Chapter Text
They were doing fine until “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
Jason was still doing fine on “For Whom the Bell Tolls”—he’d practiced the songs enough, he’d sure as hell better been doing fine—and James did fine on “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, and even Lars did fine on “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The problem was Kirk. Jason didn’t know what it was, he’d been fine most of the night, maybe missed a note here or there but he hadn’t royally fucked anything up.
Until “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
Jason could see James cutting glares at Kirk the entire time, and for every song afterward. Afterward, Kirk got his footing back and he played the rest of the show with his face turned to the ground, the slight bobbing of his head the only indication that he wasn’t just a robot running through the songs. Jason got close enough to get a look at his face and there was high color in his cheeks, his jaw clenched so tight it seemed like he was in danger of breaking those big ol’ fucked up teeth right out.
Not that anyone in the audience really noticed; there were a couple of moments, mostly on solos, where there was some awkward deadness to parts of the crowd, but it was late enough in the set that everyone was drunk enough and excited enough that they could close over it—fuckin’ hell, this was Metallica. So they finished out strong as ever, and when they headed back, Jason tensed. He didn’t know for what. He didn’t know what James was going to do; if he was just going to fucking leave, if he was going to confront Kirk, if he was going to yell at Jason for no reason other than, hey, Newkid (because he knew those songs, and he hadn’t fucked up), or what. It hadn’t been a very big show. It was one of Jason’s first, with them, and they were kind of easing him in.
Nice of them, he guessed.
Once they got backstage, James turned around and crossed his arms.
Christ, Jason could practically hear Kirk gulp. “Sorry,” Kirk said. Then he tried to brush past him, turning his head down again, and James moved to block him. “I—I’m sorry. I know. I know. I fucked up about a million times. Believe me, I know.”
“Even the fucking new kid did better than you,” James said. “What, is it 1983? You just join up, Hammett?”
“I fucking know, all right?” Kirk said. He took a step back, and Jason moved out of his way. He exchanged a look with Lars, who grimaced and then very quickly busied himself with drying himself off. That looked like a good idea, so Jason copied him, stealing glances at the scene every few moments. “I—I just, it just—”
“I don’t want to hear those shitty excuses that are about to come out of your mouth,” James said. Kirk took another step back, and James matched him. Jason had a distinct feeling that Kirk was going to get hit, which couldn’t be right. That would be super fucked up. Like, sure, fooling around and stuff, sometimes someone gets hurt—but a full-on punch as punishment?
Jason really hoped that his instincts were wrong on this one. Thing was, Kirk was small. You couldn’t tell as easy looking up at him onstage, but Kirk, while not as short as Lars, was a small guy. Skinny. And looked about fifteen years old. And James was a decent-sized guy. Topped six feet, at least. And he wasn’t as skinny as Kirk.
“Whatever,” Kirk said. “Whatever. I know. I know. I’ll—I’ll run through it a couple more times, I’ll—”
“You should know that song by now, it’s two albums old.”
“I do know it, it’s just—” and then it was Kirk that brought him into it, which is not what Jason was expecting, because Kirk can be almost nice sometimes. He really only gets into it when the other two are around. The couple times it was just him and Kirk, it was kind of nice. Kirk was a lot more of a dork than he’d expected—sure, he’d seen posters and everything with Kirk and the comics, but the thing about Kirk Hammett, he was really into comics. And horror movies. And guitars. And would talk at length about any of the above subjects if you gave him an in. “He played it differently than Cliff would’ve.”
“I played it right,” Jason said. “I played it like—”
“Technically, it was right,” Kirk said. “Yeah. Okay. You match the album pretty well. But it was—it was different. You guys had to have felt that it was different.”
James glanced over at Jason, and Jason took a step back out of instinct. He knew that he shouldn’t give in to any of this shit, but sometimes he did. Especially when James was in the mood to go after more than just Jason, because if he was in the mood to go after everyone, who knew what he’d be in the mood to do to Jason. But James switched back to Kirk.
“He’s the new bass player,” James said. “We gotta fucking deal with it whether we like it or not.”
And then he knocked past Kirk, hard enough to send him back another few steps. Lars had slipped out sometime; Jason had been too wrapped up in whether he was going to witness felony assault to keep track of him, and Kirk stood there for a few seconds before shaking his head and heading for the towels.
Jason hesitated, and then said: “What are you gonna do tonight?”
Kirk glanced at him. “Probably go home and drink alone.” They played a show pretty close to home that night. Close enough to catch a taxi or something, at least.
“Sorry,” Jason said.
Kirk shook his head. “No, I—you’re lucky James didn’t take the bait I was throwing him, chucking you under the bus like that. It was shitty of me to do, but I just—”
“I probably do play it different, though.”
“Yeah,” Kirk said. “But I know my part, why should I be so wrapped up in what you’re doing that it—whatever. Go have fun. Millions of girls out there who want some of that new bass player.”
“Millions of girls out there who don’t know I’m the new bass player,” Jason said. Kirk grimaced. “I go out with you guys and all you guys are getting crowded and it’s like, fuck, who’s that weirdo who keeps hanging around them?”
“They’ll figure it out,” Kirk said. He waved a hand. “Fuck, man, you’re cute enough, you shouldn’t have to be the bass player in Metallica to get girls.”
Jason shook his head. “Whatever, Mister I’m-so-pretty-even-the-guys-have-to-look-twice.”
Kirk turned kind of red again. “Shut up.”
They stood in silence for a couple of seconds. Eventually, Kirk sighed and said, “Do you wanna come watch a monster movie, then?”
Two hours later, they were both well on their way to hammered, there was some old black-and-white monster movie on the TV, and Kirk kept interrupting their conversation to direct his attention back to said monster movie on the TV, which Jason guessed was kind of cool but didn’t really give that much of a shit about. “—and then, dead!” Kirk said. He cracked another beer as he said so. “God, I love that movie so much. Me and Cliff used to—”
He cut off. He was getting sloppier, the more he drank, about referencing Cliff. Thing was Jason didn’t hear Cliff’s name out of Kirk’s mouth all that often. There were a lot of comparisons, all the time, of his and Cliff’s playing. Which he got why they did, even if they were a little way fucking mean about it sometimes. But Kirk never talked about what him and Cliff Burton had used to do when they hung out. None of them really did, at least not to him. The only thing he’d gotten out of them about Cliff was what Lars had said once: “Girls like Kirk because he’s the prettiest motherfucker on the planet—” At which point he grabbed at Kirk’s crotch and Kirk side-stepped him like it was a daily occurrence. “—me because I’m so fucking smooth, and James because he’s the frontman, I guess. But they liked Cliff because he had just. This massive cock.”
So Jason hadn’t really pressed any of them for more details.
Lars had been pretty fucking drunk when he’d said all of that, too. Not that Jason would put it past him to say or do any of that sober, because, he was quickly learning, Lars was really fucking weird.
But Kirk looked like he might say more, and Jason wasn’t exactly the therapist type, but Kirk really looked like he wanted to talk about his feelings. Which Jason found kind of weird. But Kirk was pretty…
Well.
Sensitive.
“What’d you guys do?” Jason asked. He winced a little bit when he heard his own voice, because it sounded dismissive even to his drunk ass.
“He was into this horror shit, too,” Kirk said. He leaned into Jason to pull something out of the couch. A book. “He read a lot, too, like, he’d use all these words none of us even knew, you know? Lovecraft and whatever. The guy was so goddam smart. But we used to watch this movie all the time.”
Kirk let out a long breath. It shuddered, a little, at the end, and Jason started to get briefly alarmed that he was going to have to deal with a drunk, crying Kirk Hammett. He did not know if he could deal with a drunk, crying Kirk Hammett.
“I was reading a little bit,” Kirk said. “Last night. I just, I thought it would like, I dunno. I miss him a lot.” He said. He nodded a few times, and then looked at Jason. “You’re all right.”
“Thanks,” Jason said. He had the feeling that he needed to be drunker for this conversation.
If Kirk had been a little soberer, he probably would have apologized. But he wasn’t so he didn’t. He just nodded like he was expecting the response and got up to rewind the movie. He stumbled a little on his way back. “Jason?” he said.
“What.”
“Could you—could you stay tonight? I mean like—” Kirk hesitated. “You know what I mean.”
Jason really didn’t know how he could mean anything other than ‘stay over’, but he nodded like he did. “Yeah,” he said.
Because if he was going to get an ally in this band, it was probably going to be Kirk Hammett, and there was no use in leaving him alone and drunk and sad. That was the kind of shit that got people killed.