AUGUST 16th, 1992, SEATTLE, WA
THE FIRST THING Reagan did upon walking into her and Dave's bathroom was scream.
It was a bloodcurdling scream, more dramatic than necessary as she would admit later on, but it was unavoidable. Her eyes zeroed in on the bathroom sink, where amidst the white porcelain lay clumps of freshly sheared brown hair.
"What?" Dave demanded, whirling around to face her with scissors in his hand. She stared at him, horrified as she cupped her hand over her mouth.
"What did you do?" she whispered. Her voice rose in pitch when she spoke again. "What the HELL did you do?"
"Cut my hair," Dave replied naively. "You like it?"
Reagan felt her jaw pop open. If she hadn't been so horrified by what he'd done, she would have admitted that he'd actually done a pretty good job with the pair of desk scissors. His hair fell right at the nape of his neck now.
"Your . . . hair . . ." Reagan said, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water. She held fast to the hope that the more she blinked, the better the chance of Dave's long locks magically appearing back on his head.
"It was getting annoying," Dave explained. He tucked back his trimmed hair behind one ear. "I could barely see on stage."
"Well maybe if you didn't thrash your head like a bucking bull!" Reagan spluttered.
"Hey, I thought you liked it when I did that," Dave shot back defensively.
She edged closer to him, letting out a miserable squeak. With one hand, she fisted a chunk of his between her fingers. A longing moan followed after another squeak.
"Reags, it's just hair," Dave said with a roll of his eyes.
"I loved your long hair," Reagan asserted. "It was my favorite. My favorite thing about you."
"Thanks," Dave said sarcastically. "Forget me being the father of your child and a notorious charmer. It's all about the hair. Are you still stuck in the eighties or something?"
"Ugh!" Reagan slumped forward against his chest dramatically and he scoffed, catching her upright.
"Come on, does it really look that bad?"
She peered up at him with hesitant eyes. It took a minute, but once Reagan had thoroughly inspected him, she decided regretfully that he did look rather good. The short hair suited him just as much as the longer style had. And it was still long -- sort of.
"No," she sighed. "You're still good-looking."
"Shit, don't sound so disappointed about it."
"If you cut it shorter, I'm going to cut something else off of your body. Something more precious than your hair."
"But whose loss would that be, really? Don't you think that you have a lot more to lose if you do that?"
"I'm not ruled by my sex drive, if that's what you're getting —,"
Reagan didn't have time to finish her sentence before Dave crouched down, swept his arms around her thighs, and threw her over his shoulder. She screamed and slammed the palm of hand onto his back as her hair fell into her eyes and the bathroom turned abruptly upside down.
"Let me down!" she screeched. Dave carried her into their bedroom, laughing freely and ignoring her demands.
"Apologize, first. And tell me that you love me."
Reagan knocked her fist into the small of his back again and growled. Her blood flow was coursing to her head at a quickening rate.
"I hate you, I despise you, I can't stand to look at you," she listed off. He plopped Reagan against the bed onto her back and laid on top of her, stroking away the stray wisps of her hair that had been snagged in her eyelashes.
"You love me," he murmured with a tiny grin.
Reagan's breath caught in her throat. They were close enough that she could feel his heartbeat thrumming beneath his shirt, pressed right to hers.
"I do love you," she said softly. "Short hair and all."
"It's not even that short!" Dave groaned. Before Reagan could chide him on the fact that yes, his hair was indeed much shorter than it had been, a keening wail sounded from down the hall. Gracie had just begun taking her naps in the nursery inside of her crib.
"I got it," Dave said, bouncing to his feet with excitement. He zipped down the hallway and out of Reagan's sight. She waited patiently for him to return with Gracie in hand, but he didn't come back.
She combed through her tangled hair with her fingers and got up off the bed, padding into the hallway and making a turn into Gracie's nursery room. Dave was sitting in the rocking chair that was catty-cornered to Gracie's crib, one leg propped up on his knee as he rocked slowly. Gracie was in his arms, gnawing on the pointer finger that he'd placed strategically into her mouth to keep her from crying. Reagan could hear him whispering.
"I'm here, I'm here, don't worry . . ."
"You look like you were born to do this," Reagan said from the doorway. Dave looked up and flashed her a smile.
"Tell that to the guys on tour. They asked me if I've dropped her yet."
"That's a terrible joke," Reagan said, wrinkling her nose back and thinking that she would give the Nirvana crew-mates a good laying into when she next saw them.
"I know. They give me shit, but Kurt's about to be a dad too. It's not the craziest thing in the world."
"Considering the position you both are in, I'd say it is."
"Come on. Show me the official document that states that professional musicians can't have kids."
Reagan snorted, joining Dave at the rocking chair and perching herself delicately on the arm rest. "Are you calling yourself professional? I don't think professionals kick holes through the bass drum at the end of a set."
"Don't make me get out of this chair. I'll pick you up again."
Reagan laughed and reached out to caress Gracie's still-baby-bald head. She was continuing to slobber on Dave's finger, gripping his hand with her little fists as if her life depended on it.
"I think she missed you," Reagan mused.
"I missed her," Dave sighed. "There wasn't a single night on that tour that I didn't think about her. And I guess I thought about you some, too."
Reagan gave Dave a playful slap on the back of his head. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," he chuckled. He stared back down into Gracie's face. "I wish we knew what color her eyes would be. They haven't come through yet."
"Brown, probably, like yours," Reagan answered. She didn't mention that she was deliberately hoping for this.
"They look like they could turn out blue."
"Is that even genetically possible?"
"I don't know. I didn't finish high school."
He started whispering at Gracie again, adopting the baby voice that he used that Reagan loved so much. She watched them with such love in her heart that she was half-surprised her chest did not burst with the weight of it all. Dave hadn't been gone long, but it had been long enough to make her miss these moments, the ones when she got to see him be a dad.
"Look, now she can't grab my hair," Dave joked as Gracie made a swipe for his chest. Reagan grinned. It was true that Gracie had developed a knack for tugging on Dave's hair when he held her, but his new lack of hair only meant that Gracie's hair-pulling on her in turn would grow ten times worse.
"When can we have another one?" Dave asked quietly, lost in thought as he watched Gracie's wide-eyed expression.
Reagan almost toppled over from the arm of the rocking chair. "Huh?"
"When do you want to have another baby?"
"Um . . . why are you asking?"
Dave gave her a 'how-do-you-not-know' kind of look. "Well, I thought you rather liked the one that we have now. And I thought you wanted more . . . with me."
"I do," Reagan assured him quickly. "Trust me, I do. But is now really a good time?"
"That wasn't an invite to go hop in bed together. I was just wondering. Two, maybe three years at the most? Then I see us having another. Maybe it'll be a boy."
"Dave . . . do you really think you're going to be done with all this touring in three years?"
Now it was Dave's turn to look perplexed. "What?"
"Don't you want to wait? You know, at least until you can be around more?"
"What are you saying?"
Reagan sighed. "I'm saying that if we have another one . . . planned, this time . . . I think it would be good if the touring was finally cooled down."
Dave didn't say anything. He mashed his lips together and stared straight ahead at the wall of Gracie's nursery, looking anywhere but into Reagan's eyes. Reagan knew that look. She felt her spine stiffen as she put two and two together.
"You don't think it will ever cool down," she said. She fashioned her words into a statement instead of a question. It would have been silly to even ask.
"I can't predict the future, Reags."
"Just last month you were venting to me about how stressed you are. Do you really want to consistently be away from home, touring on a different continent for the next three years?"
"I never said that it would be with Nirvana."
Reagan stood up and flexed her fingers nervously at her sides. "Are you saying that a break up is on the horizon? I thought it was sorted out."
"No," Dave said, shaking his head. "It's not like that. I was just thinking that I could maybe do my own thing at some point. I don't have to stay in one place forever."
"You would go solo?"
"Reagan," Dave sighed. The sound of it made Reagan grit her teeth. She hated the way he said her name, like he was trying to chide her into shutting up.
"No, tell me," she argued. "What are you talking about?"
"Aren't you the one who encouraged me to do my own music?" Dave replied, more forceful than before. "You were all hyped up about the stuff I've been writing. You lectured me that I didn't need anyone else. The time will eventually come when that's true."
"I understand that," Reagan said, trying to pull back on the obvious snap in her voice. She crossed her arms. "And I don't take it back."
"What changed, then?" Dave pressed.
"Nothing changed! Don't twist it around. I want you to make music. I'm not asking you to give that up."
"It sounded like you were for a second."
"Dave," Reagan said. Her gaze hardened and she took a deep breath, gathering her anger and drawing it back in. "If you think that I, of all people, would tell you to give up your music, then you're wrong. You don't know me at all if you think that's true."
Dave got to his feet and carefully placed Gracie back in her crib, much to her chagrin. She emitted a fussy whine.
"Let me get her," Reagan began, ducking past Dave with one hand outstretched. Dave caught her gently by the wrist, folding his fingers around her arm.
"I'll give you everything you want," Dave said, his voice low, "if you trust me."
"I trust you. I always have. Can we please forget this conversation? It's making me feel like shit."
She tried to wriggle her way past him, but Dave used both hands to secure her in place, smoothing his palms across her shoulders and down her arms. His eyes looked a cross between concerned and sincere as he tilted his head, trying to hold Reagan's gaze.
"You know I can do both, right?" he said. "I can have a family and do what I love."
"Stop," Reagan demanded. A mortified heat was creeping up her neck. "Don't say anything else."
"What's wrong?"
She fidgeted some more in his grasp before giving up, realizing that he wasn't letting her go anywhere. Reagan went limp, biting back the tremble in her lower lip. If Dave could have been a mind reader, then it would have made their conversation infinitely simpler. He would have known without question that Reagan supported him. She'd gone through weeks upon weeks of turmoil, reminding herself over and over again that she wouldn't have changed the way things had panned out for the world.
"I accepted a long time ago that this is the way it is," she said, struggling to speak in anything above a strangled whisper. "I love you because of who you are and what you do. There are certain sacrifices . . . but I decided I didn't care. Because I want you."
Dave hesitated, taking in what she'd said, before he pulled Reagan in closer and hugged her. He kissed the top of her head with another sigh, this one sounding guilty.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to say all that. I know you don't want me to change anything. You could have left already if that were the case."
"It will always work itself out," Reagan mumbled. She'd been close to tears, which wasn't like her. She was never the first person in a room to cry, but her hormones hadn't been right since Gracie's birth. Now, even the littlest of things left her feeling weepy.
"I've got my own insecurities," Dave said. "I took them out on you. I'm sorry for that."
"You don't have anything to be insecure about."
"That's not true." Tenderly, Dave cupped Reagan's face and cradled it back so that he could peer into her eyes. "Do you know how scary it is to think that one day, I'm going to come home from a tour and you're not going to be here waiting for me? That I'll find a note on the kitchen counter saying 'that's it, I've had enough'?"
"Why would you even think that?" Reagan whispered. "I would never . . . I couldn't . . ."
"You could, later down the line," Dave interrupted. "Let's say we did have another baby in three years and I'm touring again. I'm gone for almost a year. How would that make you feel?"
The thought of it made Reagan's stomach ache, but she pushed the feeling aside. "As long as you come back home, then there's no problem."
He was staring at her, staring at her hard, obviously attempting to detect a note of dishonesty in what she'd said. Reagan opened her mouth to spiel to him more about her loyalty, but the phone started ringing from the living room. Dave's eyes flickered towards the door, filled with annoyance.
"I'll get it," Reagan said. "Stay with Gracie."
She hurried towards the phone and picked it up, cutting off the trill of it mid-ring.
"Hello?" she said into the receiver.
"Reagan?"
It was Courtney on the other line. She sounded as if she'd been crying, her voice thick with a pitiful whine that didn't sound anything like her. It took Reagan several seconds to process that it was even Courtney with whom she was speaking.
"Courtney?" she asked in confusion.
"I need your help. Kurt's in trouble."