OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

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.