Chapter Text
Lars was sleeping soundly in his room at the Hamptons Inn in Cincinnati, exhausted after hours of drumming. He was doing what he loved, and he was grateful to whoever was up there that he could do it, but damn, it was exhausting. His wrists ached, his elbows were almost disjointed from the rest of his arms, his heels were still tense from all those hours on the pedals. One thing he never did was put his heels on the floor. He did it even when playing tennis, always on his tiptoes. It hurt like hell, the soles of his feet were sore, but it was always worth it in the end. He had only managed to fall asleep after a couple of beers, a hit, and a porn movie, for a change. That had been his routine for the past three months, from February until now.
The hotel was pretty awful, nothing like the photos Bob had sent him. Bob was obviously the one in charge of the reservations. He usually always picked nice little places, not too central so as not to get pissed off by fans, but not so remote that there wasn't even a nice bar in sight. Or a strip club, for all he cared. Cincinnati was a fucking dump, for God's sake, but the girls at the club he'd gone to the night before were amazing. Firm tits, mile-long legs, perfect asses, naked except for that little strip of fabric that formed the colorful thongs they all wore. The truth was, he hadn't been there just that night, but practically six nights out of seven for the past few weeks. He was stressed out, damn it. And those girls were always there for him. He smiled in his sleep, he could almost see the blonde hair brushing the firm ass of his favorite. He'd been there so many times he had a favorite. In Cincinnati, those girls didn't know who he was. Nor gave a fuck. He almost liked being anonymous, like every other guy. To those girls, he was a nobody, and that was fine by him. Blonde hair, a blood-red thong with black lace, matching the bra. A little bow right in the middle of those two beauties on her chest. Bright, confident blue eyes. She was truly beautiful. She called herself Jemma, but her real name was Jamie. He knew this because he was now a regular at that place.
He was a little ashamed of it.
At the club, he was Lawrence because saying Lars would have been an admission of guilt. There weren't many Lars in Cincinnati. Hell, there weren't many Lars in Gentofte either. He only knew his cousin with the same name. Maybe there were other Lars higher up, he'd never wondered. Or maybe he did, and he'd only realized it later. She called him Lawrie,though. He didn't mind at all, the attention of that beautiful girl, of course, but there was always something missing: that complicity, that spontaneity, that connection you can only create over years of relationship.
Or years of playing in the same band, as far as he was concerned.
He tossed and turned in his sleep, wrinkled his nose a little, then calmed down. Who knows if the porn he'd put on was still playing on the crappy little TV in that crappy hotel? The girl in the porn was blonde, too. It had become an obsession. The only thing illuminating the room was the dim pink light emanating from that little box they boasted about calling a TV. He opened his eyes just then, and the first thing he heard were the fake moans of the blonde woman. He closed his eyes and imagined it was someone else. Not the blonde from the strip club, no. Someone he knew very well he shouldn't be thinking about. At least not that way. Well, now he couldn't sleep anymore. He had become so hard that closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep was out of the question.
The covers rustled slightly, and he was on his feet. Damn, for once he'd managed to doze off and get a decent night's sleep during that tour, that one person had to ruin it. He always ruined everything. He decided that porn was just disgusting now, and abruptly turned off the TV. Cigarette on the balcony? It would have been a fantastic idea if only his room had a balcony. He left the room, frustrated and resigned, and began pacing aimlessly through the hallways of the Hamptons. It was a truly shitty hotel. The carpet lining the hallway floor was at least a century old, and the wear showed all the years and all the people who'd walked on it. The windows on the walls were opaque, sun-beaten since at least the 1950s. The pink floral wallpaper was yellowed and torn in places. Perfect. A shithole. As he walked, he came to room 505. His was room 493. How long had he walked without realizing it? A long time, he thought. 505 wasn't just any room where there might very well be a gray-haired old man snoring in bed.
No, room 505 was James's. And Lars knew this very well. He had the sick idea of knocking, but he quickly shoved the thought away from his mind. He didn't need to be treated shitty, not that night. Every time he'd knocked on James's room in those years, the one thing that should never have happened had happened. His blood ran cold when he heard two knocks on the door. At the end, he knocked. Fuck. It had been an involuntary reflex, a gut feeling. A terrible idea. He hoped James hadn't heard him, that he'd tossed and then gone back to sleep. He was ready to head back to his room when the door opened slightly, letting in a small beam of dim light that hit the blue and yellow checkered carpet. Behind the door, he glimpsed long, tousled blond hair, a chest slightly marked by sparse light hair, and blue eyes, dark in the dead of night. James had indeed opened the door. Was he already awake? Had he woken him? A million questions swirled through his mind, but the flow stopped when James, still sleepy, said,
"What the fuck are you doing awake?" he almost shouted, whispering. How to answer that question? He couldn't tell him the whole truth so, he opted for a half-lie.
"I can't sleep," he replied. "And why are you knocking on my door?" he practically yelled at Lars. Then in a softer voice, asked “Are you just going to stand there, or did you mean to come in?” James tugged at his arm and closed the door behind them.
When they were both in the room, he could see him better. His face was still pasty from sleep, but God, James was handsome. A horseshoe mustache framed his thin lips, his blond hair darkened even more in the darkness of that small space. He was wearing only old, worn gray sweatpants, the ones he’d seen him wear at least a million times since they were teens. James was a creature of habit, he found himself thinking. His expression was inscrutable. A mix of confusion and resignation. Lars immediately regretted coming in. A hundred thousand scenarios and unchaste thoughts of what could have happened were swirling around in his head, and none of them ended well. He backed away and headed for the door to leave.
"I'm leaving. I shouldn't have woken you, sorry," he whispered and turned his back on James. A large, warm hand tugged on his wrist, a jolt of electricity spreading from the spot James had touched to every corner of his body.
“What do you mean, ‘I’m leaving,’ you didn’t even tell me why the fuck you woke me up in the middle of the night the day before the concert,” James whispered, a low growl, almost sensual in its anger. Good, so he’d woken him. “I don’t know either, honestly,” Lars admitted. What the fuck was he supposed to tell him? That he’d knocked because he wanted to fuck like the back in the day? That he wanted to spend the night with him? That he was a shitty kid overcome with nostalgia? So he remained silent.
“Beer?” James offered, resigned to the idea that he wouldn’t get anything from Lars sober. He nodded, and James promptly opened two Old Styles. That beer was disgusting. As well as the whole situation. The shabby hotel with the opaque windows, having once again fallen into James’s arms at the slightest inconvenience. James collapsed onto the bed and tapped the mattress, urging Lars to sit down. Lars did. He did everything James told him to do, like a reflex, and found himself sitting next to him between the white pillows and sheets.
“Now that you’ve woken me up, can you tell me what the fuck is wrong with you?” James said, before taking a sip of his beer, his face saying he hated that Old Style too. “I can’t sleep, really”, Lars repeated. It was the only thing he could think of to say. “You already said that, asshole,” he insulted him with his usual grin that split his face in two. “You’re not here to talk, am I right?” Lars didn’t know how to respond. He, who usually always had a joke ready, he who never stopped talking, he who filled people’s brains with useless information, had remained silent when asked that question.
“I don’t fucking know,” he said, “Is just that lately it feels like we’ve been drifting apart.” Finally, something real was coming out of his mouth, but James wasn't exactly thinking that way. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Damn, he was seriously angry now. "I don't know, I don't know." His beer was still untouched, the bubbles of the foam popping in the silence of that room, in the silence that inevitably separated them. "It's not like before, that’s all" he decided to drink a little, just to soothe his dry mouth and his almost sore throat.
James was silent. That meant he was waiting for an explanation. Lars sighed and began to speak. "This tour, the band, us," he emphasized on the "us," and James immediately understood what he was referring to. "It's almost like we don't talk anymore, like you don't come to me for anything anymore, not even bullshit," he was finally letting go. That's why he'd knocked on that door. At first, he hadn't really understood it either. But now it had dawned on him. "We're drifting apart, James," he whispered. "There's a fucking wall between us, and I can't live without you." As he said this, he shifted his gaze to the neck of the beer bottle, but he felt James looking at him anyway. His accent always slipped a bit when he was being honest. Just as if he was being truly himself.
"Don't tell me this is about Francesca?" James asked. The month before, during a trip to Arizona, just as he was visiting the Grand Canyon with his girlfriend, James had gotten down on one knee before her and proposed, with a stunning ring. White gold and sapphires set on the band, a three-carat diamond at the center. Truly breathtaking. He had chosen that ring with Lars, just three months before proposing, when they were still speaking like civilized people.
"Are you jealous?" James asked. It had come out less sarcastic than he'd intended, but it didn't matter in the end, because he'd hit the nail on the head. Damn. "Look, the fact that I'm getting married is not going to change anything between us. You'll always be a part of my life, no matter what. We're like family," he slurred a little on the last syllables of that terrible word.
Family.
In what kind of family you fuck shamelessly the one you call “brother” in the group camper?
“Do you hear yourself when you talk? What the fuck, James, are you drunk?” Lars jumped up from the bed and started gesticulating wildly as he railed against the blond. “Family? No way you and I are family. You’re completely cutting me out of your life, damn it.”
He fixed his hair, which had been short for a while now, a drop of sweat rolling down his tense forehead. James stared at him for a moment, before slowly getting up to stand in front of Lars. James was much taller than him, terrifyingly imposing. He’d always towered over him, but Lars’s personality and oversized ego made him feel like the difference wasn’t that big. But now that he’d bared his heart to him, he couldn’t help but notice how small he felt.
“I’m not cutting you out of my life, Lars.” Bullshit, Lars thought. He never called, never texted, never invited him home. Never.
Lars looked him in the eyes for the first time since he’d walked in. Tears threatened to spill, but he fought them back, the only shred of dignity he still had left. “Me too,” James said, breaking the precarious silence that had been forming as they gazed into each other’s eyes.
Green in blue, blue in green.
Lars looked at him, puzzled, still not understanding. “I can’t live without you, Lars,” he was still confused. What the fuck did that mean? He never called him and then he said bullshit like that?
“If I don’t put some distance between us, I’ll end up doing something fucked up. I can’t afford that.” He moved slightly closer to Lars, almost closing the distance between them, but not quite.
“I think about it every time I’m with Francesca, every single fucking time,” he was getting closer and closer, so much so that Lars could smell his skin. It wasn’t a perfume, it just smelled like James. “All the stolen glances on stage, the handjobs in the closets after the shows, the make-out sessions in the band’s camper, when everyone thought I’d hooked up with someone,” it was becoming more and more real. The smell of James, mixed with the beer and probably the whiskey he’d had earlier, was becoming unbearable. It filled his nostrils, and he let it.
“It had to be you,” James said.
His mouth suddenly went dry, and even though he still had the beer in his hand, he didn't take a sip to soothe it. The pain brought him back to reality, made everything real, like the pinch you give yourself in a dream to tell if what's in front of you is truth or fiction. Lars was at a loss of words. They all died in his mouth before he could say them. James was definitely drunk, and wouldn't remember anything tomorrow, but he didn't care. He had to seize the opportunity while it presented itself. "What do you mean?" he asked, his heart pounding in his throat, his airways constricted by the effort of pronouncing those simple three words.
James didn't answer. He just closed the distance between them completely and captured Lars's lips in a voracious, vigorous kiss, a kiss full of unsaid things, a kiss that condensed six years of lies, subterfuge, and repressed feelings. It wasn't just six years, but the last time they'd kissed had been exactly six years ago. A hand gripped his hair, at the back of his head. He stood on tiptoe to give James more access. His arms were immediately around the blond's neck, supporting himself. He was afraid his knees would give in, the kiss so fierce and passionate. Their tongues tangled, and a trickle of saliva connected them when they broke away only to catch their breath. How had they not done this for six years? To Lars, it seemed an incredible, awful waste. James's hands moved from his hair, to his waist, to his ass, squeezing Lar’s cheeks between long, calloused fingers. The hands of a guitarist, Lars thought. In the midst of his passion, Lars regained his senses and shoved James, sending him falling back onto the bed. He hadn't pushed him hard enough to cause him to fall backward, so James must have followed his movements.
“What the fuck, James,” he was almost screaming now. “How can you do this to me?” Yes, he was definitely screaming now. “After six years, I managed to forget you, forget all of this, and now you say it’s time you wanted me back? To use me again, like that time? You probably don’t even remember, fuck it.”
“What time?” James simply said. Did he really not remember? “What time? You really don’t remember?” Lars asked incredulously, having had enough of James’s drunken bullshit. It always ended badly when he was like that, one way or another. “Moscow, 1991. Have you forgotten? Was it just a game for you? Or were you too drunk and every last neuron you had it’s burned out?” He was furious. James was really pissing him off. How brave of him, kissing Lars like that, like he owned him. Like he was claiming him.
Lars hated himself a little more because he liked it.
“The night you bled on the drum kit? That time?” James asked. He seemed genuinely curious, as if this information was reaching him for the first time. “Yeah, that one,” he confirmed, now too tired to fight James’s bullshit anymore. Lars might be a jerk, but that night was too important to forget. “I was in my room, and the staff nurse was trying to dress my wounds as best she could, when you came in and kicked her out of the room,” Lars began. “At first I didn’t understand. I remember thinking you were an idiot, but the scene was mad funny. You sat next to me on the bed, and even though you were dead drunk, you started wrapping my hands, carefully.” Tears were slowly rolling down his slightly reddened cheeks. “You took my hands in yours and told me mine were so cute, so small. Then you kissed the bandages. Lots of kisses, like a mother would to make the pain go away. You asked me if I was better. But how could I answer? If you were there, everything was better, that’s what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Then you kissed me, and we ended up fucking on my bed.” The tears had come back inside, Lars wasn’t crying anymore. Now he was just incredibly frustrated. ”You don’t remember anything, do you?” James nodded softly, still sitting on the bed, where Lars had pushed him.
“I bet you don’t even remember saying you wanted to make love to me? That it wasn’t just sex? That what you felt for me was stronger than anything you’d ever felt before?” he cried again, thank God James couldn’t see it. It was probably in her voice. “And you don’t even remember all the sweet things you whispered to me while you pressed me into the mattress? That’s just all the bullshit you must tell your sluts, right? A born flatterer. After all, you’ve also written romantic songs, you must have a great imagination, because you’re incapable of feeling anything.” The anger had faded to sadness, an unfillable void had opened up in his chest, in his heart. “Is that what I was, James? One of the many sluts you fucked, huh?” James was petrified, the half-empty beer still clutched tightly in his right hand. Why the fuck didn’t he remember anything from that night? He let out a long sigh and began to speak.
"It's not imagination, Lars. Every song comes from something real, tangible, and true."
"That thing for me is you."
"When I wrote, the only thing I could think of was your smile. The way we stayed up all night to find the perfect words for our lyrics. But words didn’t ever matter, if you chose them. If you chose them they had to be perfect. I remember all those nights. So close, yet so far away. But it doesn't matter, because they’re engraved in my heart." If James was saying those things, he must have been really drunk. "I seeked and I found you." “I’ve never opened myself this way, never to anyone. At least not with words,” he confessed. “Please listen to me,” James begged, rising from the bed. He towered over Lars’s minute frame again, tilting his chin up with two fingers to look him in the eye. “It’s true, I don’t remember a damn thing about that night. But I still think about all things we did together,” very convenient, Lars thought. “Every time I look at you, I think that if I get any closer, I might screw up,” he continued. “That’s the effect you have on me.” “The first time, when we did it at my house, in the summer of ’81, was the only time in my life I’ve felt something so strong, so visceral.” “You know me, I’m not one to open up, ever. But with you, I don’t need to, because you understand me.” “Maybe that was before, but not anymore,” Lars said. Everything that came out of James's mouth was perfect, but he no longer believed it. His gaze fell from James's eyes to the floor. "You can't solve things like this, silencing me with kisses and sweet words."
"The truth is, you'll never love me the way I love you," there, he said it. What he had been hiding for years, what he had sworn he'd take to the grave, what he didn't even want to admit to himself. The truth. James didn't answer. He knew perfectly well that talking would be pointless. They would only argue and end up punching each other in the face. He kissed him again, even more passionately than before, if that were possible, taking him from under the thighs and carrying him in his arms, so that their heads were at the same level. He pressed him against the faded bedroom wallpaper, sliding his tongue into his mouth until it almost touched his tonsils. It was a wet, sloppy kiss, all tongue, saliva, and teeth. James's mouth moved from Lars's lips to his neck, biting and kissing every inch of the pale skin, paying particular attention to the area behind the ear, the most sensitive. Lars's breathy moans immediately reached his ears, his arms tightening around his neck, his hands caressing his back. They were fucking up. But what could they do? Life was theirs, and they lived it their way. A strange and messy way, but deeply exciting. James rubbed the crotch of his pants against Lars's ass, making him moan softly. It wasn't enough, he wanted more, he wanted to feel it. With an abrupt gesture, he pulled Lars back to his feet and began pulling down his own sweatpants, along with his underwear. Lars did the same, quickly undoing the jeans he'd been wearing all day, freeing his throbbing erection. It hurt like hell. James took a moment to really look at him, to study him. Lars was truly beautiful. His green eyes, lively and full of lust, his short hair that gently caressed the nape of his neck, his small, upturned nose, like a girl's. James had always been so tall, his face full of pimples, his thin lips, and his swollen nose. Lars, on the other hand, was so handsome. His smooth skin, marked only by a few wrinkles on his forehead and under his nose, his lean, lithe body, made him still look like a boy. Red streaks marked Lars's pale, clean-shaven cheeks, the marks of James's bristly mustache. A certain satisfaction swelled in his chest.
"Take it all off," he commanded, almost threateningly. Lars obeyed immediately, pulling his black T-shirt over his head. He was completely naked now, and James pushed him against the wall again to kiss him. The heat emanating from James's body was the only thing he wanted to feel against his skin for the rest of his life. A passionate kiss enlivened the static, dark room. Their moans and breathing blended into a single trail of sounds. James picked him up again, pinning him between himself and the wallpaper. He continued kissing him with the voracity of a hungry animal, pressing him tighter and tighter against the wall. It was an indecent scene. Lars bent like a pretzel and James slamming his hips, rubbing his cock between Lars's ass cheeks. At a certain point, the situation had become unbearable. Their cocks dripped with precum and their breaths mixed and remixed, making them feel dizzy. Two fingers reached Lars's mouth, long and calloused.
"Suck," James ordered, fed up with that sweet friction that couldn't bring them to orgasm. Lars took James's fingers in his mouth and began sucking them, quickly, sloppily, and wetly. James thought about what those lips would feel like stretched over his cock, the tears that would flow from Lars's green eyes. James withdrew his fingers, making a wet, dirty sound, only to bring them to Lars's opening. He was itching to feel James's fingers inside him once more. James was blinded by the sight, too horny to think straight. He penetrated Lars with his middle finger, easily inserting it all the way to the last knuckle. Lars's warm, soft walls tightened rhythmically around his finger, and he couldn't help but think about what it would be like to slide his cock inside him, again. Fucking him against the wall, into the mattress, in the shower, on the hotel stairs, on the reception couch. He was wandering now, consumed by pleasure. Lars moaned softly until James curved his finger, pressing on a spongy, soft area. Lars cried out in pleasure as James inserted another finger inside him, scissoring them to stretch that tight ring of muscle. The room was filled with Lars's moans and whimpers, with two of James's fingers inside him up to the last knuckle. The sensation was different from when he'd done it alone. James's long, gnarled fingers were a far cry from his own short, thin ones. He continued to thrust into him, in and out, always with the same frenetic, spasmodic rhythm. The sounds James wrung from Lars's lips were the most erotic he'd ever heard, music to his cock. Just as his erection was becoming painfully unbearable, Lars held him tighter, whispering something in his ear.
"Fuck me, James, please," he asked softly. "Fuck me until the neighbors know your name." That was the only thing James needed to hear. It had always been the only thing he needed. The only request worth granting. He gave his erection a couple of quick tugs and then aligned the throbbing purple tip with Lars's opening. As he pushed deeper and deeper, he could hear Lars's labored breathing in his ear, fragmented and frantic.
Lars felt completely filled. As if they were meant to be this way, one inside the other, like pieces of a puzzle. Carved from the same soul. Two parts of an ancestral androgynous being reunited for the first time. Lars saw stars as James slid fully inside him, all the way to the hilt. He could only say disjointed words that had nothing to do with each other. A trail of "yes, yes harder, James, yes, go deeper" escaped his lips, without him even realizing it. James certainly wasn't any better. The more he pushed in and out of Lars, the more he felt her heat ebbing and flowing from the surface of his skin. He kept kissing his neck, his right ear, his face, his lips. Fuck, how could he not? Lars's smooth skin was a pure invitation to mark every inch of him with purple hickeys and bites. Lars's skin was tearing under James's teeth, but he didn't care.
Nothing else mattered anymore. He was where he wanted to be, where he was supposed to be. In James's arms, as the latter pressed him harder and harder against the wall. Lars was sure the wallpaper would leave embossed marks on the skin of his back tomorrow. At the perfect angle, with every thrust, James hit his prostate, sending electric shocks through his entire body. He was so close to his climax. His eyes were watering profusely, his legs were about to give out, his inner walls clenched spasmodically around James with every thrust, his toes curled with every stroke on his most sensitive area. He was about to soar toward the bliss of orgasm when James held him tighter, pulled him away from the wall, and placed him surprisingly delicately on the bed. “I want to make love to you on a real bed, for once.”
Making love.
Not sex, James was making love to him. Nothing mattered anymore. When that sentence reached his ears, his whole body tensed and he came, his cock squished between their abdomens, a trail of cum connecting them, sticky. James realized this and quickened his pace. He sighed, panted, growled in Lars's hypersensitive ear, who still hadn't come down from the heights of his own peak. James found himself pushing Lars deeper into the mattress, as if he were a nail and he were hammering it. Lars's tears were a mix between pain and intense pleasure, while James's still-hard cock inside overstimulated him.
“Come inside, please,” Lars asked, almost pleadingly. How could James refuse when Lars asked him so softly, so nicely? He didn't need to be told twice. With two or three more thrusts, he came deep inside Lars, who held him tightly and stroked his long, wavy blond hair. Sweat beaded their foreheads, glued to each other. For what seemed like an age, they stared into each other's eyes.
Blue in green, green in blue.
Just as it should be, just as it had always been. James lifted himself off the smaller man and collapsed next to him in the sweat-soaked sheets that now smelled of sex and lust. James said nothing and sat with his back against the headboard. He took one of his Camels and lit it, a cloud of smoke rising from his lips. Lars found himself thinking that from that angle, James looked like a Norse god, ready for battle. Still silent, he brought the cigarette to Lars's lips, as if telling him to take a drag. Lars sat up too, aching and reluctant. He took the cigarette from James's fingers and took a drag, the sound of the burning paper filling the room, as did the thick, dense smoke from the Camel.
“Come here,” James said, as he approached him, placing the younger man's head on his powerful shoulder. They remained like that, passing the cigarette around like two seventeen-year-olds after their first fuck, Lars's head on James's shoulder. It was really like that, though. It truly felt like the first time. The first time they had both felt such an intense, primal, animalistic sensation. Almost like a mating call. But this only happened between them. Lars had been with many women, but only James drove him absolutely crazy. James had been with many women, but only with Lars did he open himself that way, only with him was it real, naked and raw.
“You mean everything to me,” was the last thing Lars heard before drifting off into a deep sleep, in the arms of the man he loved. Nothing else mattered anymore.