OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

sixty-four.

IT WAS HEAVEN for Reagan to wake up in Dave's arms, the faint beams of Manhattan's sunrise peering through their hotel window and just barely warming her face. She shifted against him as she made sense of her surroundings, her unconscious mind slowly piecing together that she wasn't waking up in their Seattle apartment that morning. She was across the country in a different city, but that sudden awareness was subdued in the way Dave held her, one arm draped across her chest protectively.

She sat up between the fluffy hotel bedding and looked down at Dave, who appeared to also be stirring awake. At home, they typically never bothered to sleep so entangled against each other, but the position they'd woken up in served as evidence for how much they no doubt missed one another.

With half his face pressed into a pillow, Dave opened one eye and squinted at Reagan tiredly. She smiled at him, content to momentarily forget the alarming feelings she had felt the night before. It was easy to put them aside when Dave was lying so close next to her, one wiry arm still in her lap and the other tucked under his head.

"You've got a big day," she told him, caressing her nails lovingly down his bare back as she proudly thought of the Saturday Night Live performance awaiting him.

"Coffee," he groaned in return, swiveling his face back into the pillow.

Reagan laughed. "How about breakfast and coffee?"

She managed to coerce him out of bed with the promise of a steaming cup of black brew and the repeated reminder that within several hours, he would be able to boast that he had performed on Saturday Night Live.

"No one except you and my mom actually care," Dave insisted with a snort as he dressed himself, humbly sidelining Reagan's enthusiasm.

"That's not true!" she argued. "Lisa cares. The rest of your family cares. Think about all the people you knew growing up who are going to turn on NBC tonight and see you behind that drum set."

"I'll consider thinking about it, but only if my seventh-grade girlfriend ends up watching and calls to admit that she dropped the ball big time."

Reagan countered this by throwing one of the big, downy pillows directly at his head.

Once they were both dressed to withstand the wintry wind tunneling its way through the city (Reagan had reluctantly tugged on a pair of jeans), Dave began to hatch plans for what the day would hold before he was needed at Nirvana's final sound check. He leaned against the bathroom sink and rambled as Reagan stood in front of the mirror, threading her hair into a French braid.

"We'll meet my mom downstairs and take her with us for breakfast," he decided. "We should go uptown to eat. And then, we can walk through Central Park together."

Reagan approved of his plans, smiling to herself in the mirror as he spoke like a tour guide. She felt wholeheartedly that his agenda would serve as a pleasant distraction from the aching truth that befallen her the night before. As she had fallen asleep to the sound of Dave's slow and steady breathing, she had decided that the only way she could approach the matter was with distance. After wiping her tears from her face, Dave had told her that it would do her no good to corner Kurt and confront him. It would only lead to trouble once his guard went up. The added backing of Courtney, who rarely went against him, didn't help either.

She loved Kurt like family, but knew in the deepest part of all her instincts that the rollercoaster he'd hopped on was one that could not be stopped by anyone but himself. She had been conscious of this since first knowing him, back when he ate acid like candy and huffed fumes from aerosol cans. Heroin existed in a whole other dimension outside of those adolescent experiments, but with a touch of his wisdom, Dave had asserted himself to be right. Reagan could do nothing for Kurt except be the same person he knew and loved — and that meant not challenging him.