Chapter Text
June 1999
Lars’ eight-year marriage ended the moment he entered his hotel room and found his husband James balls-deep inside Metallica’s long-time tour photographer.
In hindsight, Lars should have suspected something was wrong when Jason started avoiding him. He’d had eleven years of familiarity with the band, traveling on tour with their entourage since 1988. Except for the last month or so, Lars would invite Jason to catch a movie or browse an art museum in whatever city they were playing, and Jason would politely decline. Later, Lars would catch him with James in some local drinking hole, or with the rest of the band, and this happened frequently enough that Lars came to the perfectly logical conclusion that Jason was tired of him.
Lars could be stubborn, talkative, and bossy: traits that often put him at odds with the rest of Metallica. Dave hated being told what to do — but especially by Lars — and Cliff found Lars’ boundless energy exhausting. James and Lars would often butt heads in the studio and on the road, conflicted over the musical direction of their records, their tour setlists, or pretty much anything.
On the surface, James was easier to get along with, and he made a better drinking partner. So it wasn’t unreasonable that Jason might have preferred the company of Metallica’s affable frontman rather than the control-freak drummer.
At least that’s what Lars thought up until the moment he caught James fucking Jason on the hotel bed James had shared with Lars twelve hours ago. Then it made a horrible kind of sense why Jason had been avoiding Lars.
Lars should have shouted, screamed, maybe upended a table and thrown some chairs, but he could only manage a pathetic croak of, “What the fuck?” Shockwaves rippled through him, the urge to vomit rising, but his stomach was pretty much empty; he’d come here to ask James to fucking go to dinner with him.
Just five minutes ago Lars’ life was entirely different. And now it was over.
James, while still inside Jason, took one look at Lars and said, “Ah, shit.”
When Lars replays this moment in his head, which he often does, obsessing over the minute details like a lunatic, it’s the lack of theatrics that hurts the most. Usually, when a man is caught cheating on his spouse, he panics. He claims it’s not what it looks like, or he scrambles to put his clothes on in a bid to disguise the clear-cut evidence of his infidelity. Or maybe he pushes away the person he’s cheating with, as if distancing himself from his co-conspirator in this act of domestic terrorism, because on some level he recognizes the gravity of the mistake he’s made. He recognizes what he’s lost.
But James didn’t do any of that, which Lars interpreted as James’ crushing indifference to the instant dissolution of their marriage.
As if Lars needed more proof, James’ hands, clenched around Jason’s bare ass, were perfectly visible, and the silver ring that Lars had bought him was missing. There was a tan line there, the ghost of their marriage wrapped around his finger.
“What the fuck?” Lars screeched, the words ripping his throat on the way out. He stood there frozen, unable to command his stupid body to do something other than tremble like an arachnaphobe watching a tarantula crawl across the wall.
Finally, James stopped clutching Jason’s pale white ass and stepped back. He hitched his jeans up over his hips, concealing his half-chub — apparently being caught ruining his marriage wasn’t enough to make him flaccid. Jason drew his jeans up from where they were pooled around his ankles. The agonizing slowness of it all killed Lars. Neither of them gave a shit about the emotional wreckage here. They didn’t even have the courtesy to look guilty.
“Lars, fuck, man,” James said, sighing like an apology might inconvenience him. “I’m sorry.”
But he didn’t look sorry at all. He looked embarrassed to be caught, but there was no remorse for pissing all over their marriage, their eighteen-year friendship, or the sanctity of the band.
So Lars was left with only one conclusion. This wasn’t James’ first rodeo, so to speak. “How long have you been fucking doing this?”
Jason had the decency to blush, and even though Lars wanted to strangle the motherfucker until he turned blue, he could appreciate that much.
“Um…” Jason looked at James, as if seeking permission to answer.
“Not you,” Lars snapped. “I don’t wanna hear a fucking word from you.”
“Since Rio de Janeiro,” James said with too much dignity for a man who’d just been caught with his dick in the ass of someone he wasn’t married to.
Their show in Rio was over a month ago. At some point, James and Jason had an anniversary. How did they celebrate that? Did they bang in one of James and Lars’ shared hotel rooms, or did they go for drinks? Were gifts exchanged? Did James write a song for him?
On Lars and James’ one-month anniversary, James had played for Lars the rough demo of what eventually became “Nothing Else Matters.”
“A fucking month?” Lars cried.
As if this couldn’t get worse, someone knocked on the door to the room. Dave’s voice snarled from the other side of the door: “Lars, what the fuck are you shrieking about?”
A sickening thought occurred to Lars then, manifesting as a slow, sinking weight in his stomach. Infidelity left evidence, and if Lars had noticed Jason’s frequent outings with James, then maybe the rest of the band did too — and they hadn’t said anything.
Lars whirled, yanking the door open and coming face-to-face with Dave’s scowly sneer. “Did you know?” Lars shouted, standing on his tiptoes to better approach Dave’s six-foot height. “Did you fucking know about James and Jason?”
“The real question is how did you not know?” Dave said, smirking like the implosion of Lars’ life amused him.
Put simply, Lars didn’t know because until now he hadn’t walked in on them having sex in his hotel room. Maybe that revealed a crippling stupidity on Lars’ part, but after almost twenty years of knowing James, Lars assumed James would talk to him if there was a problem instead of doing this.
Sure, their sex life had tapered off, and maybe they’d started to argue over trivial bullshit — James’ habit of leaving his dirty dishes in the sink, Lars’ occasional snort of coke every now and then — but that was typical married life, wasn’t it? Eventually the passion would fade, and Lars would stop laughing at James’ jokes the way he used to when they were dating, and James would be too tired for sex after a show. Lars had prepared himself for these inevitabilities, but he hadn’t considered them warning signs that their marriage was about to go nuclear.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” Lars cried, overwhelmed and on the verge of a breakdown.
Dave stepped back and put his hands up as if warding off Lars’ insanity. “I thought you knew, you dumb shit.”
“Well, I didn’t! And fuck you, that’s a cop-out! You just didn’t want to choose sides!” Because with Dave, he would always pick James over Lars.
“Jesus, you’re like a fucking chick with all your psycho drama,” Dave said, rolling his eyes. “Just get this sorted out. We have a show tomorrow.”
According to Dave, being the slightest bit upset over marital infidelity was strictly women’s work.
Lars slammed the door in his face, hard enough to rattle the foundation. James and Jason were fully dressed now, and James was packing clothes and toiletries into his suitcase. The thought that James might plan on sleeping in Jason’s room tonight ignited Lars like a tinder box.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“Lars, I can stay somewhere else if you — ”
“No. Forget it. It’s over. We’re fucking done.” Lars elbowed past Jason. “You, get the fuck out of here.”
Jason didn’t need to be told twice.
Lars hauled his suitcase onto the bed and threw his clothes inside. In this moment, he was grateful for his habit of living out of his luggage when he traveled. He could use a shower and a change of clothes, but he didn’t want to be around James or Dave or Cliff (where the fuck was he?) any longer than necessary.
James had the audacity to say, “Lars, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, fuck you! No, you’re not! You don’t fuck someone for over a month if you feel bad about it.”
James made a conciliatory grunt, which enraged Lars more than anything he could have said.
“Just answer me this: why? What did I do that’s so fucking awful you wouldn’t even talk to me about it?”
“It’s not — ” James sighed. “It’s not just that, man. You know when me and Jason hooked up? Mother’s Day. That’s a fucking hard day for me, and you know that, but you were too busy doing whatever the fuck else you were doing instead of being with me.”
James’ mother had passed away when he was in high school, and Lars knew James still struggled with the anniversaries: her birthday, Mother’s Day, and the date of her death. But those sort of memory lapses were just part of a long-term marriage, right? After many years, things slipped through the cracks.
For Lars, that day was just another show in a series of them: Rio de Janeiro, then onward to Santiago, Chile the following day. He’d been exhausted, and anticipating an early flight, had gone to his hotel room to shower and sleep. James’ emotional needs had been the last thing on Lars’ mind.
Maybe a little unwilling to concede his own contribution to this disaster, Lars fired back: “Seriously? It’s been, like, twenty years! I thought you were over it!”
“You don’t fucking get over something like that, you dick. It just hurts less. But it still hurts.”
Lars had lost his own mother a little over a year ago, but he’s always been the type to repress and distract himself with work. The band had live shows and public appearances to keep Lars occupied, but James wasn’t built that way.
So maybe James had a point, but Lars was fucking furious and unwilling to give it to him.
“Maybe I’d buy that if you slept with him once, but this has been going on too fucking long to be a momentary lapse in judgment.” Lars zipped up his suitcase to emphasize the point. “Try again.”
“Lars…”
“Just fucking be honest with me!”
James sighed again; it was his “Lars is being needy” sigh, a sound Lars hated. “Fine. I don’t want this anymore. All we ever do anymore is fight and argue with each other. And — ” James stopped himself.
“Oh, please, go on. There is literally nothing you could say that could make me feel shittier right now.”
James nodded grimly. “I don’t love you anymore, man. I was a shy, messed-up kid when we met. I had a crush on you for years ‘cause you were nice to me. And maybe, y’know, without ‘One’ and the Black album, I’d still be that shy, insecure dumbass that nobody looked twice at. But now… things are different.”
It’s Lars’ fault, really, for asking a question to which there is no right answer. But, fuck, it still stung.
“So you have options now? Is that what you’re trying to say? You don’t have to settle for me anymore?”
“That’s not — I mean — I used to love you, Lars. You know that. But people change,” James said.
“No, I don’t know that!” Lars grabbed his suitcase and stormed toward the door. “You just said you married me because you didn’t think you could do better!”
“I said that was part of the reason!” James threw his arms out like he was trying to fly. “Lars, you wanted me to fucking talk about this! So I’m talking!”
“Do you love him?” Lars asked, a glutton for punishment. Lay on all the hurt at once, and maybe he could heal faster.
James looked away, guiltily, and that was all Lars needed.
“Fuck.”
Eight years of marriage, eighteen years of friendship and Metallica, gone in a heartbeat.
The hurt came not all at once, but in a series of agonizing rips and tears.
After Lars flew back to San Francisco, he came home to a flurry of panicked voicemails from Metallica’s managers, PR reps, and lawyers. They wanted to do damage control, to convince Lars to stitch the rotting corpse of the band back together for the sake of a few bucks, his broken marriage and violated trust notwithstanding.
“You’re integral to the success of Metallica,” their manager spoke on Lars’ answering machine. “Regardless of your problems with James, we can’t afford to lose you.”
Lars pressed delete, delete, delete on all the fucking vultures looking to feast on the carrion of his bruised dignity.
Then there was the message from Cliff. Cliff had slept through the whole screaming match, and he’d offered condolences on Lars’ shattered marriage. “I’m so sorry, man. I thought something might’ve been going on with Jason, but if I said anything, there was a good chance I’d be wrong, and what the fuck would’ve happened then? I didn’t want everyone pissed off at me and potentially lose my place in the band ‘cause of a misunderstanding.”
Lars’ decision to walk out on Metallica felt even more justified now. Not a single person was looking out for him, and it’s not like James was volunteering to leave. James was the voice and the face of Metallica. Nobody gave a shit about the drummer, except when he fucked up, and then he’d get an earful about how bad he was. Whenever they would switch instruments onstage and fool around on “Am I Evil?”, Dave always used to joke that James was “still a better drummer than Lars.”
Except it wasn’t really a joke, was it? No one in the band respected him. Dave was always a drunken prick through and through, Cliff was too stoned most of the time to care when Lars got shit from the others, and now James had taken a huge shit all over their marriage and their working relationship, underscoring a latent disrespect that might have laid dormant for years.
Fuck ‘em all.
July 1999
Lars meets Metallica and the band’s lawyer at the latter’s San Francisco office.
He parked on the street bright and early at nine-forty-five, but he was nervous as hell about seeing the band — and James — again and discussing the legal ramifications of an inter-band divorce. Lars spent a good fifteen minutes in his parked car, trying to psych himself up for the formal end of his career and his marriage. It didn’t work, but he was already five minutes late, so he said fuck it and went inside.
The lawyer, it seems, is just there to oversee what Lars feels is more like an intervention than a proper meeting. They all sit around a polished oak table inside the conference room. James wears a look of guilt that Lars has never seen before. Is he finally properly ashamed of what he’s done, or just that it’s been shoved under a spotlight?
Dave sits with his arms folded over his chest to make it perfectly clear that he has better things to do with his time.
Cliff takes the reins of the conversation. “Lars, man, I’m sorry about all this. Whether you stay or go, you’re still part of the Metallica family — ”
“Oh, shut up,” Lars says, rolling his eyes. “You know what you would have done if this was a family? You would have told me my husband was fucking someone else. But you didn’t. You just let it go on because you didn’t want to get in the middle of it. If that’s how you treat family, I’m out.”
Dave scoffs.
“It wasn’t like that,” Cliff says, sounding hurt.
The lawyer speaks up then, sliding a thick contract across the table at Lars. “The band wants to offer you a deal. I think you’ll find it to your liking.”
Lars flips through the pages. Basically, he’s being offered a severance package from Metallica: a lump sum, then a trickle of royalties for all the band’s previously-released music, as well as any future releases including his performance. The band has a live CD and DVD coming out later this year, recorded in April when Lars was still blissfully unaware that his marriage was the Titanic heading for the iceberg.
But the devil is in the details. In order to receive any of this, Lars has to waive his right to legal action against the band and any of its members, including James.
Which means signing off on a no-contest divorce.
The contract prohibits Lars to talk to the press about the details of the split, about what James did. If Lars signs this, James will pretty much get away with infidelity scot-free.
Lars looks up from the contract and meets James’ eyes. “Are you still fucking him?”
Dave sighs, “Come on, Lars.”
“That’s not really relevant, is it?” asks James.
“I told you guys he’d throw a fit,” Dave says.
“What’s stopping me from saying ‘fuck you,’ tearing up this contract, and suing the everloving fuck out of James?” Lars says. “The money? I don’t give a shit about that. I’m already set for ten lifetimes.”
“I’m always looking for billable hours,” the lawyer says, “but let me give you some free advice: don’t fight this. The wheels of justice don’t move quickly. You sue the band or any single one of them, and the case drags on for years. Court appearances mean fewer tour dates, which means pissed off fans, which means you, Lars Ulrich, are pretty much the enemy of the state where Metallica’s concerned.”
“Everyone hates me anyway,” Lars protests. “And I’m willing to be on the chopping block if it means he” — he jabs a finger at James — “doesn’t get away with the shit he pulled!”
“But suing him hurts us too,” Cliff says. “We can’t do shows or record new music if James has to be in court.”
“You sorry lot of fuckers aren’t blameless either,” Lars says, but his resolve is weakening. “I should go after you for emotional damages.”
Dave scoffs again. “Lars, you fucking pansy.”
“A messy, public divorce is the last thing Metallica needs right now,” the lawyer says.
“Then James should have thought of that before he stuck his cock in our tour photographer!” Lars blurts. “This isn’t my fault! What the fuck is wrong with all of you? I’m the victim here!”
“I get it, man,” says Cliff, sounding sympathetic, “really, I do. But if James can’t unfuck Jason, and you don’t wanna stick around, what else are we supposed to do?”
“So all the hard work and fucking blood, sweat, and tears I put into this band: fucking gone, because James couldn’t keep his goddamn dick in his pants?”
“You’ll still get all the royalties you’re owed. It’s right in the contract,” the lawyer says, oblivious to the real issue here.
“Hey, look, we warned you fruits not to start fucking each other,” Dave says. “It’s not our fault you ignored numerous warnings that banging someone else in the band doesn’t end well.”
It was mostly Dave who advised them against a sexual/romantic relationship, but Lars and James were younger and dumber then, and they assumed Dave was just homophobic. Which, he was (and is), but perhaps there was a modicum of good advice in his otherwise prejudiced business plan.
“Just take some time to think about it,” Cliff suggests. “I know you’re dealing with a lot right now.”
Looking at their faces, though, Lars sees that the last thing they want is for him to delay this decision. In their eyes, Lars Ulrich is a problem to be dealt with, and once he signs the contract, they can breathe easy knowing he’ll be prohibited from pursuing legal action.
And a sad, grimy, pathetic part of Lars, buried away in some dark place, still wants these assholes to like him.
Metallica moved away from their thrash metal days, evolved their sound into what detractors claimed was “too mainstream”; they embraced the MTV model of music videos, interviews, and awards shows, much to the disdain of the heavy metal community; they cut their iconic long hair, as if signaling a rebirth and a metaphorical distancing from their radio-unfriendly fan-favorite image.
Even after all of that, Lars never felt like more of a sellout than he did right now, signing his name to this fucking contract.