Chapter Text
“Play it again,” Kurt says. “One more time, Dave.”
He moves into the apartment. Fall 1990. The weather’s muggy and cold, even for someone from D.C., so he packs an absurd amount of sweaters that he’d copped from a thrift store two blocks down from a place they’d used to play near Gilman. It’s not a grand affair; Kurt, who Dave still can’t reconcile with the wild image he’d had in his head of the guy who’d screamed his lungs out on all those tracks off of Bleach, directs him through the door and stiltedly points out the cramped bathroom, the lone bedroom that belongs to Kurt, and the disaster of a living room that’s really just a television, a tiny counter littered with empty beer cans, and the ugly brown couch that Dave’s to sleep on for the unforeseeable future while they scrape something together.
There’s a hole in the window and the entire place smells like mold. Shit’s better than the Stahls’ van, at least.
“If the turtles get out, put them back in,” Kurt tells him, distractedly flicking a lighter on for the cigarette that’s hanging out of his mouth, and Dave glances around to see what the fuck he’s talking about. There’s an aquarium against the wall, so green and rank that he can barely see the little wriggling things through the glass. But they’re there, alright. Jesus Christ. There really are turtles in this shithole. “Besides that… I got nothing. Knock yourself out. There’s an Ampm across the street if you get hungry.”
“I don’t have that much on me,” Dave admits, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He’d scrounged up all the savings he’d had and whatever he’d made with Scream from playing those little gigs, but he’d blown most of it just getting here on his own.
Kurt’s mouth twists into a funny little grin. “99 cents gets you 3 corn dogs.”
Dave barks a laugh. Hopes it doesn’t come off as loud as he thinks it does. “Shit. Now that’s a fuckin’ offer.”
Kurt pads off towards his room without another word. Dave watches the door close on his back before dropping his stuff by the couch and then flopping back onto it himself.
It’s not much, but it’s home for now. It’s Olympia until they get their shit together and get something out and get back on tour, Krist had said. He’d said something similar during their very first meeting, that barebones audition where Dave hadn’t even gotten two minutes into a song before they’d stopped him and said that he was in. That there’d be a lot of sitting around and waiting. Practicing and waiting. Mostly waiting.
Dave stares up at the ceiling and counts the water marks until someone down on the street jams their horn up so loud that someone next door starts to yell. There’s a soft splash from his right. One of the turtles has fallen into its bowl. On the little table by the couch are a couple of out-of-place VHS tapes for a television that’s broken, and a little bowl filled to the brim with cigarette butts. An air rifle has been left to lean against the wall right by a dinged-up Stella being held together to the best of its ability with a fair amount of duct-tape.
He lights one of his own cigarettes up, letting himself sink into the couch as he exhales and watches the smoke curl up along the peeling wallpaper.
Maybe this wasn’t a good plan after all. Moving in here. He barely knows the fucking guy and he’s living in his house. Maybe he should’ve been a little less annoying to Krist when he’d been staying at his place instead—his and Shelli’s place in Tacoma—and maybe he could still be waking up on their couch instead. Dave had barely lasted a month there before he’d gotten kicked to the curb by the other fucking guy he barely knew and handed over to the next one like a little kid to be taken care of.
He’s not a kid. Not anymore, at least. He’d been the youngest in Scream—everyone else had a solid ten years on him and that’d been terrifying at first, but here, Krist and Kurt aren’t that much older than him at all.
Dave’s eyes fall back on the acoustic guitar in the corner by the Crosman. He wonders if Kurt will mind if he borrows it. Maybe he’ll ask later, whenever Kurt comes back out of his room.
If he ever comes back out of his room.
It’s fine. Dave’s fine. He’ll make do—he’ll learn how to make this work. If all of this works out, and they get to put out some good shit, well, that’ll make this all worth it. His mom had told him that before he’d even come out here, that he had to look out for himself too. That if he got a chance, he should take it.
He rummages through his bag for his Walkman and puts The Winding Sheet on, letting it wash over him like the rain outside. It’ll be worth it, he thinks.
Nirvana’s worth it.
They let him have the window seat, because right before the plane took off he’d gone and said that he’d always liked watching the plane take off on flights, and Krist had started talking about how he’s flown a ton already and how Kurt doesn’t give a shit about which seat he gets so Dave should take it, it’s really no big deal, he likes having more space in the aisle anyway, yadda yadda.
Dave can tell Krist has little siblings. It really shows. Clear as day.
He spends take-off staring out the window at the way the ground gets further and further away, the way the fields warp and blur into little patches, the way the land gives way to blue-green seabeds and then the evening-casted sky.
Kurt’s arm brushes against his as the plane stabilizes on its path. “You want anything?”
“Can I get a Pepsi?”
“Pepsi tastes like dirt,” Kurt says, but he flags someone down for one anyway.
The crunch of the can in his hand offsets the music coming through his tinny headphones. Kurt’s got a Coke, and Krist is eyeballing the patrolling air stewardesses to make sure they don’t spot the bottle of Jim Beam he’d stowed away onto the plane.
Dave taps out an idle rhythm along the tray table, almost rattling the half-full can right off. First tour abroad with these two. Feels different from when he’d gone to the UK and Europe with his last band, but in a good way. Different in an exciting way, in a way that makes him eager to get onstage with them.
“Hey, losers.” Krist’s wrestling with a little black bag, padded and boxy. “You ready to make a home video?”
“You brought your camcorder?”
“Mom’s,” Kurt says, sitting up to look straight into the lens of the camera, “it’s his mom’s. Hey, Mrs. Novoselic. Krist spent the entire flight snorting blow in the bathroom.”
“Without us,” Dave adds, peeking around Kurt’s shoulder. “Ain’t that just selfish?”
“Absolutely,” Kurt says. “Hey. Gimme that.”
Krist hands him the camcorder, and he turns it onto Dave before adopting the whiniest high-pitched voice he can. “Give us your best face.”
Dave pulls the ugliest face he can think of, teeth stuck out like a horse. Krist lets out a guffaw. “Beautiful, honey,” Kurt simpers. “Just beautiful. Thank you. Perfect. Next in line, please.”
Krist belches in response and flutters his lashes.
“Wonderful,” Kurt says. “That concludes our pageant for the evening.”
He hands the camcorder back to Krist, who says, “Nirvana: the world’s greatest rock band or world’s greatest beauty queens? You decide, ladies and gentlemen.”
“We can’t be both? Aw man,” Dave says. “What’re we gonna do with all the ball gowns we packed?”
“Save ‘em for next year’s Miss Teen USA. You’re a stunner, a shoo-in, look at that hair. Am I right or not, Kurt?”
Kurt makes a noncommittal noise, but he’s smiling between sips of his Coke. His eyes flick up to Dave for a moment, like he’s considering something, but they’re soon turned back to Krist, and then the little in-flight snack they’d been given.
Dave settles back in his seat and watches the clouds pass them by.
The flight proceeds summarily. They continue to goof around for the video camera, they drink a lot, they make fun of people they used to know back in their hometowns and they pretend like they’re behaving whenever the stewardesses pass by their row.
They touch down around two in the morning. Dave had stayed awake the entire time on the plane, too wired to rest, but he can’t help but be lulled into sleep the second they get into the van that’s taking them to the hotel. It’s the result of all those years spent living in a tiny little room on wheels, packed together like sardines with nothing but a blanket and a rolled-up T-shirt for a pillow.
He dozes off with his Walkman still playing ABBA in his ears, not thinking about the tour. Not thinking about anything, really.
Time just goes. Like this, on and on, the clock feels slow.
The van eventually comes to a halt. He feels it the second the van slows; learned habits die hard. Dave’s eyes open, and his cheek feels warm. The scratch of fabric makes him realize that he’s woken up not leaning against the window—but someone’s shoulder.
It’s Kurt. He lets Dave’s head drop before telling him flatly, “Your chin’s too fucking bony,” and he jumps out of the unmoving van without another word.
Jesus. Alright. Dave follows after, still sleep-weary and confused, headphones hanging around his neck. He doesn’t get why Kurt’s always so hot and cold. The first time they’d met at the airport, Kurt had offered to help him lug his kick to the car, eyes big and blue and honest. The next time, he’d barely looked at Dave, sticking close to his guitar in a corner of the practice room. Even now as they head up to their floor post-check-in, Kurt deviates from their group without a farewell, heading for his own room.
Dave’s gaze follows him the entire way, even after he’s shut the door.
A hand falls onto his shoulder. “Don’t take it personally,” Krist says. “He didn’t move for an entire half hour because he didn’t want to wake you up.”
Oh.
Dave nods, not wanting to get into it any more than his brain’s already letting him, and raises a hand. “See you in the morning, then.”
“Bright and early!” Krist says, ever chipper. “We’ve got English scenery to disrupt.”
Krist takes an instant liking to the owners of the Dalmacia, where they’re being put up for the next couple of months. They’re Croatian just like he is, he tells them excitedly with his mouth stuffed full of food just a few mornings after they’d reached London. Dave only half-pays attention, too preoccupied with consuming the actual breakfast of beans and toast they’d gotten instead of another day of gas station or drugstore offerings.
When he’d been in Scream, he’d been lucky to get a bowl of cold pasta whipped up by the wife of a friend of a friend’s band for an entire day’s meal. They’ve got hot water. They’ve got actual beds here. Fuck foam rollouts, god—Dave’s back hasn’t felt this good in literal years. Practically living in luxury’s lap, here. Total five-star Four Seasons shit.
Kurt only looks at him with a modicum of concern as Dave scarfs down the last of his fried toast. “The baby likes his food, huh.”
“Wah-wah,” Dave replies. “Who’re you calling a baby?”
“You’re the youngest,” Krist says, setting his fork down. “You’re like, totally the baby of the band now.”
Again, Dave thinks despairingly. He’ll never escape.
“Chad was my age,” Kurt adds, dunking a teabag into his chipped mug of hot water. “And you look like you’re still in high school.”
“Man,” Dave says. “I dropped out before you guys even started the fuckin’ band.”
Krist lets out a bellowing laugh. “That makes three of us.”
“It was meant to be!” Dave cries, clutching at Krist like a swooning maiden fallen into dramatics. “Fate brought us dropouts together.”
“Fate, and Buzz Osborne,” Kurt says, sipping at his tea. “Mostly Buzz.”
“God bless The Melvins,” Krist sighs, putting his hand over his heart. “Got us the best drummer we could ever ask for. Don’t tell Chad I said that. Or… like, any of the others.”
Something warm travels up Dave’s throat, and he gulps down his coffee to hide it. He’d honestly come in thinking he’d just be another one in a long line of coming-and-going drummers. If Krist thinks that he’s good enough, then—
“Chad’s good,” Kurt says, and it’s the first time Dave’s heard him say anything on the topic since they met. “But he didn’t fit. You do. Now shut up and finish your fucking breakfasts.”
“You’re so hungover, aren’t you.”
Kurt makes a miserable little noise, and Dave stifles a laugh in his mug.
He thinks about what they’d said throughout the rest of the tour, even as they travel from town to town, from county to county. They do Birmingham first, then London, then Leeds. The shows are all a day apart and they spend almost all of their free time sleeping in their room at the bed-and-breakfast, their three beds squeezed together sideways with barely any space to tiptoe to the bathroom in the middle of the day.
It’s just about as hectic as it’d been touring with Scream, but it’s different. They, Kurt and Krist, are a lot more laidback compared to the rest of the guys he’s played with. Kurt still doesn’t really talk all that much, and Krist’s only really chatty whenever there are other people around. But it’s fun. He’s really starting to get used to being a part of the band.
Dave still remembers North Shore Surf Club like it’d happened yesterday. The first show he’d gotten to play with them after being called up. The power in the venue blowing out multiple times. Playing like he’d never played before, to the point of accidentally ripping a hole in one of his drums. Kurt holding up Dave’s busted snare high above his head like some sort of victory symbol to the cheering audience.
It’d felt like he’d had something to prove that night. It’d felt like he did, in the end.
But he didn’t fit, Dave remembers Kurt saying again, packing his drums up after Leeds. You do.
He holds the words close like a mantra.
You do, you do, you do.
They play every single stop on the last leg of the tour as loud and as dirty as possible. Each venue’s different, from the way they’re set up to their immediate surroundings. But—there’s one thing that’s the same about each and every one of them: the energy.
It’s frenetic and wild. The kind of energy that you can only achieve with high-voltage shows, with a screaming guitar to match a voice of the same caliber, the heavy pulse of a bass underneath it, and the feverish turbulence of drums to seize it in its entirety and direct it back to the crowd. People climb up onto the stage and throw themselves back off. Someone tips a monitor over, and another person almost knocks one of Dave’s cymbals over in his haste to scramble away from a bouncer.
Frenetic, wild, intense. It’s everything Dave hoped for, joining the band. It’s more than. And it’s on one of those nights that Dave finally realizes, halfway through a set and about twenty-four beats into Blew, that these songs aren’t just theirs—as in Kurt’s and Krist’s.
They’re theirs. Kurt’s and Krist’s and Dave’s now, too. At least, that’s how it feels like to Dave in that very moment, sucker-punched by exhilaration and wanting nothing more than to play these songs for a lifetime.
Kurt pulls back from a shout into the microphone, and turns to catch Dave’s eye. He’s not smiling. Instead, there’s something feral in his eyes and something in the way he’s holding himself in front of hundreds of people that makes him look like every inch of the man Dave had only heard about before actually meeting.
That’s Kurt Cobain.
And this, Dave thinks, throwing every last bit of himself into the next song, this is Nirvana. The three of them, like this.
Fucking flying.
The excitement dries up quick when they come back from touring.
It’s goodbye to their roadies, to their fellow bands that they’d toured with. Sonic Youth, L7, Shonen Knife, Dinosaur Jr., Hole, Mudhoney and the lot. Kathleen, Tony, Dylan, who’d stayed for most of it. Jen, whom he’d had a spectacularly short but gratifying fling with until she’d kicked his ass to the curb. Jimmy, his best friend who’s roadied for him since the very beginning, clapping him on the shoulder and telling him to call whenever he’s back in Virginia next. A lot of see-you-laters and catch-you-arounds and fuck-yous, and then Dave’s hauling his drum kit back to Krist’s to dump it in his basement before catching a ride back with Kurt to their little paradise of a dump in Olympia.
Much like tourists going on vacation, they arrive back with more belongings than they’d started with. Dave leaves his newly-acquired box of records under the shelf with the boombox and the record player to help Kurt put up the cheap prints he’d bought on a whim.
Kurt, as Dave had discovered about ten minutes into living with him, has a strange fascination with knick-knacks and antiques that range from stomach-churningly grotesque to displayable alongside your grandmother’s fine china. Most notably, he’s got a little anatomy model from the ‘70s with its guts hanging out, propped up precariously on a dog-eared copy of Süskind’s Perfume and the first two Pixies albums on the far end of the room.
The prints are of some marigolds. Kurt had spotted them at a market they’d visited on a too-cold Sunday the morning before a show, and had swept the entire collection of six delicately painted yellow-orange puffballs to stuff into his suitcase.
Dave puts them up behind the headless, cut-open body, and Kurt makes an approving noise. “Yeah. That works.”
“They’re kinda crooked,” Dave says.
“Nothing in this house is allowed to be straight,” Kurt declares, ashing his cigarette. “Her Majesty’s decree.”
“Lucky me,” Dave quips without thinking, striding across the room to toss the cardboard holder the prints had come in. “I’m about as straight as a wet noodle.”
There’s no response to that, and his stomach drops as he glances back up to see Kurt’s reaction. He doesn’t think Kurt would take that badly, not at all, but Dave’s just never—he’s never said anything out loud before to someone he barely knows. Shit, seriously, him and his unstoppable tendency to run his fucking mouth—
He doesn’t get one. Kurt’s got the window pushed open, and the air rifle balanced over the wooden frame edge. He either hadn’t heard Dave or has just chosen to ignore the remark.
Dave blinks, relief settling in for just a second before it’s eaten right up by his curiosity. “So, we—what are you doing?”
Kurt doesn’t look up. “Target practice,” he says simply, before raising the gun to let off a little crack of a shot off the signboard of the Washington State Lottery building across the road. He glances back up at Dave and motions with his chin. It’s the first time he’s actively asked Dave to join him in something that isn’t related to the band.
Dave scrambles over immediately, grinning.
By the time evening falls, he’s taken out half a window and Kurt somehow manages to knock a doorknob off a side entrance before someone comes out to yell at the unknown perpetrators. They slide down to the floor, Kurt still clutching to the air rifle and shushing Dave like anyone would even be able to hear them all the way from there.
“We’re good,” Dave reasons, getting up to peer over the sill. Looks like the man’s gone back into the building. There’s no one out there anymore. “We can blame it on the turtles.”
Kurt snorts.
“We’ll just go, oh, sorry Officer,” Dave adds, putting on the most downtrodden voice he can, “Nikki Sixx just has such a trigger finger, swear to God.”
“You named the fucking turtles?”
“Yeah,” Dave says. “Wait, shit. Did they already have names?”
“No,” Kurt says, staring at him for a long, unblinking moment before his mouth curls into something amused. “Which one’s your favorite?”
“Axl,” Dave says breezily, and Kurt laughs so hard that he falls off the couch, that wheezy cackle that Dave’s only heard a few times since they met. It’s so fucking funny that Dave starts laughing like a total idiot too.
It dies down soon after, but Dave’s still grinning when Kurt goes, “I got 7 dollars. We should like, treat ourselves for once.”
“Living like kings, huh.” Dave tucks his hair behind his ear and tries to look hopeful. “We gonna get some real food?”
It’d be a change from their shit on a shingle dinners. Kurt owns exactly one pan that they’ve been taking turns to scrub out after every dinner that doesn’t happen to be made of corn dogs bought from the Ampm—toast with canned tuna, griddled up with a gross mix of flour and pepper and whatever dry shit they have on the shelf.
Kurt’s already tugging his sweater on. “Yeah. C’mon,” he says, and Dave’s one step behind him without another word.
They go fuck around at the convenience store down the block. There’s some middle-aged woman in there that Dave’s absolutely certain they end up traumatizing after Kurt dares Dave to stick his fingers in the Slurpee machine. A good half an hour is spent picking between various disgustingly cheap TV dinner options and then blowing the rest of their cash on beer before escaping the wrath of the unamused store clerk with their trophies.
“Alright,” Dave says, grandly sweeping an arm across the table back in the house and letting all the magazines and cigarettes tumble onto the floor. “What’s it gonna be, the… Salisbury Steak, fuck, that sounds fancy—orrr… classic fried chicken?”
“Gimme the one with the fries.”
“They both got fries.”
“Chicken,” Kurt decides. “Beer?”
Dave slides the frozen chicken meal into the somehow still-functional microwave. “I got two hands. Gimme two.”
“I’m not feeding you those peas,” Kurt snarks, cracking a can open. “Use your other hand for something better.”
Dave mimes jerking off, and Kurt rips the tab off the can to flick it into his face.
They eat their overheated dinners and toast their beers while The Sonics’ The Witch plays in the background. “That fuckin’ drum sound, man,” Kurt mumbles, mouth stuffed full of factory-processed mashed potatoes. “So huge.”
“Yeah,” Dave agrees. “God, like, how’d they get that back then? I’ve heard hardcore albums from like, this year, where the drums don’t sound anywhere close to this big.”
“They were inadvertent prophets, man. Ahead of their time.” Kurt motions vaguely with his fork. “Hey, we should jam this at the next practice.”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Dave exclaims. “Let’s do the entire fuckin’ album.”
Kurt lets out a dry laugh. “Points to the wet noodle for enthusiasm,” he says, eyes brighter than they’d been all day, and he sticks a Chim Chim sticker on Dave’s jacket. Badge of honour.
Dave’s smile wobbles a bit, but he beams regardless. “About that,” he starts, uncertain, “I—”
“You don’t have to say it.” Kurt shakes his head, voice suddenly much more sober than before. “There ain’t nothing wrong with it. Absolutely nothing.”
“Oh. You—” Dave says, and he clears his throat, not looking at him. “You?”
Kurt gives him a half-hearted shrug. “Yeah,” he says. Casual, like it’s nothing. Dave wishes he could be that brazen. Maybe he could learn to, now. “I suppose.”
Dave’s heart jumps up to his throat. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay, cool.”
Another appraising stare. Then, Kurt says, “Eat your dinner or I’ll eat it for you.”
“No fair,” Dave says, “I’m a growing child. I need sustenance.”
“Shuddup,” Kurt says. Then, he gives Dave one of his fries.
They eat. They listen to more music. They talk about cleaning the turtle aquarium (but Dave knows they’re going to forget by the time they wake up tomorrow). Eventually, Kurt tires of Dave and slips away to his room, leaving Dave be with his sleeping bag and the ugly couch and his Walkman.
Back to writing songs in his head, then. Quietly picking at the left-handed guitar and attempting to figure out some chords. Staring at the ceiling for the rest of the night. He’s never been good at sitting still and doing nothing for too long.
Or, well, he could look at the marigolds instead, now. At least they’re a pretty view. Prettier than the turtle aquarium or the putrefying kitchen or the dilapidated posters on the walls.
Kurt’s not too bad to look at either, Dave’s traitorous little mind whispers, and he shrugs it off, because of course Kurt’s fine to look at, he’s got the nice jawline and the knobbly hands and the blond hair that’s actually kind of soft whenever he scrubs it out with bar soap, and those really pretty blue eyes—
Dave sits up so fast that he almost gives himself whiplash.
“No,” Dave tells himself. “Not going there.”
Not Kurt. He’s not going to fuck with whatever they’ve got going right now by going and—what, developing a thing for his bandmate? A thing. Like he’s a teenage boy all over again. Been there, done that. Had his fair share. Not recommended in the slightest.
But it’s just—Dave’s always been a bit too attracted to stuff that’s not good for him.
Like Kurt.
There’s something a little tragic about him, sometimes. Just in the way he sits alone, looking like the loneliest person in a room full of people. He’s not always that way—on his best days, he’s outrageously hilarious. Magnetic, the kind of person you wanna hang out with for hours. On those days, Dave wants to spend every single second soaking in the way he speaks about the music he loves, the way he’ll go along with all of Krist’s and Dave’s jokes, the way he makes them laugh in turn.
On other days, it’s like there’s a permanent shadow just hanging over him. Waiting and looming and clasping onto his shoulders like it’s mocking the rest of them who can’t get any closer.
Dave counts the marigolds on the wall. One, two, three, four, five, six.
Six color pictures, all in a row.
He thinks about Kurt and his shadow, and then he thinks about Kurt with his big Jackie O sunglasses and oversized Elmer Fudd hat picking out photos of pretty flowers from a stall in Brixton Village for his decrepit apartment, face lit up by the stark winter sun.
Something a little magic, something a little tragic. They go hand in hand.
Dave lays back down on the couch, arms crossed under his head. They’re heading out, cross-country, to test the waters with some record labels next week. Maybe it’ll do him some good to get out of here again, even if they’ve just gotten back.
The clock ticks, slow. Dave shuts his eyes and falls asleep to the muffled sound of Kurt’s humming from inside his room. It’s just a quiet room, he thinks, the words forming over an idle melody in his head, and he’s there.