OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

ninety.

DECEMBER 19th, 1993, SEATTLE, WA

NIRVANA'S TOUR TOOK a brief interlude for the Christmas holidays, which in turn settled an air of peace over Reagan once Dave was back home, dropping his things on the floor of the living room.

It had only been a few days since she'd last seen him. The band had returned to Seattle to perform for MTV's Live and Loud, but it had been a short-lived stop, only lasting a day before Dave had departed on another flight headed for Massachusetts. Days apart from him had felt like years and the feeling was only exacerbated by Reagan's fears that she'd stoked the tension festering in the band. Her skirmish with Courtney hadn't gone forgotten, and despite her nagging worries, Dave had delivered a different outcome to her over the phone in late November.

Kurt, apparently, was holding no grudges. Courtney very much was and had forbidden Reagan from coming within a mile of her, but Kurt had shrugged the incident off, refusing determinedly to talk about it. Reagan's hopes had been filled with the inclination that he could have never been truly mad at her, but Dave let her down gently, alluding that Kurt's complacent reaction was no more than an example of his failure to care about much of anything these days.

Reagan had put it aside. If she could escape from the altercation without consequences, except that of Courtney's everlasting wrath, then fine. So be it. She didn't need Courtney's approval or friendship. What was more important was that Dave had returned to her in one piece for the holidays.

"Need help unpacking?" she asked. Dave didn't have much with him, but it would be a good way to spend their rejuvenated time together, emptying his things and catching up. He'd come from Denver, so his internal clock was only running an hour ahead of time, meaning that he wouldn't be too tired to hang around her.

"Nope. I'm not unpacking."

She cocked an eyebrow curiously. "Oh? Are you going to live out of your suitcase for the next two weeks?"

"Sort of. I can't unpack, because I've got a flight to catch in two hours," Dave explained casually.

Reagan's heart tripped over its rhythm pattern of beats. She froze, feeling her face go slack with shock.

"What?" she whispered, a rasp of pain in her voice. "You're leaving? You just got here."

"We're leaving," he clarified.

"Leaving? Where? What about Gracie?" She jerked her head in the direction of Gracie's room, where she was down for a nap. Sarah had just left for the day after fulfilling the job of putting Gracie to sleep. Reagan had asked her to come watch Gracie while she'd retrieved Dave from the airport, having taken the whole day off to be reunited with him.

"Sarah's coming back. I had it all arranged," Dave explained, a growing smile pulling at his mouth. "She's staying with Gracie until we come back on Christmas Eve."

"From where?" Reagan gawked. Her heart had started to function again, now picking up rapidly as it thudded. "Where the hell are we going?"

Dave smiled fully at her. "Hawaii. I said that we would go, so we're going. Today. Now."

She stood frozen, her jaw hanging open though no sound emitted from her mouth. It took several seconds worth of her replaying what he'd said in her head to make sense of it.

"Hawaii?" she asked. She wanted to be sure that she'd heard him correctly. "We're going to Hawaii?"

"Yep. I booked the tickets back in Florida. Merry Christmas."

"But . . . but Gracie," Reagan stammered. Gracie's face swam to mind, all smiles and cheer. What the hell were they supposed to do? Up and leave her?