Hit the Lights

Title: Hit the Lights - Chapter 3
Author/Pseudonym: ScrewTheDaisies
Email: herself@heathergwells.com
Archive: Please ask
Rating: R
Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction based loosely on the public personas of the members of the band Metallica. No harm or impeachment is intended by this work.
Summary: James and Lars: the early years.

The next afternoon Lars found himself in James's bedroom sitting on the floor watching James down first one then another of the twenty-four beers he'd brought with him.

After the second can had been crumpled and tossed a corner of the room, Lars took a deep breath and plunged into part two of his latest plot.

"Uh, James? I, I , I wanted to talk to you about last night."

James's brow creased. "What about it?"

Lars got to his feet and took a couple steps across the room, away from James, then he stopped and half-turned back. "I'm not sure I should even bring it up, but...it's just kind of sticking with me and...."

"What?"

Lars opened his mouth and then shut it. And then opened it again, but didn't say anything.

"Well what the fuck is it?"

Lars judged that James had std ond onto that fine line between curiosity and impatience. Showtime. "I, uh...." He ran his hand through his hair and looked to the ceiling. "I caught you looking at me."

"What? Looking at you where? When? What the fuck?"

"When we were going at it with those chicks...." He cleared his throat. "I caught you cing ing me out."

Lars himself had actually gone to great pains to _not_ check James out the night before--as much as he'd wanted to do just that--to make certain that James couldn't throw this accusation back at him. And since he'd made such an effort not to look toward James last night, he had no idea whether ot Jot James actually had ever glanced in his direction. But _that_ didn't matter.

"What the fuck? Have you lost your fucking mind? No fucking--no way was I fucking checking you out."

"Yeah, look, I thought maybe it was me, like I was being paranoid, right? But...."

"But what? But I wasn't fucking checking you out!"

"But Angie said something about it, too. She--" Hand through his hair again. "She asked me if you were...you know."

Fuck, James could move fast, from sitting pensively on his bed to slamming Lars into a wall in the space of a breath. He had Lars on tip-toe; his thumb and index finger dug under the corners of Lars's jaw.

"Fuck you," he growled into Lars's face. "I did not fucking check you out."

"Hey...hey, it's okay. Fuck. We're fucking guys. Guys check each other out." He ed aed as James's fingers dug in deeper. He'd run out of toe to climb up on and was ready to start walking up the wall. "It fucking happens, in the locker room or whatever. You know, take a peek, see what you're up against. So you were checking to see what I was doing. No big fucking deal."

"I was not checking you out." But he stopped pushing so hard.

"Right. You weren't. But if you had been it's no big fucking deal. I'd have looked to see what the fuck youe doe doing if my eyes hadn't been rolled back in my own head."

James pushed one last time and then let go, turning away.

"Have another fucking beer," Lars said.

"Planning on it. Stop looking at my ass."

Lars rubbed at his throat and held back a grin. "As if." There was just one more thing, as soon as the right moment presented--

"Fucking faggot," James grumbled as he popped open another can.

"Me? What? You're calling _me_ a fucking faggot?"

James shrugged, lifted the can near his lips, then said, "If the name fits," before pouring beer down his throat.

Lars made himself look taken-aback. He stammered. Finally he said, "Like you have room to talk."

"Whaddaya mean? I already told you I didn't fucking look at you last night."

"Forget last night." Lars advanced on him. "What about a few weeks ago? You didn't fucking stop what happened then."

James's cheeks reddened; whether out of anger or embarrassment, Lars couldn’t tell.

"In fact, you fucking participated. Or was that someone else's hand on my dick?"

With a snarl, James leapt toward him. Lars closed his eyes and raised his arms in front of his face. James's fist got him on the side of his head. Lars bent and turned, ducking his head under his arms, giving James his back to beat on, but no further blows came. He heard the door slam. Peeking out from under his hands, he saw that he was alone. He touched his head where it throbbed from James's knuckles and let out a ragged breath. Okay, that didn't go as bad as it could have. Nothing was fucking broken at least.

Lars sat on the edge of James's unmade bed. This was the best place to wait for him; he had to come home eventually.

Ron got home first. When he asked about James, Lars brushed him off with half an explanation, half of it true. Eventually, it got dark. And then it got late. Lars found hif lyf lying on James's mismatched sheetarinaring up at the shadows the moonlight cast onto the ceiling.

At three a.m., the door to James's room flew open. Lars sat up. He heard a palm slap against the wall, then the light came on.

"Well aren't you pretty?" he asked.

James stood hunched over and blinking just inside the doorway. His jaw was slack and his eyes glassy. "The fuck you doing here?" he slurred, swaying a bit.

"I was worried. You look like shit."

James's face scrunched and then he said, "Gonna puke."

Lars jumped up from the bed and snatched a giant plastic bowl. Popcorn kernels rattled in the bottom of it as he thrust it into James's hands. James bent his head and vomited. Lars winced and looked away. Then he moved behind James, who had progressed to mere spitting, and put his hands on his shoulders.

"Why don't you just come and lie down and sleep it off, okay?" He pushed James toward the bed.

After stumbling up alongside it, James stood there, swaying. The bowl in his hands looked ready to slide out of his grasp. Lars took it from him and set it on the floor beside the bed. Then he turned James around and got him onto the bed, curled up on his side, his palms together under his head like a little kid.

"Why don't we just take your shoes off?" He pulled at the laces on James's sneakers, loosening them enough to pry the sneakers off his feet, then he dropped them, one after the other, to the floor at the foot of the bed. "There, isn't that better?"

James stared straight ahead at the opposite wall.

"Okay, so the bowl is right there on the floor. Just...you know, lean over when.... Anyway, I'll be right back."

He went out to rummage through the bathroom, then returned to James's side a few minutes later.

"I found a washcloth. Or something like a washcloth."

He held up a dampened rag. James's eyes didn't follow it. Lars sighed blotted James's face with it. He'd wanted to give him aspirin, too, to maybe head off the hangover, but he hadn't found any in the bathroom medicine cabinet. When James's eyes slid closed, Lars folded the cloth into a rectangle and pressed it across James's forehead. Then he shuffled off to check the kitchen for aspirin, just in case, but had no luck there, either.

When he returned to James's room with a tall glass of water, he found James lying with his head hanging off the bed. Apparently, he'd made use of the puke bowl again.

"James?"

"Hrmmmm."

"Come on, drink this. It'll help. All that fucking alcohol dehydrates you. Plus it'll get the taste out of your mouth, you know?"

No response.

"James." He crouched beside the bed, closer to the bowl than he'd like to have been but he didn't want to move James's bowl, and touched James's shoulder. "Come on." He gave a gentle shake.

"Frumph."

"Okay, just drink some water first."

An eye cracked open, closed, and then blinked open again. James reached for thter.ter. Lars watched him he pushed himself shakily up onto an elbow and take a sip.

"Come on, drink it up. Then I'll leave you alone."

James took another swallow, then coughed. Lars flinched aside, in case James was heading for the bowl. Instead, he wiped water off his chin, missing most of it.

"All right, just a little more. Then I'll leave you alone. Promise."

James glared at him with the one open eye, then drank back three swallows and thrust the glass toward Lars. Lars's fingers closed over it a split second after James's let go. Water sploshed inside. He set it down on the floor, closer to the wall than to the barf bowl.

"Okay, then. I'm leaving. All right? Get some fucking sleep, and drink some more fucking water if you get up to take a leak or puke or whatever. All right? Okay?"

James flopped back down onto the bed, his eyes closed and mouth open, the tip of his tongue lolling at the corner of his lips. Lars smiled. "Okay. See you in the morning." He turned out the light and shut the door as he left the room.

The next day, mid-afternoon, Lars popped back by to find James lying on the couch in a ragged t-shirt and a pair of old shorts. The puffiness of his face and the way he squinted when the door banged shut showed that he was still suffering from the drinking binge of the night before.

"How's he doing?" Lars asken ann anyway.

"He's been chasing the hair of the dog." Ron gestured to the empty can on the coffee table.

Lars shook his head. Then he reached in his pocket and called out, "Hey, think quick." He tossed the bottle of aspirin at James. It landed on his chest. His hand came up and clutched it there.

"How you feeling?" Lars asked, scootching James's feet out of the way so he could sit down; Ron had already claimed the chair. The TV, a black and white set with tin foil on the ends of its antennas, was going, but the volume was cranked down so you could barely hear it.

"Like I'd feel better if I died and went to hell," James replied, holding the bottle of aspirin out. Lars took it and opened it while James popped open a fresh beer that he'd had sitting on the floor by the leg of the couch.

"That's the spirit."

Lars shook two aspirin onto his palm. James scrabbled them up with three slightly uncoordinated fingers, popped them in his mouth, and washed them back with half the can of beer.

Lars leaned back on the couch and pretended to become absorbed in the Gilligan's Island rerun.

Eventually--halfway through the second half hour of Batman--Ron got up, said goodbye, and headed to work.

"Feel like eating anything?" Lars asked.

"Yeah. I'm fucking starving."

"Got anything here?"

James laughed.

"Then you'll have to get up off the fucking couch. Let's go." He nudged James's feet. James kicked back.

"I need a fucking shower."

"I'll wait."

Twenty-five minutes later, James returned to the couch with a flowered blue towel--obviously a hand-me-down, maybe from Ron's mom--wrapped around his waist. His hair dripped water down his back as he sat hunkered over, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on the TV.

Lars's cheek twitched. He forced his attention back to the TV. Green Acres had come on. Talk about a tedious fucking show.

"When's the last time you took a shower?" James asked.

"What? Yesterday, maybe. The day before?" He lifted his arm and sniffed. "I don't stink."

James wrinkled his nose.

"You fucking Americans are obsessed with showers. I think the fucking water companies start conditioning you at a young age. Subliminal kindergarten messages and shit: shower four times a day or the boogieman will fucking get you."

"What do you have against soap and water?"

"Nothing! I just don't see the need to overdo it."

"Suit yourself."

"No, no. You obviously have a problem with my B.O. or something." He stood up. "I'll go take a fucking shower right now. Is that what it'll take to make you happy, James?" he asked, heading toward the bathroom.

"Me and everyone else who runs into you this evening."

"Fuck you," he called over his shoulder.

"You want some clean clothes to wear, too?"

"These _are_ clean clothes, dick."

When he came out of the bathroom, his clothes back on and his hair, though mostly dry thanks to his efforts to keep it out of the stream of water, wrapped in a towel, he found James in his bedroom wrestling with the snarls in his still-damp hair. Lars flopped down on the bed and shoved his hands behind his head. The towel slipped down over his eyebrows. He wrenched it back.

After a few minutes, James cleared his throat and said, without turning from the little square mirror that hung on his wall, "You don't really think I'm a fag, do you?"

Lars stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before saying, "I was pissed about you slamming me into the wall."

"Yeah, about that, I'm sorry. I'm just.... That stuff gets to me."

"Can't even take a fucking joke."

"Yeah, um, let's not fucking joke about that shit, okay?"

Lars waited another beat before he said, "Right. You're probably still having trouble dealing with what happened the other--"

James threw his comb on the dresser. "New rule. Let's not fucking talk about it at all."

Lars pushed up onto his elbows. Fuck, James was hot. Lars imagined him coming over te bee bed, crawling over to him, reaching out....

"You don't think talking it out would help?"

"Help what? What would help is if you'd shut the fuck up about it."

Lars let himself drop back down on the bed. His eyes saw the ceiling, but his brain played images of James leaning over him, the wet ends of his hair sliding down Lars's cheek, leaving trails of water.

"Well, you brought it up," he said.

"And I'm shutting it the fuck down."

"All right then. Are you fucking ready to eat yet? You know, that's that problem with fucking showers. An hour fucking later and you're still not ready to get on with your fucking day. I could die of starvation right here, turn into nothing but a fucking skeleton and...."

"At least you'd be a clean skeleton. Let's go."

When Lars yanked the towel off his mostly dry hair and shook his head, he didn't miss the mixed look of amusement and resignation on James's face.

"What? It takes for fucking ever to brush it, and then it's fucking wet and you don't have the right fucking conditioner--"

He got his feet moving; James was already out the door and loping across the living room.

Lars gave him a two week break, taking great pains during that time to avoid saying anything that remotely sounded as though he were revisiting the forbidden subject. They just had fun: hanging out, rocking out, catching Motley Crue at the Whiskey, talking about how shit was gonna be when they were fucking famous. Mostly, they played, and while they played Lars relished his spot behind the drum kit where he could look out and watch James fucking own that guitar. From time to time, he got a little _too_ into watching and, inevitably, the cymbal would go crashing over. "Stupid fucking cheap kit," Lars would mutter. Depending on his mood, James would turn and glare or he'd just play around it. Yeah, for those two weeks, things were pretty much the way they used to be.

Part of that was because Lars was stumped. He had a vague idea of what he could do next, but it hadn't taken shape yet. As much as he _did_ want to rush it, he didn't want to take that risk.

~Continued in chapter 4~