Chapter Text
August 26th 1982
Lars is supposed to start his senior year at high school today, he’s actually already finished his mandatory education in Denmark. He finished when he was 16 going on 17, he is now turning 18 in December. Lars has spent the past year focusing on Tennis and other sports alike, but mainly Tennis.
He isn’t sure why he has to do high school, his father says it’s to make some new friends and improve his language skills. Lars thinks that’s a load of bullshit.
Lars’s father travels a lot. He is a widely known tennis player in Europe, and therefore travels for his tournaments all across the world. Usually, Lars would come with him but not this time because he's supposed to be in High School.
It’s not like he doesn’t want to go see an American high school, he’s actually quite excited, it’s just that he doesn’t know anyone and he barely even understands the language.
He ponders over this as he walks down the stairs at which point he starts wondering how he’s going to even get to the high school. He doesn’t have a car, hell, he doesn’t even have a bus ticket.
“Hey! You there! Danish boy!”
Lars looks up from the stairwell and sees the two boys from the other day beckoning him over. He looks around to see if maybe they’re talking to some other Danish boy. He’s the only one there. So, against his better judgement, he walks over to them.
“Yes?”
Lars says as he walks up to them, he notices the hickeys on the strawberry blonde’s neck, they were red and fresh and very noticeable, he also had a few bite marks that circled around his neck and then went further down his shirt. The other guy had a black eye but also a few hickeys here and there on his neck. Huh, wonder what kind of fight these guys got into.
“Would you like to ride with us?”
The dirty blonde asks and then points at the closely approaching trolley coming down the road.
“I don’t have uhh ticket…”
Lars says, feeling kind of embarrassed. The strawberry blonde then stands up fully from where he was leaning on a light post.
“Oh don’t worry, you won’t need one.”
The strawberry blonde says and puts a hand on Lars’s shoulder, squeezing it a little before leading him to the trolley.
“Come on, Scandi.”
The Strawberry Blonde pushes Lars into the trolley, with him and the other blonde following closely behind. They sit down in seats near the back, the two Americans sitting together while the Dane sits in the seat on the other side of the aisle.
“Did we ever tell you our names?”
The strawberry blonde asks, to which Lars shakes his head.
“Oh well, I’m Dave, Dave Mustaine.”
Dave reaches over the dirty blonde and shakes Lars’s hand.
“James Hetfield.”
James also shakes Lars’s hand, his handshake was firm unlike Dave’s, it reminded him of his father’s handshake. Being so close to James made it so that he could better see the black eye, he put a finger up to James’s face and hovered it a couple inches away.
“What happened?”
Lars asked, Dave turned his head away and chuckled, he put his hand up to his mouth to try and hide it, Lars saw his knuckles as he did so, they’re red and bruised as if he’s punched someone.
Ohhh.
“I uhh...got in a small fight..”
They all knew that was a lie, Dave then put a hand on where James’s neck met his shoulder and leaned forward.
“You should see the other guy”
Dave said with a grin and James looked quite embarrassed as if he wanted to just sink into his seat, which he probably does. The whole scene made Lars chuckle which turned into a laugh, which made the other two boys laugh as well.
Lars hated his laugh and hated his smile even more. He has a bit of a tooth gap which he hates more than anything, his mother loved it, she said it added to his baby face. He hates his “baby face”, he hates it because she loved it.
“Cute smile, Lars”
Dave said after their laughter had died down, Lars looked away to avoid blushing. He doesn’t know why he’s blushing. Why is he blushing?
While Lars is having his existential crisis, the two Americans begin their own conversation. Lars uses this moment to look out the window and look at the San Francisco landscape when all of a sudden he starts thinking about Kirk Hammett. Does he also go to this high school? Does he even go to high school? He looks to be the same age as Lars, maybe a bit older…
“So Lars”
James says and Lars looks at him, James takes this as a sign to move forward with what he was saying.
“You play any instruments?”
The fuck does that mean.
Lars made a confused face that James caught on to and then began to elaborate.
“Oh you know, like guitar!”
James then proceeded to do air versions of each and every instrument he named.
“Or like bass or piano”
James stopped for a moment to ponder over what else to say.
“Drums!”
Dave said while doing air drums with his fingers and making drum noises.
“Ahh Trommer!!”
“Yes! ….Trommer!”
James says, not really sure what Trommer means. Dave then whispers to James while they both still look at Lars with confused faces.
“The fuck does Trommer mean…?”
“No fucking clue”
James whispers back.
“I play those! Trommer! Drums!”
Lars says excitedly, his face lights up and he looks like a child on Christmas morning, Christmas night for him because he celebrates Christmas on the 24th but that doesn’t matter. He loves drums, he loves talking about drums, he’ll talk about drums to anyone who’ll listen, he loves everything about drums, he may even love drums more than tennis if he’s going to be honest.
Before Lars could begin talking about his love for drums, the trolley stopped in front of a big building that Lars can only assume is a school.
“Come on, Big guy”
Dave says to Lars as he stands up from his seat, giving Lars a pat on his shoulder as he does so. Lars follows Dave out the trolley and into the school yard.
The three boys all had to go and collect their schedule for this school year so they went down to the main office to get said schedule. Upon looking at their schedule, they realised that they had a lot of their classes together, except for a few classes here and there. Lars had Math, French and Gym with Dave and James, English with Dave and History with James while he had Science and Art alone. There are also clubs he has to sign up for as a mandatory after school thing but he can worry about that later. His first class was English with Dave, Dave lit up at that for some reason.
As they said goodbye to James, they headed off into the direction of the English classroom. Dave starts talking about something that Lars isn’t really listening to, instead he starts thinking about Kirk Hammett again. He’s subconsciously looking for him in the crowd of students rushing to get to their classes in time.
“Does Kirk Hammett go here?”
Lars asks, cutting off Dave while he does so.
“What?”
“Does Kirk Hammett go here?”
Lars repeats.
“Kirk Hammett? I- I mean, yeah, well he did.”
Dave says, still confused as to why Lars is asking that.
“Did?”
“Yeah he graduated last year- why do you care?”
Dave says and Lars is a bit taken aback by the tone that Dave used.
“What? I can’t ask?”
Lars says. he’s getting quite annoyed now.
“I mean you can, but like why? How do you even know who he is? You moved in like yesterday.”
“He helped me move boxes up- you know what, I don’t need to tell you anything! In fact, why do you even care who I hang out with?!?”
Lars stopped in the middle of the hallway, his accent was growing thicker and thicker as he got angrier and angrier.
Lars then lowered his voice and narrowed his green, almond shaped eyes.
“Got a crush on me or something?”
Dave widened his eyes in shock and opened his mouth to defend himself but Lars cut him off before he could.
“I’m going to class.”
Lars then walked off in a direction that he could only hope was right.
“You don’t even know where you’re going!”
Dave shouted from where he was still standing in the hallway and Lars just kept walking.
༺❤︎︎༻
Dave was fine, Dave didn’t care, why would he care? Barely even know the guy. He walked the rest of the way in a pissy mood and when he got to the classroom, he sat down in his usual seat next to no one because no one really likes him, except James. Dave had a….reputation. Everyone thought he was a satanic devil worshipper or a druggie, usually both. I mean it makes sense, he was a druggie but that shits all behind him now, he’s clean. God knows that James makes sure of that.
About 8 minutes had passed since class started and Dave wasn’t paying attention, he was bouncing his leg and thinking about Lars, where the fuck is he?
Then all of a sudden, the door opens and in walks Lars, Dave’s leg stopped bouncing and his back automatically straightened.
“Ah….welcome…”
The teacher looks down at the clipboard in his hand.
“Layrs Ul-reech…”
The teacher said, pronouncing Lars’s name all wrong.
“It’s Lars Ulrich”
Lars said, drawing out the Danish pronunciation.
“Right…Since it’s your first day here, I’ll let this tardy slide. But it won’t happen
Lars nods. The teacher looks around the room for a free seat, there is only one left and it's right next to Dave, Lars reluctantly sits down next to him. Lars feels bad, he shouldn’t have snapped at him, it wasn’t like Dave didn’t have it coming but still.
Lars keeps stealing small glances at Dave who is, at the moment, staring out the window in fake concentration.
The teacher is going on about something that Lars hasn’t really been paying attention to, it isn’t like he can pay attention to it, he doesn’t even understand half of it.
Lars then decides to begin scribbling something on a piece of paper before folding it up and passing it to Dave’s table as discretely as he could.
Dave is confused but reluctantly takes it.
He opens it up and looks at the contents of it. On the paper were many iterations of the word “Sorry” including sorri and soreey before eventually landing on sorree. It makes Dave chuckle, he finds it quite endearing. He then begins writing as well, he folds it up and passes it to Lars.
Lars opens it up and the only thing that Dave had wrote was Sorry*.
Lars drew a sad face next to it and passed the paper to Dave again.
Dave started to laugh and tried to hide it but failed miserably, which then made Lars laugh.
The teacher looked at the two boys with a stern, disappointed face which only made them laugh more. They only stopped when the teacher threatened them with a week’s detention but they still made funny faces at each other when the teacher wasn’t looking.
༺❤︎︎༻
The day breezed by pretty quickly and before Lars knew it, it was 11:32PM.
Lars’s English teacher had threatened them with detention earlier today if they didn’t stop interrupting the class, they stopped. For a bit. Before continuing again, only the teacher didn’t give them detention, he gave them something worse…Homework.
So here he is, at his table which is the only furniture in his room other than his bed, staring at his English homework. He’s been sitting there for about 15 minutes just staring at it, he’s supposed to read some story and then write about it. Only he can’t read it. Because he doesn’t understand it.
Lars groans and lays his head on the table, he doesn’t get it, all the words are scrambled and every time he tries to even begin reading it, he just gets a headache. But when he thinks all hope is lost, he gets an idea.
Kirk Hammett.