DECEMBER, 1996, SEATTLE, WA 

THE GUILT. IT was killing her.

Just the mere aching presence of it in her system made Reagan hesitate at her doorstep, lifting her key to the lock before freezing. Her work day had been especially long and especially exhausting, but that still wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to make her willingly enter her own house.

She knew what was waiting for her on the other side of the door. Gracie was surely asleep already, with Reagan having coming home so late, meaning that the chance of being greeted by her daughter had long past.

It was only Dave awake behind that door. Dave, whom Reagan had viciously chewed out the night before in a fit of stress induced rage.

Her teeth automatically snagged on the inner corner of her lip and she took a weary step back. It was a gut punch to even recall the way she'd reacted. Worse yet, it was a brutal beating to recall the way Dave had stood there and taken it.

He was typically like that with her. In all the years that Reagan had been with him, she'd grown used to his startled adversity to fighting with her. He was good at soothing her irritations rather than building upon them, but even then, she'd still caught snatches of his temper. She'd witnessed that terse inner side to him and knew that he was capable of standing up for himself if he felt wronged.

But the previous night . . . he'd done nothing. He had stood morosely in front of her with tired eyes, alternating his gaze between the floor and her face with his hands wrung into his pockets.

The sight of him taking her verbal lashing had done something to Reagan — it had filled her with the worst kind of guilt, the kind that flooded and spilled over in uncontainable buckets.

It was her fault.

She couldn't even accuse Dave of having started it. Yes, he'd been the one to propose adamantly that they move to Los Angeles, but Reagan had lit the spark to the fuse.

It had been too much. That one tiny suggestion had pushed her promptly over the edge and perhaps on another day, during a different time, she would have cut herself some slack for having lost it.

In theory, she wasn't all that surprised with herself. An entire year had swallowed her whole, the emptiest, loneliest year of her life, and that had been due to Dave's touring. The mellowed out city hopping that he'd initially planned for the Foo Fighters had turned into a day - month - gobbling responsibility.

The distance hadn't been physical. Emotionally, Reagan had felt worlds away from him as he'd toured, watching alone as Gracie shot up like a weed and started preschool. No amount of phone calls and handwritten love letters had patched the hollow hole left in Dave's absence.

Yet, through all of it, she'd bitten her tongue. Hadn't she encouraged him to do it? Had she not been the one to nudge him back into the arms of his passion, and had she not always promised him that she understood?

Reagan had known those things. She'd sworn to herself that they were clear to her, as clear as day, and yet the whole of nineteen-ninety-six had left her feeling bitter and depressed.

But the way she'd reacted the night before . . . it had been instinctual.

Dave knew she didn't like California. She'd rambled so many times about her animosity for the state, namely the entire shtick of L.A., that she assumed he would never suggest something as insane as them moving there.

But he'd done it anyway and it had ended horribly. Reagan had exploded, Dave had accepted it, and they'd gone to bed not speaking.

She approached her front door again and squeezed her eyes shut, leaning her forehead against it as she thought.

It was fucked up. He was there, right there, finally home after all those months and she had stupidly chosen to fight with him rather than cherish the fact that they were simply together again.

Everything felt wildly unpredictable. He'd be gone again soon, busy recording the Foo Fighters' next album and then surely away on another tour. All Reagan had wished for for so many months-straight was at least five minutes with him, five precious minutes in which she'd hold him and kiss him and remember exactly why she'd fallen in love with him in the first place.

Nothing had been the same since Kurt died. Some things had been relatively normal, but it was obvious that Reagan's world, inevitably meshed with Dave's, had jumped into a different orbit.

Kurt, Reagan thought, his name floating like a whisper in her head.

It hurt to think of him during moments like this one. She tried not to pull thoughts of him out of her own personal drawer of memories constantly, but it was pointless. She always wondered what he would have said, what he would have done if he'd been able to see them all now.

Hopefully he wasn't lingering around Reagan at all. She expected him to be with Frances, invisibly supporting her as she grew up with only Courtney as her guardian.

Reagan opened her eyes and backed away from the door, sighing. A light, fluffy snowfall had started and she was getting cold. Between her acidic guilt, thoughts of Kurt, and all the reflecting she'd done on her own emotional turmoil, she was sure that she was going to die prematurely of a heart attack.

Carefully, she inserted her key into the front door and opened it. As she walked inside the house, noticing that thankfully, the lights were still on, she tried to be as quiet as possible.

It was dead silent until she heard the thrum of gently played guitar strings coming from the living room.

Her stomach flipped.

Dave was up.

She slipped her shoes off and set her bag down along with her keys, listening intently for the moment that he stopped playing. He didn't, though. He kept on, oblivious to her arrival.

Reagan followed the sound of the guitar down the hallway until she reached the threshold to the living room. She could have kept going, speeding past any sort of confrontation and towards Gracie's room where she could check on her daughter, but she hesitated.

Instead, she pressed her back to the wall and listened again.

Dave played and then paused, and Reagan imagined him scratching lyrics into his notebook. She heard him shuffle his guitar around, probably adjusting it on his lap, and another snippet of a melody was produced. It was the same as before but it was becoming more fluid. He was on to something.

She closed her eyes again, just as she had done outside. This time, burning hot tears gathered behind her eyelids and no amount of wrenching her eyes shut could prevent them from escaping.

What she would have given to bottle that moment in time.

Screw five minutes, she thought, thinking about that ever-persistent wish that had plagued her.

That moment then would have been enough. Her, hiding behind a wall, getting to listen to Dave play. Getting to hear the sounds of his heart, his passion, and knowing that she was lucky enough to love someone tender enough to nurture something like that.

He kept playing for another two minutes before stopping. That's when Reagan opened her eyes, wiping away the trace of her tears with her knuckles.

She stepped slowly out from behind the wall, revealing herself.

Dave didn't look up right away. As she'd predicted, his break from playing coincided with his frantic scribbling into his notebook, his eyebrows cinched together in deep thought.

Reagan cleared her throat softly. His head jerked and his eyes met hers.

"Hey," he said. The greeting was made with both surprise and leisure, as if he hadn't expected to see Reagan that night.

She'd assumed he was mad at her. When she'd stayed late at work, he hadn't called to check in. He always did when she wasn't home by five-thirty.

"Hey," she replied quietly.

Dave shifted the acoustic in his hands, draping one over the length of its body.

"There's pulled pork in the fridge," he said. "I made some for me and G tonight."

"Thank you."

"Yep."

He looked back down, away from her, and Reagan's chest tightened.

She was painfully torn between wanting to yank his face to hers to kiss him or getting down on her knees in order to beg for forgiveness. The former option sounded the most appealing, specifically because it was so hard to look at his face without feeling that familiar swell of all encompassing love.

He'd physically changed over the years. At first glance it wasn't noticeable, but Reagan had noticed it. It wasn't a bad change. If anything, he was only getting more attractive much to her approval, but it was almost odd seeing him grow up. She's grown with him.

"Dave," she began, walking forward until her feet tripped her in a stagger. Her voice cracked as she reached for him.

Dave looked up, two fingers poised over his guitar strings, and Reagan took the initiative to began her apology.

"I . . . I'm sorry. I'm sorry for acting the way I did last night. I've been so stressed without you here and sometimes it gets to me and I took it out on you. I shouldn't have done that."

He sighed, heaving his guitar out of his lap and placing it aside.

"Reags," he started.

"No, please. I'm sorry Dave. I love you. I told you nothing would come between us, especially not your career, and I stand by that. I'll go wherever you go. If you want to move to Los Angeles, we'll do it."

He was staring at her apprehensively, his expression hard to read. Something about the way he looked at her made Reagan's breath hitch and suddenly, she couldn't fight back the sobs that had been stirring within her all day.

Her shoulders began to quake and she raised one hand to her mouth, trying fruitlessly to silence the whimper that escaped her mouth.

She'd always told herself that she wasn't a crier. When faced with confrontation, she was well-adjusted to maintaining her role as a level-headed adult. She had to be just that, considering the way Kimberly acted.

This was different. There seemed to be no sense in trying to be strong when Dave was looking at her like that, with indecipherable eyes and a mouth that gave nothing away.

It made her think horrible things. It made her think of the possibility that he could leave her, and she was sure that of everything in the world, second to losing Gracie, that would destroy her.

"Please," she whispered. Her vision was blurred, but she could still make out the warped edges his face. She was shaking badly, but she stammered out every word determinedly.

"I know you're stressed right now, too," she cried. "I know you've been gone, and it was hard, and William is giving you a hard time and you miss Gracie and you want this band to work. And I know you want us to work. I'm not making that easy and I'm sorry."

Dave stood up, shaking his head before he spoke. He reached out and clasped his arms around Reagan's shoulders, drawing her into his embrace.

"Reagan, Reagan, Reagan," he said. His voice was gentle, soft. "I get it, baby. It's okay."

"It's not okay. You're finally back for a good while and I'm spending your time here picking a fight with you."

"You didn't pick a fight. I brought up L.A., so technically, that's on me."

"I should have reacted better."

"I left you. There's no way I'm going to give you a hard time when you fit that into the picture."

Reagan hated that he'd said it. She didn't like that he'd acknowledged her having a 'hard time,' because it had been a hard time and wouldn't it have been easier to pretend otherwise, at least for the night? Functioning in a world where she was more likely to hear Dave's voice on the radio rather than whispered in her ear, his arms roped around her, was agony.

She sniffed back some of her tears, hurriedly wiping  beneath her nose in an effort to compose herself. She put her hands on her hips, assuming the position she took at work when a member of a different department started giving her a hard time.

It was also the same position she'd assumed for as long as she could remember, whether it had been when Kimberly was talking down at her or when the twins had gotten particularly rowdy.

Always in charge — or at least trying to be.

"Listen to me," she said, clearing away the thickness in her throat. "I freaked out. That's my fault. I love you, same as I always have. Gracie and I both go wherever you go. You're running this band now, and . . . I support you. I always will."

Dave studied her for a moment, standing still as his eyes flickered just barely while observing her face. He reached out, caressing her cheekbone with the edge of his thumb.

"You don't have to be strong all the time. You know that, right?" he asked quietly.

"To be with you? Yes, I do. But . . . I don't want to be with anyone else."

That was the crux of it, Reagan had decided. No matter how far apart she was from him, she'd accepted that she didn't want any other version of her life that didn't involve him. There was still so much they'd pledged to do with each other.

A house in Virginia, more kids. More time. They needed so much more of it.

"I missed you too. I hope you know that," Dave said.

Reagan couldn't help but to laugh, the sound of it coming out in a blubber. How could she have not known that?

"I never doubted that you missed me too. Just feels like the world is keeping us apart," she whispered.

"You mean this?" Dave asked, gesturing to his guitar, still propped up on the couch. "That's what is keeping us apart?"

Her heartbeat twinged painfully. No. She wouldn't allow him to go back to that, to blaming the one thing he loved more than anything next to her and Gracie.

"That's not what I mean at all."

Casting another glance at his guitar, Dave sighed and snuck one arm around Reagan's waist and the other over her shoulders, tugging her to his chest. He murmured into her hair, his breath warm, tickling her neck.

"I guess not, being that's the thing that brought us together. You know what I still think about?"

It was hard to answer him. Reagan was more focused on his hands, smoothing their way down her shoulder blades and across her hips, and his lips so close to her skin. She would have frozen time and space to stay locked in that moment, the very pinnacle of being close to him.

"What?" she whispered back, half a beat late on her response.

"Seeing you on the drums for the first time. Knowing everything and nothing about you that first night, but feeling like I had to be next to you. Wanting you. Amazed that there was a person out there, someone I was already falling in love with after five minutes, who cared about music the way I did."

"You got all of that out of watching me play a gig I was basically forced into?"

He chuckled. "Yeah. Call it kismet, or something along those lines."

Reagan pulled away and cupped her hands to his face, opening her mouth to say more, but Dave silenced her with his mouth. As soon as he kissed her, she melted like always, going nearly limp in his arms. It wasn't just the comfort of kissing him, but her exhaustion thinning out, morphing into relief. The weight of the day's emotions crashed down on her.

"Can we go to bed? I want to be beside you," he said, whispering the words against her lips.

She knew what he meant immediately. There wasn't going to be a fray of tearing each other's clothes off once they got to their bedroom. Instead, she was certain that she and Dave would lay together, nose to nose, tucked beneath the linen sheet of their bedding that shielded them from everything else.

That was what they had that night. Only a linen sheet to protect them from themselves, but it was enough.

"Okay," she whispered back.

_____________

The first thing that Reagan was aware of the next morning was Dave's absence. She wondered if something in the back of her unconscious mind had stirred her, calling out that Dave was no longer in their bed.

With her eyes fluttering as she oriented herself, she sat halfway up, groping a hand along the sheets in search of him.

Then, she remembered.

He had to be somewhere that morning. Meeting someone, though the details were evading her sleep-clouded brain. He'd promised her before they'd fallen asleep that he would be back in time to meet her at work. They were going to get lunch.

Reagan sat up when her hand roved over Dave's pillow. He'd set it beside her, next to her head, and her fingers crunched across the crisp face of notebook paper. She held it up to her eyes but the early morning dimness of their bedroom wasn't helping any.

She got up and walked to the window, pushing back the curtains so that the freshly risen sun could guide her reading. Automatically, she noted Dave's handwriting.

Hammered this out yesterday, it read. You're a great critic, but I hope the fact that you inspired this one doesn't change anything.

Reagan registered, with surprise, that the rest of the note consisted of song lyrics. She started reading each stanza, her body growing warm as she understood that Dave had finally written a song about her, or rather, written a song about her that he was willing to admit was about her.

If everything could ever be this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when