OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

eighty-two.

"Look, Dave," she began. "I get it. I'm not in the band. I don't have to put up with Kurt like you do. But you need to realize that he's a dumb ass, sometimes. He's going through a lot of shit right now and he's still your friend. Friends fuck up."

"I still don't get why you're defending him," Dave snapped. "And it wasn't a fuck up. He meant what he said."

"Do you want to leave it like this?" Reagan shot back angrily, refusing to believe that Kurt had made some kind of Freudian slip. "When you get the phone call one day that something happened to him, do you want it to have ended this way?"

Her rationale silenced him quickly. His face fell but he recovered only a moment later, moving his mouth though unfortunately for him, no sound came out.

"No," he finally said.

"Exactly. You don't need Kurt's approval to know that you're a great drummer. You're amazing, Dave. You may think you don't need them, which maybe you don't if you want to do this for the rest of your life, but you do right now. They're your friends and they need you."

"Do you know how badly it hurt to hear him say that?" Dave asked. He brought his hand to the underside of his chin, rubbing it as if he were willing himself not to break down. The sight of his weakness made Reagan nearly eat her own words. Seeing him in pain made her want to deliberately hurt the person who'd put him there in the first place.

But this was Kurt they were talking about.

"I know," she said gently. "Like I said, he's a dick for saying it. Do you want me to slap him when he gets here?"

"I don't know if I want him here, Reagan. Not after that."

"Can't you be the bigger person for five seconds? If you would just realize how stupid Kurt sounds! Do you think that Nirvana would be what it is without you?"

"Sure. Probably. I don't know. I don't care."

He started to slip away again, but Reagan re-latched her hand onto his arm. "Hey," she said sharply. "They had three drummers before you came along. Four if you want to include me, which I know you like to do. Do you see any of them drumming on the records? Going on tour? On the front page of Rolling Stone?"

Dave sucked in his cheeks. "That was luck."

"If it was luck, then Kurt is right, you're just a shitty drummer who got lucky. And we both know that isn't true."

He looked like he wanted to sneer at the valid point that Reagan had made, but Dave only stood there, rolling his tongue across the inside of his mouth and turning over what she'd said. After heaving a long sigh, he pushed his hands back through his hair and let it fall into his face. Before he could curl a finger upwards to tuck one side of it behind his ear, Reagan completed the gesture for him.

"Maybe I am being a little bitch," he admitted.

"I'm on your side. I don't appreciate what Kurt said at all," Reagan reassured him. She wouldn't let him escape without making that one point clear.

"It's not the kind of thing that I'm going to forget any time soon."

"You don't have to. Let's just get through today, please, for Gracie at least. And if you're still bothered by the end of the day, maybe you should talk to Kurt yourself."

"He hates confrontation. I'm sure it would only piss him off more."

"Well, I guess that means you'll have to be the bigger person then, doesn't it?"

Dave sighed again. He brushed his hand against Reagan's, the one that wasn't clutching a fistful of streamers, and gripped it. Raising it to his lips, he kissed her knuckles longingly, as if he wished that he could have done more than that. Reagan was merely grateful that she'd managed to calm him down.