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"I'm scared to be touched," James confessed to Lars one night in February '84, drunk on the Jager their roadies passed them post-gig. Thirteen nights hung heavy in their belts, their first European tour done and over with. Now they could relax, let their hair down and drink as much alcohol as possible.
Lars knew James was shitfaced. The man wouldn't say things like this unless he was shitfaced. They wouldn't be laying like this either, side by side in James' bed like a couple of schoolgirls gossiping about boyfriends at a slumberparty, an empty bucket of KFC and drained beer bottles between them, if James wasn't shitfaced. And he wouldn't be touching James' arm like this, tickling his fingers up and down, the fine hairs parting underneath his calloused tips, if Lars himself wasn't shitfaced.
"I'm touching you right now," he whispered.
"That doesn't scare me."
"Why?"
"Cuz it's you."
"So?"
"You don't count."
He snorted, his hand cupping James' forearm. "I don't count."
"Yeah."
"Because it's me?"
"Yeah. You touch me all the time anyway. You're a touchy person."
With his senses diluted to nothing, he took the sentence the wrong way and giggled like a loon, burying his face into the pillow, turning from twenty-something to two.
Lars' face turned red from laughing. "Man. I'm trashed."
James didn't look so amused. "I can tell."
He felt sluggish as he rolled over onto his back. His brain told him to get up and move, tell James good night and stumble to his own bed, but his body shouted back fuck you. This wasn't good. Falling asleep in James' bed meant an argument he wasn't in the right frame of mind to deal with. It didn't matter. James would kick him off once he woke up in the middle of the night, realizing he was sharing a twin with his best friend. And Lars didn't mind the floor as long as he had a pillow.
His eyes drooped shut, his mind falling into that welcomed sleepy haze, when James shook his shoulder again.
"You gonna tell me what that was about?"
"Huh?"
"Why'd you laugh?"
He yawned. "Dunno."
"Tell me."
Lars drifted further away into sleep, smiling. "You touch me... sound funny... not happening." He giggled at his joke.
The hand shook him again. Lars tried to shrug it off, but James squeezed it hard enough to wake him up a little.
"Outta my bed."
"Kay." He tucked the pillow underneath his head closer and used the last of his strength to roll completely off the mattress. Lars barely registered the pain of his body slamming on the ground. He'd feel in the morning. For now, he didn't care.
That hand grabbed him again, his bicep this time. "Dammit Lars. You're not that shitfaced."
Lars murmured something in his stupor. Maybe not shitfaced, but definitely sleepy. He wanted to say, 'I just drummed a two and a half hour show and drank enough booze to fill most of the Grand Canyon, fuck you,' but he let James yank him back on the bed. The man was being generous. He wasn't going to bitch and pass this up.
James' hand still held his bicep. "Hey."
"Mm."
"You... uh." He lessened the hold. "You're okay, yeah?"
"Sleep."
"Yeah." The hand drifted up to his shoulder. "Lars?"
"Mm?"
"Why do you touch people?"
He giggled again.
James growled this time. "Lars."
"Wha?"
"Answer the question."
"Just do."
"Why?"
"Cuz."
"But... you can make people uncomfortable."
Lars giggled again. None of this made any sense and all he was doing was misconstruing James' serious words into another childish meaning. He pulled the pillow to his face, talking as clearly as he could. "We'll talk later, okay? Tired."
He didn't get a chance to relax. James shook his shoulder again. "I don't get it."
His patience finally began to wear thin. He sighed, "What?"
"You."
That was enough to have Lars peek open one eye. "Huh?"
James still looked positively shitfaced, but there was an edge of nervousness, of need. He still held a semblance of control and clarity, and mixed with it was this urgency, a desperation to know. "You confuse me."
Lars leaned up on his forearms, stomach on the bed and lifted his heavy, pounding head from the pillow. He had enough now. "Fucking say it already."
And he did. "You hug people you don't know. You let random people kiss you. You don't tell people no or go away. You talk to everyone. You don't seem to care when a random stranger comes up and says hi. You don't have any fear or... or fucking wariness or whatever. You just fucking... I don't know." James' hand squeezed his shoulder painfully tight, hissing through his teeth. "You do this without a goddamn fucking problem, like it's all natural to you, and it fucking pisses me off. Because you do this, and then you can be away from everyone, still not caring, but you do care, because you touch them, and I don't get it."
Even with all the alcohol in his system and the need to sleep clawing at his mind, Lars listened to every word James said and he finally understood.
He lifted his hand over James' on his shoulder, search for the right thing to say as he looked into bleary blue eyes. His fingers idly ran over James' knuckles, touching the light hair there, tickling his skin. And then he smiled, knowing what to do.
"Don't worry. I'm a weirdo anyway."
James gaped at him, blank-faced. Lars took that as his cue to move in and kiss those parted lips for a brief moment, short enough for James to call it a lapse-in-judgment if he remembered in the morning but long enough for Lars to taste his breath, feel how soft and wet they were and remember it like all the other times, locking it far away in the closet of his mind slowly filling up with everything James.
He slid his hand down James' entire arm, from knuckle to shoulder, feeling it up along the way, measuring and memorizing each muscle as he went. His hand grasped that strong shoulder and Lars pulled the two of them together, their pillows side by side like their bodies.
"I fear something too," he whispered into James' throat.
The question vibrated under his lips. "Yeah?"
Lars closed his eyes. "Death."
James' chest was softer underneath his cheek than the pillow. "Why?"
His hand laid flat over James' heart. "I have a lot of things to do... that I'd like to do. I'm constantly afraid it'll be taken away from me."
"Then... why?" James' hand stroked his shoulder once, twice. "Why do you bother so much with people? They could hurt you."
And he whispered a truth he never told anyone, not even his father. "Because I fear them. And I don't want my fear to rule my life."
Lars took a deep breath, inhaling James' scent. He hoped he made sense. The alcohol was still there, permeating his mind, clouding his thoughts, but it gave him some courage to speak freely, and he felt sober enough to put the right words together. The fact that James was in the same intoxicated state as he reassured him too. Maybe James wouldn't care. Maybe he'd write off whatever he said as jibberish and go to sleep finally.
He couldn't close his eyes, couldn't move. Sleep hovered too far out of his reach this time. James breathed normally underneath his cheek, his heartbeat as steady as the rise and fall of his chest.
And then that hand on his shoulder became an arm tucked around his waist.
Lips kissed his forehead, lingering for a moment. "Thank you," James whispered, and his arm secured Lars closer, his body shifting around to get more comfortable before he settled down and wouldn't move again 'til morning.
He stayed awake a few minutes longer, heat rising on his cheeks and spreading down his neck. His mind embedded all the sounds and feelings right into that closet inside the darkness, and he smiled softly, his nose grazing James' old t-shirt, as the tension left his body and he finally fell asleep to the rhythm of James' heart.