one-hundred-two.

JANUARY 1995, SEATTLE, WA 

          IT WAS RAINING. Of course. 

Reagan yanked the hood up to her sweatshirt -- Dave's sweatshirt, actually -- and ran up her driveway with a hefty bag of sandwiches thumping into her thigh. She struggled to fish her keys into the right position in her hand, but finally slid the proper one into the lock and pushed her front door open.

She was met with a cacophony of sound. 

It wasn't so much a cacophony as it was the mere rampant sound of drumming. Bad drumming at that, sticks beating with rhythmless abandon on the toms. She pulled down her sweatshirt hood and walked into the living room.

The first thing she saw was her drum set, which took her by immediate surprise. Despite Dave having reattached himself at music's hip, all of their instruments had remained in the music room, a place that Dave now inhabited quite often.

He was sitting behind the set with Gracie in his lap. That explained the noise -- a pair of drumsticks were fisted into Gracie's hands and she was was wailing them, her squeals of delight barely audible over the ruckus. 

Reagan couldn't decide whose smile was bigger. Gracie's or Dave's.

"Welcome home," called a voice. Reagan looked towards the couch, where Pat was sitting with his knees on his elbows. His expression was hung, suggesting that he'd been listening to Gracie's drum-playing for longer than a living being's ears should have been subjected to.

Nate was beside Pat, but his face was lit with amusement, grinning as he watched Gracie whip one of the sticks to the hi-hat. There was a beer in his hand.

"I brought sustenance," Reagan announced, lifting the sandwich bag into the air, "but I didn't bring any ear plugs. Sorry."

"Hey, baby!" Dave said, greeting Reagan enthusiastically just as Gracie returned the sticks to the toms. 

Gracie followed her father's line of sight and upon seeing Reagan, screeched. She shimmied off of Dave's lap and tottered to where Reagan stood, throwing her little arms around Reagan's knees.

"I wasn't aware that our child was replacing Will in the band," Reagan remarked, smiling as she reached down to smooth her hand through Gracie's hair.

"She wanted to join in," Dave shrugged.

"Yes," Pat interjected, rubbing two fingers against his eyebrows. "For the last thirty minutes."

"What did you get?" Nate asked eagerly, sniffing his way over to the food.

Reagan locked eyes with Dave across the room. As soon as it happened, a flood of warmth filled her body and it had everything to do with the megawatt brightness of his smile. It was the smile that for one brief moment she'd feared she would never see again.

She supposed that he had a good reason to be smiling. The turnaround that his life had taken through the winter was one that was wildly disproportionate to the path he'd been speeding down prior. Finally, Dave had clicked the missing piece of his soul back into place. Finally, he had found himself again.

It didn't look like much, but then again, an epiphany wasn't always formed the same every time. Dave's new band was content to rehearse the music that their frontman had masterfully crafted, but rehearsal did come with periods of down time, most of which often took place at the Grohl's house with a few several beers.

Reagan couldn't definitively say that it was everything she ever wanted, and she didn't think the same could be said for Dave. Rather, it was a partial glimpse of what they wanted. For her, it was seeing Dave happy again. For him, it was a new adventure, a new way to exercise the buzzing, musical energy flowing through his system. 

But still, it was pretty great.

Reagan liked the change, which surprised her. She'd wondered how she would react, seeing Dave in a new band and fronting the whole thing to top it off, but it seemed natural. The treasure trove of lyrics that he'd been scrawling for years were finally seeing the light of day, and it was a positive thing that Dave was making use of his singing voice -- even though there was a lot of screaming involved.

His bandmates fit snugly into the shift of things as well. Pat was a familiar, comforting face, one that Reagan relished in seeing. His dry snark combined with his massive penchant for kindness was a plus for Reagan, who always gravitated towards Pat whenever he was in a room. It had been that way since he'd served as an addition to Nirvana, making a forever friend out of Dave in the process. No surprise there.

Nate and William were nice to have around, too. Reagan had embarrassedly fawned over Nate, having been a fan of his ex-band Sunny Day Real Estate, and she found kinship in William over their mutual love of drumming.

Overall, she thought that things couldn't have been better. It was a welcome change from the gloom that had settled since Kurt's death, and half her happiness could be contributed to her pride in seeing Dave play music again.

"That's not work attire," Dave murmured into her ear. He slid up next to her, winding an arm around her waist as his bandmates dug ravenously through the meals she'd brought them.

Reagan shrugged. "I changed when I got off work. It's too damn rainy for heels."

"Any good talent on the radar?" Nate asked as he lifted a meatball sub out of the paper bag.

"Here and there," Reagan answered honestly. She'd been working harder than ever to encircle a hoard of new bands into DGC's reach. A promotion seemed to glimmer on the horizon, but she figured that she didn't need it when she'd already retained some form of ultimate bliss.

"What did you get me?" Dave asked, impatiently poking through the bag. 

"I just grabbed whatever I could from the deli. I thought we'd have another mouth to feed. Where's Will?"

"Left around the time that Gracie stole his sticks," Pat said. 

"Count on the two-year old to ruin band practice," Reagan snorted, glancing down at Gracie who was still wrapped around her legs with a smile.

"It isn't practice any more. It's rehearsal," Dave corrected as he selected a sandwich. 

Reagan flashed him a look before arranging her mouth into a small smile. It was funny to hear Dave refer to it as rehearsal when he'd assembled a band of more-than-capable musicians, but the implication was still there. A tour was coming, in little over a month. They had to be prepared to play together, to function as a four-piece act on stage.

Things had indeed moved swiftly, but nothing had arrived faster than Dave's announcement that his band was going on tour.

Reagan felt guilty presuming that Dave was getting ahead of himself when in reality, he wasn't. He'd gone through his period of mourning. He deserved to find his niche again in the world of music. 

From the time that he'd told her he was going to record, Reagan had kept up to date with every single development in Dave's small project, bloomed into something greater. She'd supported him when he'd brought home the cluster of tapes holding the birth of his songs, and she had shamelessly teared up when he'd performed with The Heartbreakers on Saturday Night Live. 

She even felt that she'd had her own small role in deciding the band's name. When Dave had come to her one night, looking more introspective than normal, she had listened when he'd voiced his idea on what to call his new band.

"Do you like . . . the Foo Fighters?" he'd asked her, plopping down next to her on the edge of their bed.

"I don't get it," Reagan had admitted truthfully. She'd seen her fair share of band names while doing her job and most she could pin down where they'd taken inspiration from, even if it was just a guess. Dave's idea had drawn a blank.

He'd gone into a in-depth explanation behind the choice, citing a term that World War II aircraft pilots had apparently coined. By the end of it, Reagan had been beamed.

"I love it," she'd said, her opinion having taken a one-eighty turn as soon as Dave had presented his case. 

She'd encouraged him throughout his hunt for bandmates, supported his late nights spent writing new music, and never minded when he disappeared to string together the necessities in forming a new musical group. All of it had thrilled her almost as much as it had thrilled him and for Reagan, she felt that a new chapter of their life together was being turned.

That is, until Dave had told her about the tour.

It's not a big deal, she mentally reminded herself. He's just doing . . . what he does

That was manageable enough. Telling herself that it was what Dave needed, a sweat-filled, gritty tour on the road was what slipped Reagan into a strange sense of calm. It was what he did best. Slumming it in venues standing on their last legs, sipping a lukewarm beer before a show before walking on stage and letting loose.

If his band -- the Foo Fighters -- would instill some kind of normalcy back into his life, touring included, then Reagan accepted it.

"See you guys tomorrow?" Dave asked, rising to his feet as Pat and Nate did the same.

Reagan looked up from the sandwich clasped between her hands, partially startled. She'd been staring at it for the last fifteen minutes, only three bites taken out of it, lost in thought. She hadn't even realized that everyone else had been talking.

"See ya'," Nate agreed. He and Pat both hustled out the door, throwing thanks over their shoulders for Reagan and her sandwiches, and then all at once Reagan and Dave were alone. Minus Gracie sitting cross-legged on the floor, tapping drumsticks against the carpet.

Dave slumped back onto the couch with a sigh, stretching out every limb as he yawned. Reagan folded her sandwich up and set aside. Her hungry didn't outweigh the need she felt to be alone with Dave, to have a conversation with him. They had plenty of conversations all the time, but now felt different. Something electrified the space around them, like the brimming of a storm on the horizon.

A pleasant storm, though.

"You're working hard," she commented, glancing over at him.

Dave smiled lazily, a contradiction to all the effort he'd put forth in organizing a new band, and pulled the brim of his baseball cap down.

"Doesn't feel like work," he replied.

"No, I bet it doesn't."

Smiling at him, Reagan stood and began to collect the scraps of sandwich wrappers off the coffee table. As she started for the kitchen, she lingered by Dave, reaching out to caress his face. There was such contentment in his expression. Like someone who had found the age-old meaning of life. 

"Hey," Dave said abruptly, latching his hand onto Reagan's before she could pull away. She stopped in place and raised her eyebrows, a smiling still poignant upon her lips.

"What?"

Dave quietly massaged his thumb and pointer finger into the back of Reagan's hand, looking down as if lost in thought. She gave his fingers a squeeze. It was a slight encouragement, a wordless insistence that he could tell her anything.

"Is this right?" he asked quietly.

"What? My hand? Looks pretty normal to me."

She was joking, but her quip didn't elicit a smile out of him. He raised his eyes to her and they were round with worry, wide and pleading for a serious answer to his vague question.

"I mean this," Dave said, nodding towards the drum set. "This . . . band. Starting over. Leaving you and Gracie."

Reagan frowned and dropped down next to him. She'd already heard him express all of his previous doubts. Before the mere atom that had become the Foo Fighters, Dave had questioned her over and over again, seeking her advice and always awaiting her confirmation that it was okay. She honestly wasn't sure how she could prove more than she had that she was alright with it.

"Of course it is. Why are you saying that?" she asked gently.

Dave wrinkled his forehead into a mask of frustrated thought. "I don't know. Today we talked about the tour next month, and I was pretty hyped about it until I remembered what I'm leaving behind."

"You've gone away before."

"I know. I know that. I mean, call me crazy, but this time just feels . . ." Dave's words faltered and he slumped even further back into the couch, uttering the last of his sentence in a defeated mumble. "Different."

"Different might be good," Reagan said encouragingly, rubbing his arm.

"Will it be good for us, though?"

"You already know that I support you."

"I know you do. But why do I feel like I'm giving something up?"

Reagan's breath hitched in her throat. She was already trying to guess just what exactly Dave's assumed sacrifice was. He was making it seem like he knew something that she didn't. 

"What would you be giving up?" she inquired calmly.

He shrugged meekly. "A normal life, I guess. Or maybe not normal for me, but normal for everyone else."

"You've never been normal, Dave."

"Gee, thanks."

Reagan let out a quick burst of laughter. "I mean it in a good way."

"What I'm trying to say is that I don't want this to feel like a choice," Dave explained. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together into a conjoined fist, head hanging low. "I don't want to do this and look back one day and think, 'fuck, I could have done it different.' I could have been a husband. A dad."

"Having a band doesn't deny you of those titles."

"By what definition? Don't you deserve to see me being those things for yourself? Here when you come, here to help with Gracie. An even nicer house with lots of land. No holidays, no birthdays missed."

Reagan's heartstrings pained. Dave was certainly painting a pretty picture in her head, but it wasn't anything that she hadn't already hashed over in the past. Long ago, she had accepted that those things, the things he was describing, were not a part of the essential makeup of her and Dave's relationship. They were normal for other people, but not for them.

"Happiness is important too," she said quietly. "You wouldn't be happy doing those things. Not completely."

"Maybe I would."

"Dave. I know that you can't look me in the eye and tell me that you truly want that. That's not a life that includes music."

"Who says? We've got a shitload of albums lying around. There's our music right there."

"It's not the same. It's not like getting up on stage and playing to an audience and know that someone out there appreciates what you created."

Dave raked his bottom teeth over his upper lip, contemplating what Reagan had said. He looked slightly defeated, clearly one-upped in their back-and-forth concerning right and wrong.

"Why do I feel like you're trying to talk yourself out of this?" she questioned.

"I'm not. You're right, I know what I want. I want to play. I want to do this. But . . . fuck, Reagan, I love you. I fucking married you. I can't pretend like your feelings don't matter."

"It's enough that you care about my feelings. My feelings are fine, though. I want you to do this."

"Right now," he whispered, turning his face towards her. "Right now you want me to do this. What happens two, five, ten years down the line? What happens when you want the big house in Virginia and the babies and the nights together?"

Reagan took a deep breath, carefully choosing her response. "Okay, first of all, all that can still happen regardless of your career. You can't change my mind about that. We can still have everything we both want while you do what you love."

"Can we afford that kind of time?"

Time. Jesus, Dave cared a lot about time. He treated it like the microscopic bits of sand funneling through an hourglass, counting each individual grain with weary precision. He'd never been big on time before, but when it had to do with Reagan and Gracie, he obsessed over the subject.

"I'm married to you," Reagan said slowly. "We agreed to this life together. Until the very end."

"You treat it like it's so predictable," Dave murmured, caressing the pad of his thumb briefly over her cheekbone. "Like you know everything before it's even happened."

"We've been through this before. A whole three years worth of it. I think I'm well prepared for whatever comes next."

"I'm not."

So maybe that's what it was. He was scared. Frightened of the unknown, of starting another band with his massive, worldwide-known title hanging over his head. Always in the shadows of a band, never fronting it. Reagan empathized with his fear.

"No one expects you to be," she whispered. 

"I want this to work so badly. Not you and me, but the band. I didn't think I'd want it as badly as I do now."

"It's okay to want that."

"I'm coming to terms with the likelihood that it's just a side project." Dave paused and then laughed, shaking his head stiffly. "I sound like a major fucking dick, talking like this shit is actually going to be something. We could walk in to that first show of the tour and get booed off the stage."

"Not even a possibility," Reagan countered firmly.

"I don't really care. I'll still love it all, no matter what happens. I'll be glad I fucking did it anyway. We could sell zero records and I'll still be proud that it even happened, that we really tried."

"Mhm," Reagan said, smiling between closed lips. She leaned in and kissed Dave's cheek. "Keep telling yourself that."

She got up to continue her path to the kitchen, but Dave grabbed her hand again, this time tighter than before. When she looked at him, he looked back urgently at her.

"How can you be so confident?" he demanded.

"Special psychic abilities," she teased.

"I'm serious. It's like you know something that I don't."

Ha. Where have I heard that before? Reagan thought, recalling her previous thoughts. 

"I just have a good feeling," she shrugged.

"You really think this is going to turn into something?" Dave asked tentatively, seeming suspicious of Reagan and her hopeful outlook.

To her, it wasn't hope that guided her notions. It was pure confidence, a manifestation of having known Dave better than anyone else had ever known him in the course of four years. She had always been painted into the background of his life, listening and watching even while he was out of the spotlight.

She had seen what his hands could do when wrapped around a guitar. She had heard his voice on countless nights, singing their baby to sleep or serenading an invisible audience as he toyed with chord progressions.

Reagan had once been sure that Nirvana would find fame. She'd missed her mark by a mere few inches, having not known just how famous Kurt's little pastime would become, but in many ways she had been right.

She was ten times more sure that the Foo Fighters, that Dave, would be known. It was difficult to say just how, in what way, but her gut lurched towards the premonition that a sort of destiny laid visible on Dave's horizon. One chapter closed and another opened. The concept of time was resurfacing, except it was a stark countdown to a bigger purpose than Dave knew he had. 

And somehow, all of that assuredness was buried deep within Reagan's flickering intuition.

"I know it will turn into something," she said. She offered him a smile, drawing the tips of her fingers along his jawline. How ridiculous it was for him to imagine a reality in which she didn't love him with every throb of her heart.

"It's you, Dave," she said softly. "That alone means it will be something."


a/n:

i didn't edit this because i'm tired as hell, but i hope my grammar and spelling made it out of the woodwork that is better known as a 'rough draft.' 



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