Chapter Text
Lars Ulrich is a normal 17 year old Danish boy, he goes to school, he has friends, he plays Tennis and Football, he plays the drums and his mother is dead.
August 7th 1982
As they drive home from his mothers funeral, he looks out the window and sees that it’s starting to rain. Ironic.
He hasn’t really gotten it through his head that his mother was dead, it wasn’t like he was prepared for it, she was fine one day and the next she wasn’t.
When they arrived home, Lars’s father told him to pack up, they’re leaving and Lars just stood in the doorway for a while, processing what he just heard.
Leaving? Where? When? Why?
He supposed he knew the answer as to why, but he just didn’t want to admit it, why would he? It’s better to just not think about it.
His mother wasn’t even cold in the ground and his father wanted to leave, to forget her like she never even happened.
It was only when his father yelled at him that he was shaken out of his trance, he went up the stairs and started packing. The first thing he did when he entered his room was call his friend, his friend asked him all sorts of questions, questions Lars didn’t have the answers to. He hung up and he wanted to cry but he just couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried.
Lars wanted many things, he wanted to stay in his house, he wanted to stay with his friends and he wanted his life to be normal again. But what he wanted most of all, was his mother.
He wanted her to hug him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, he wanted her to wipe his tears away like she did when Lars’s father got too competitive in his and Lar’s Tennis matches. He just wanted her to come back.
August 21st 1982
Lars felt a pit in his stomach as he walked through the San Francisco international airport with his father, his father hadn’t been speaking to Lars much these past few days, Lars supposes he knows why.
When they got out of the airport, he watched as his father hailed a cab. He looked around at his surroundings, there was a mother with her two kids by the vending machine outside the airport doors, she was yelling at them to calm down. He then looked to his left, a man in a fancy suit holding a sign with a name on it, obviously waiting for someone important.
“Lars!”
He heard his father yell, beckoning at him to get in the cab. When they got in the car, Lars’s father yelled directions at the driver in his heavy Danish accent; he wonders if his accent is also that heavy. Lars isn’t the best in English, especially not in school, he never got any good grades in the class as he always thought that he would never have to use it. God if he could see him now, he’ll just have to hope that no one ever tries to talk to him in English, in fact, he’ll just have to hope that no one tries to talk to him period.
The car ride somehow feels like forever despite only being 15 minutes. As he steps out, he looks up at the apartment building in front of him. It was a red brick 5 story building with a fire escape, it looked out of place next to all the San Francisco style houses that surround it, like it wasn’t supposed to be there.
It reminds him of himself.
The moving van that had been following close behind them in the car ride over here, drives up next to them and begins unloading their stuff. Lars’s father tells Lars to take one of his boxes and carry it up to their apartment in 5B. For some reason, Lars picked the box that had all of his vinyls in it, aka, the heaviest box in the van. Why does he do this to himself?
Lars was by no means unathletic, he’s played tennis almost his whole life, he plays football, he did track and handball for a while, he even did swimming for a couple years. But he has a small frame, he's strong, sort of, but he’s also short, 166 cm to be exact or maybe he should start saying 5 feet 5 inches now that he lives in America…
So having put all that into account, you’d think he’d be able to carry a big box full of vinyls, right? Wrong.
He walks towards the elevator but sees a big “OUT OF ORDER” sign in front of it, of course it is.
As he walked up the stairs, being careful as to not drop the box full of valuable vinyls, he sees two boys around his age walking down the stairs, they were were in a heated argument of sorts, one has long and shaggy, dirty blonde hair and the other has long strawberry blonde hair, they were both tall and wearing shirts with bands that Lars recognised, metal bands.
For some reason, the two men decided to stop in the middle of the stairs right where Lars was walking, do they even notice him?
“Oh will you just shut up, you faggot.”
The strawberry blonde said, obviously tired with whatever the other one was saying.
“Oh am I the faggot? Last time I checked, you were the one sucking my dick last night-”
“Um excuse me?”
Lars says, trying to hide his accent but probably failing miserably but they thankfully didn’t seem to notice. The two men look at him like he was just interrupting the most important conversation of their lives but then soften once they see him. Lars has that effect on people, he’s cute, he knows he is, he has big puppy dog eyes, in fact, he’s often been compared to a lost puppy dog, people mean it as a compliment. Gee, thanks.
“Oh shit! Sorry man, are we in your way?”
The dirty blonde asked and all Lars could do was nod slowly. God, why can’t he just act like a normal human being? The dirty blonde moved out of the way but before Lars could continue walking up the stairs, the strawberry blonde put a hand in front of him.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before, I definitely would have noticed you.”
The strawberry blonde looks Lars up and down before landing on his eyes.
“Uh yeah I’m moving in um… apartment with my dad”
Lars said, his Danish accent heavily coming through. They look at him like he’s grown a second head, God they probably think he’s crazy.
“You talk funny.”
The strawberry blonde says and the dirty blonde lightly elbows him in the stomach.
“Dude!”
The dirty blonde looks at Lars apologetically.
“I’m Danish- I’m from Danmark…”
Lars quickly explains and the two blondes make one of those “ohhh” faces. Lars feels the box slipping from his grip, oh shit.
“Um I have to go…”
Lars says.
“Oh right!”
The strawberry blonde retracts his hand from where it was resting in front of Lars.
Lars then hurried up the stairs, he heard the two guys talking about something as he left, guess they forgot about that argument they were having.
Dear god, why did they have to live on the top floor? For some reason, Lars stopped looking ahead as he reached the 3rd floor, something must’ve caught his eye, he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings and it seems that the person walking, more like running in Lars’s opinion, down the stairs wasn’t paying attention either as they ran into each other at full force causing Lars to drop his box of vinyls.
“Holy shit I’m so sorry dude! Are you alright?”
The man asked.
Lars looked up at him, which wasn’t that hard as they were about the same height, the man being maybe a little bit taller, and was quite surprised, he was quite cute, he had long dark curly hair with big brown eyes and tan skin. But before Lars could answer the man started talking again.
“You moving in?”
The man asks and then picks up the box like it weighs nothing.
“Lemme help you with this, I’m Kirk Hammett”
The man, or Kirk Hammett, steadies and holds the box with one hand and extends the other towards Lars, obviously waiting for him to shake it. Lars stares at him for a while, did he just take his box? Lars then took Kirk Hammett's hand and shook it.
“Lars Ulrich”
Lars said in the most heavy Danish pronunciation ever.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that accent before, where you from?”
Kirk asks
“Uhm Danmark”
Lars says, Kirk still has his box, is he ever going to give it back?
“What! Dude that’s so cool, I’ve never even been out of the states before. What’s it like over there?”
“It’s…different”
“Isn’t ABBA from Denmark?”
Lars stares at him for a second.
“No….ABBA is Swedish…”
“Eh same thing”
Kirk waves him off as he says that and Lars looks at him like he’s just said the stupidest thing Lars has ever heard, because he has.
In their earlier kerfuffle, the one that had led to Lars dropping the box, said box had opened slightly, revealing a Black Sabbath album. Kirk looks at the album.
“Woah you listen to Black Sabbath?”
Kirk puts the box down and opens it fully, going through all the albums.
“Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motörhead, I listen to all these bands, dude!”
Kirk looks up at Lars, starstruck. But Kirk then suddenly realises how rude he’s being by going through a strangers stuff, he immediately stands up and starts apologising profusely. Lars just awkwardly laughs it off.
“God, the least I could do is help you carry your stuff up”
“Why? So you can go through more of my boxes?”
Kirk turns red at that and stumbles on the rest of his words as he tries to find an explanation.
“I’m kidding! Please do uhm help me with the boxes”
Lars says.
God, can this interaction be any more awkward?