The Punk and the Princess (A Dave Grohl Fanfiction)

Ch. 30 - Friend of a Friend

April 1994
"Hello?" You say as the phone rings at 8:30. You're standing in your kitchen making breakfast before you head to class and are taken aback, no one usually called you in the mornings.

"Jules, I only have a few seconds to talk to you so I need you to really understand what I'm telling you" You immediately tense up at the sound of the familiar voice.

"Annie? What's going on?" You ask, your heart beating fast all of the sudden. Your closest friend from high school, Annie, was a producer for MTV News and you had been waiting for her call for days now.

"Kurt is dead, they found him in his house this morning. I wanted to tell you before we go on air with it, you need to call Dave right now" She says and you feel your heart sink in your chest.

Though Dave had called you a couple days ago to tell you what was going on and how scared everyone was, you weren't truly prepared to hear the news of the death of someone you knew.

"What happened? OD?" You ask and you hear a sharp intake of breath from her end before she answers.

"Suicide" She replies in a whisper and you feel suddenly like ice is running through your veins. Shock and pain are the only emotions you can register for the next ten seconds.

"Jules seriously focus, you need to call Dave right now. He needs you, I know this hurts but Dave is hurting more." She adds and you're snapped back to reality.

Before you can say anything else she speaks again, this time in a more hurried tone.

"I gotta go we're about to go on the air. I love you" She says and you mumble some kind of goodbye you don't comprehend yourself and then immediately dial Dave's number.

He answers on the second ring but doesn't say a word, the only proof a human being is on the other end is the lack of a ring back tone, "Dave?" You ask in a gentle tone, still terrified out of your mind.

"Dave please, its me Jules I just got off the phone with Annie, she told me what happened. Just tell me what you need Dave, I will do anything" You say desperately, you had no clues as to how he was doing and you need to hear his voice.

"Do you want me to come to Seattle?" You ask and it sounds like a stupid question, of course you were coming to Seattle—Dave needed you and you needed to be there for him.

"Yes, please come" He says and his voice sounds so strained and broken you feel tears prick the corners of your eyes. You can tell he's been crying which was not normal for Dave.

"Ok, I'm on my way, I'm getting on the first plane out—I'm just going to the airport and waiting." You say, "I love you Dave, I'll be with you soon"

"I love you too. Hurry—please Jules" He says and the vulnerability in his tone breaks your heart, "I need you"

You promise him you'll be there soon and hang up the phone, mindlessly throwing clothes into a bag, cringing as you grab a black blouse and a black skirt for the obviously impending funeral.

You weren't even letting yourself consider yet what Courtney and Frances might be going through, you would start sobbing immediately if you considered the effects on them.

Though you only saw Dave every few months or so and hadn't seen the people from Nirvana in a long time, in the past few days you had heard more from Courtney and the band's manager and Krist than you had in a long time.

Even though you had not been dating Dave for years, and her and Dave didn't get along much anymore, you still had kept in touch with Courtney. Whenever you went up to Seattle you always made a point to spend an afternoon with her and Kurt and Frances up at the house. You'd make lunch and play with Frances and catch up with them and whoever was living with them at the house during that time.

Even though their reputation made it seem like their lives were always full of drama and chaos, when they were back home in Washington their lives were practically normal. Except now, you thought to yourself.

When you first found out Kurt was missing you had talked to Courtney on the phone, she was in Los Angeles—near where you had been living since you began law school at Stanford—and you wanted to check in that she was ok. But she instead was completely hysterical, scared out of her mind, rightfully so, as you would be if you were in her shoes. You didn't want to think about how lost she was right now, how the news had affected her.

Instead you call a cab and just focus on getting to the airport as quickly as possible. You don't let yourself think about school, finals were coming up for your last year of law school and the next few weeks were arguably most important of your academic career. In just a month you would be done with everything—you'd have your degree, you'd have taken the bar, and you had a job offer set up for a respected firm in Los Angeles.

But if you thought about anything except for focusing on what you were doing in the moment you would probably have a panic attack, all you let yourself think about the exact task in front of you at the moment.

As if the stars have aligned for this horrific event, the next plane for Seattle is leaving only a half an hour after you arrive. You buy your ticket and rush through security.

Once you get to the gate you make a hasty call to Dave's mom, leaving her a message telling her you're going up to Seattle. You decide its probably useless since she's undoubtedly on her way to Seattle anyway and won't hear it until after but it seems the right thing to do.

After you get on the plane and take off you try to sleep, but you have too much going on in your mind to even get close to sleeping. All you keep thinking about is how hurt Dave is, how broken Krist must be, how shattered Frances's entire future is now.

You let a few tears fall down your cheeks but you wipe them away, you had to be strong for Dave right now, you needed to be his rock.

Your relationship with Dave over the past few years had been hard to define. You weren't dating—at all, but it felt odd just to call yourself just friends. It wasn't that there was really anything romantic going on per say, you just were on a level beyond that of a friendship, you understood each other in a way two friends didn't.

You saw each other more than either of you had expected to, probably once every couple months and you talked on the phone every week or so. When you were together it was hard to predict what would happen, sometimes you got drunk over dinner and slept together and sometimes you would meet his new girlfriend and have dinner with them as the third wheel.

It was a unique dynamic and one you never thought the two of you would have, but you were just happy you were in each other's lives at all. He was so important to you that the thought of him going through pain like this broke you.

When he had called you a few days before and told you Kurt was missing you were heartbroken but like his death, in some ways you had been bracing yourself for it for months, ever since what had happened in Rome.

After what seems like an eternity your plane lands in Seattle. You call a cab right away and go straight to Dave's house.

You look around as you reach Dave's house. It looked as though there was no press around but you still sneak in the back, using the key Dave had hidden for emergencies.

You take a deep breath as you turn the knob and open the door, afraid of what will meet your eyes on the other side.