OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one-hundred-three.

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.