fact that sometimes after sending it he didn’t have enough for food himself. A session drummer with at least some talent is needed by many, actually, and at first, with Jerry’s help, he had no shortage of work. But it was tedious work that brought almost no money while taking a shit-ton of strength and time.

Nick was a different story, but even there was a catch.

**

Of course Sam is late for everything, and he arrives at the rather inconspicuous door in a pretty deaf alley in Croydon fifteen minutes late.

Nick is already hanging in the doorway.

Strictly speaking, Nick is a year and a half younger than him, but looks much older. He knows it and tries to look... well. relevant. At the moment, the bags under his eyes are the size of two lunar craters, shading the bleached ends of his hair combed upwards. He squints at Sam from under his brow and from below, because he’s also half a head shorter than Hallett.

“Fuck, did you ride from Yorkshire? I don’t understand?”

Nick’s annoying habit of chopping phrases into questioning sentences drives anyone insane, but after so many years Sam got used to it. He even texts the same way, for example “eh? hello? you there? when’s the draft? I don’t understand? fuck?”.

“Don’t bitch, please,” Sam asks, squeezing past his boss deeper into the corridor that smells of withered geraniums and dishwasher liquid. Nick’s house is much bigger than his tiny cell for ridiculous money, but he doesn’t give a shit about living space, and usually it’s either all cluttered with stuff or five more of Nick’s equally fucked-up buddies are hanging out.

Today it’s relatively clean, which means only one thing — Nick thought about something for a long time and came to another "brilliant" idea.

They met online on Reddit about five years ago, when Nick was known for going through comment sections and writing the most hater comments under all the bands that somehow gained popularity and made it. He was from that breed of metal elitists who listen to niche bands assembled from three cripples in dad’s garage and called something like “Death Bulldozer”.

Listening to that shit, Sam always wondered how accurately they came up with the names, because after listening he really wanted to die, preferably being run over by a bulldozer.

Five years ago Sam got into an argument with him about deathcore dying, for which he got verbally fucked in DMs. Then Nick found out he was a drummer himself, took pity and even deigned to admit that his YouTube covers were pretty decent. Around the same time Nick, being a fucking sneak, founded a portal called MetalMayhem and a podcast of the same name, which at first became a very good source among the same filthy elitists as Nick himself, and then, ironically, gained some popularity and got shit after a couple of controversial interviews with semi-popular bands.

Around the same time Nick started dealing and using, which heavily fucked his brain, and the podcast, and then the portal, calmed down in sharpness and moved into the “ah, those fucks” category. And around the same time Sam, who desperately needed money, agreed to become one of the reviewers of the local northern scene, periodically getting small cash for it.

When everything at home became completely fucked, it was to Nick that he went for advice, and he told him to come to London.

“I’ve got an idea worth a million here? And you can’t get your ass up?..”

Nick falls into the armchair, unceremoniously shoving his cat Liza off it, and starts rolling a spliff.

An idea worth a million lately means that Sam will have to bust his ass, because lately Nick doesn’t bust his own ass, being up to his ears in his own shit. Which doesn’t stop him from constantly trying to break into the world of online journalism.

Sam carefully sits opposite, brushing still wet hair from his forehead and catching his breath.

“I applied for accreditation for Download? These dickheads don’t want to let us in? Understand?”

Now this is bad. The only thing worse than Nick is Nick pissed off at the lack of recognition of his fucking majestic persona.

“And... who gives a fuck?..” says Sam, leaning back in the chair, still not understanding where the conversation is going. Of course they won’t let them into Download. Andy Copping and all his merry gang don’t really like portals like Mayhem. Especially after Nick, high as a kite a year ago, released his own investigation into corruption at big British festivals. “You despise them, don’t you?”

“I despise them but I keep it in mind. I came up with a sensation? Understand? And you’re gonna help me make it happen.” Nick’s finger pokes him straight in the face, disappearing in the smoke.

“After that all these dickheads will start taking us seriously. I got some cash thrown my way. We’ve got money? We can arrange a grandioso virtuoso. Shall we cook up an investigation?”

“On festivals again?”
Over the years Sam had gotten involved in such investigations more than once, but after moving to London Nick turned him into one of his assistants. Read: errand boy, knowing Sam needed money. By now Nick, thanks to his second line of work, had cash. And Mayhem now had plenty of freelance ears and hands, mostly as fucked in the head as its creator.

Why Nick suddenly wanted to drag him back into this, Sam doesn’t understand, but his ass smells yellow tabloid scum.

“Fuck festivals. How about we go straight for the headliners?”

Nick blows smoke into his face again, and Sam for some reason remembers the spider and the news it prophesied for him.

His employer narrows his eyes.

“What do you know about Sleep Token?“

Chapter Text

“Sleep Token?” Sam repeats, not quite sure he would ever hear these words come out of the mouth of the person sitting across from him in his lifetime.

“Yeah?” Nick repeats in turn, blowing a decent cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. Spooked Liza offendedly licks her paw by the leg of his chair, then demonstratively flicks her tail toward the door — like, you assholes can deal with the shit you’ve stirred up yourselves.

Sam exhales, closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose, lost in guesses and trying to scrape together the few crumbs of information he knows from the depths of his memory.

“Uhh, well, an anonymous band. There’s four of them, I think? Or five. They play prog… rock? Prog metal? Got pretty popular pretty fast — though honestly I’ve only heard a couple of songs, one of which I know from TikTok edits of BG3. Your Reddit friends in the threads constantly shit on them, they absolutely need to slap a sticker on everything: is this metal or not.”

On the last phrase he adds some humor to his voice. Nick doesn’t react to the jab at all, just keeps smoking and watching him with a half-sarcastic expression. Neither the face, nor the silence, nor the very essence of the request sits right with Sam. Someone like Nick would only ask about guys like Sleep Token if he was preparing a massive shitstorm online, and Hallett really doesn’t want to be part of it.

“They’ve got a pretty good drummer, right?”

Sam tries to recall what stuck with him from the little he’d heard.

“Yeah, that’s probably true. A guy I know mentioned him, and I trust his opinion. Can’t judge personally, I know too little.”

Nick finishes his smoke, flicks the stub straight into the ashtray on the cluttered paper-covered table, and pokes at Sam again, this time with a finger snap.

“Perfect. So go find out then? Dig up everything you can on him? On them?”

An uncertain chuckle, more like a polite cough, escapes Sam’s lips. He fucking knew some bullshit was brewing. Hallett tries to play it off as a joke.

“Well, what do you need Google for then? Or do you want a summary from private fan Facebook groups? I think some girl from your freelancers would have better luck with that.”

Nick puts his feet on the floor, very patiently licks his dry lips, then pushes himself closer to Sam with a loud squeak of the chair and takes his hands in his own. The look he gives Sam while lifting his face and stretching it into a smile doesn’t promise anything good. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes — they stay glassy, slightly glazed over. Up close, Nick smells like a fucking mix of everything: tobacco, weed, gin, some Thai takeaway, toilet freshener, pretentious perfume, cat piss, and the faint smell of a man who’s figuratively shat himself. Sam doesn’t feel any better because of it. Something’s going on in his boss’s life, and that combat blonde hair isn’t gonna fix it.

“No, I think you’re exactly the one who’s gonna help me here.” The fact that Nick drops his usual questioning speech pattern sends chills down Sam’s spine. “None of my freelancers have any real field experience, so to speak. Meanwhile you, as we can see, know half the heavy underground in the country and can worm your way under the skin of any metalhead if you pull the sticks out of your back pocket and the tongue out of your ass. Plus, a cute thing like you gets let in everywhere if you use your talents right. We’ve got six, maybe seven months, depending on when Download officially announces them. Are you even listening?..”

Sam has a lot of questions and very few answers, but for some reason the first thing he does is stupidly open and close his mouth. Worm under the skin? What the fuck is happening exactly?..
He doesn’t realize he said the last part out loud.

Nick, who was grandly rambling about some venues and mutual acquaintances, shuts up reproachfully when the remark interrupts his monotonous babbling.

“You’re seriously telling me you’re thinking about doing a piece on Sleep Token for Mayhem? And not just a piece — what? An investigation, like you said? Leaking info? What the fuck are you even planning to write about?.. Why do you need this at all, you used to spit on yellow press, and now you’re flushing your own website down the toilet for clicks and views?”

He throws off Nick’s hands — sweaty and sticky — and tries to stand up, but suddenly gets pushed back down quite roughly. Nick’s face, no longer smiling at all, hangs an inch from the tip of his nose.

“The whole world, for fuck’s sake, Sammy, is clicks and views. The whole world is attention and money. You get it? You fucking prick?.. Or did you somehow forget how those same clicks and views brought you a few quid so you could send them to whatever shithole you crawled out of?.. Or maybe you got lost in the textures when this very Mayhem actually started making some money, and thanks to who, exactly? Me?.. Who did you run to so they could wipe your ass when daddy was beating the shit out of that pretty face of yours? What, work the checkout at Tesco? No? No. Because you’re too fucking good for that, and London's obviously going to recognise your brilliance. Musician and writer, well, I'll be damned.”

After spitting out this whole tirade under Sam’s shocked gaze, Nick leans back and lights up again, this time a cigarette. The stinking smoke burns his eyes.

“In reality, you are incapable of doing anything else; that’s the truth,” Nick concludes and finally blows a stinking ring right into his face. “And your side gigs only bring enough for beer. Otherwise you wouldn’t be clinging to me.”

“Nice to know what you really think of me.”

Sam decides for a moment whether he should tell Nick that his website is complete shit and he’s hammering the last nails into his own coffin if he still dreams of proper online journalism. But no matter how much he wants to spit in Nick’s smug skinny face, he needs money — and right fucking now. And Nick is the only one who can realistically give it to him soon. The words about an advance get stuck in his throat like a lump, but his bitchy editor correctly reads the internal struggle written all over Sam’s face.

“I’ll pay you upfront. And well. Come on, Sammy, listen, I didn’t mean to be rude, okay?” He puts the dumb-asshole expression back on his face. “Maybe I got carried away about the lack of talent, but you do write well. Remember those couple of interviews you did? Some of the top viewed. The material you found for the podcast. You’re sharp, you know music, and most importantly, you play. You’ll pass as one of them. Fuck, you’re almost one of them already. You’re one of them, Sammy?”

“Why the fuck do you need Sleep Token?” Sam shakes his head at all the empty reassurances, even though there’s a grain of truth underneath — he writes decently and knows how to dig. “And how do you know they’re gonna headline Download?”

“A little bird.” Nick takes a deep drag. “Who else? You seriously underestimate how much they blew up in a couple of years. It’s insane. Over a million subscribers in a week or some shit like that. People want to read about them. Demand exists — no supply. Nobody knows shit except a couple of blurry facts from their bio, half of which are made up. And a couple of equally blurry photos. And the single interview on the entire internet, which they clearly wrote while tripping on acid and laughing their asses off behind the scenes.”

Apparently, appealing to reason isn’t going to work, because for that the opponent first needs to actually have some fucking reason.

“Okay, you do realize this is NDA, label, management, and all that shit, right? Even if you get some material in your hands — fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud — Mayhem is done. They’ll sue you, and you’ll drag me into it too. I’m out. Sorry. If this threatens to turn into a bigger lawyer bill than I can handle later, then I’m out.”

“It depends on how you use the material that ends up in my hands,” the boss dodges darkly, sending another stub after the first one. That tells Sam he’s not saying everything. And that he’s nervous. “Not everything that doesn’t fit Mayhem can’t be used somewhere else.”

“What the fuck did you get yourself into?” Hallett blurts out sincerely, and Nick snaps his head toward him. He studies Sam’s face for a few seconds, opens his mouth like he’s about to say a thing, but ends up spitting out something completely different.

“Look, are you a journalist or what? A reviewer? Then use your damn brain. I’m giving you money to study the most popular and controversial band on the current scene, one that’s about to get even bigger after the festival and whatever else they’re planning for the summer. The whole world is gonna be talking about the Tokens, and you’ll have the key to the info in your hands. Review their style. Write about their crew. About what the fuck gear they use. Where their roots are, who inspired them, what they even are. And if you’re lucky enough to get really close and do something that would make readers crash our server, we’ll find where to use it. And if they take you in as a second vocalist or a fucking pole dancer on stage, I expect a fat exclusive interview for the pod. No NDA. Nobody should even know who you are. Just… dig around.”

Gotta admit, he’s thought this through. Sam drags his hands hard down his face.

“I don’t want to become a stalker, Nick.”

“I’ll give you five grand upfront right now and another ten when the article’s done. If there’s more, ten per piece. If you dig up an exclusive — we’ll discuss rates separately.”

What the fuck?

“Where the hell did you get this money?” he asks in a hoarse voice. It’s not some insane amount for London, and definitely not for Nick himself, but the most Nick had ever paid him was a couple hundred.

“You’re offering more than you could ever make off the ads, no matter how killer the article turns out.”

“Consider it an early Christmas. You in or not?”

It would be enough to send Mikey some cash and pay for all the classes he wants. Maybe even buy decent mics or an interface for home studio, because his old Behringer has seen too much in its life and his YouTube videos lose hard in quality. Fuck it. Just… fuuuck.

“You don’t actually give a shit about guys like them,” Sam whispers into the void, mentally surrendering.

“I sincerely hope you don’t either. With that attitude everything will be much easier.”

He watches as triumphant sparks flash in Nick’s eyes behind his lashes when he lowers his head to roll him a spliff.

When Sam lights up too, his head is completely empty.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“In that case, start from the very beginning, my dear friend.”