OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

forty-nine.

REAGAN WOKE UP before Dave, her eyes fluttering open as she laid on her side with her head on a pillow and her hands tucked underneath her cheek. It had once been disorienting for her to wake up in Dave's apartment, but as she came to that morning, it dawned on her that eventually it would be her apartment too.

She blinked sleep out of her eyes and focused on the picturesque view of Dave sleeping soundly beside her. He was facing her direction, lying on his stomach with his lips slightly parted and his back rising and falling with each gentle breath that he took.

Lightly enough so that he would not awake at her touch, Reagan outstretched her fingers and caressed his face. As she did so, she saw the flash of her ring out of the corner of her eye. Immediately, she yanked her left hand closer to her face and inspected the new, foreign thing nestled between her pinky and middle finger.

It was hard to look at it and still feel somehow tethered to actual reality. Reagan wasn't sure what felt more unreal — the engagement ring she then wore or the knowledge that by midway within the following year, she'd have a child.

It was definitely going to take some getting used to.

She sat up quietly, rubbing her thumb over the glint of the tiny diamond. Someone, maybe God if he truly existed, had to have been holding down the fast-forward button of her life. She'd grown up used to the humdrum trickle of the way time seemed to roll on, predictable and almost always dull. Yet recently, things had changed for her in the way they might have changed over the course of a few several years. Marriage, a kid, preparing to move in with someone. Reagan had once hoped for these milestones like almost every other person in the world and she'd gotten them all in the span of a year.

She took a deep breath in attempt to steady the faltering tremor that abruptly returned in her hands. It was a grim thing to think amidst her bliss, but she sincerely hoped that the rosy colored picture of everything happening to her was not as big of a facade as it seemed.

What did it even mean to be a good parent? The definition seemed so vast. Reagan clenched her hand, the hand wearing her engagement ring, into a ball. As much as she wanted to be excited about taking vows with Dave, the big roadblock of her pregnancy got in the way of things. They weren't going to be like some newly wedded couple with months and years spread out before them to enjoy their alone time together.

Soon enough, they'd be parents. They'd have real responsibility. And the most bitter reminder of it all was that Reagan would probably be doing a good chunk of the parenting alone while Dave remained preoccupied in Nirvana.

She glanced down at him, still dozing peacefully on his pillow. He looked young. Too young to be called a father so soon.

From fucking inside of a broom closet to this, she thought, running her hand through her bedhead hair. Hopefully their child would never think to ask how they had first met.

The longer Reagan looked at Dave, the more she began to miss him even though he was still lying in front of her. In mere days he would be leaving, off to tour the world while she faced the uphill climb of carrying a baby. She supposed that she could have told him that she didn't approve of him going away. Some women might have nailed their baby father's feet to the floor before letting them depart on a worldwide tour lasting months, but Reagan could never.

She supported Dave, as well as the rest of Nirvana, too much. If she was going to marry him, she would do it right and make sure that she gave him no reason to resent her later on down the line. Plus, Kurt would have wrung her neck if she forced him into a hunt for another new drummer.

It was, after all, what Reagan had signed up for. She was the one who had gotten into a long-term relationship with a musician. And besides, she was strong. Even if it killed her, she was going to let Dave go do his thing and she was going to carry her pregnancy all the way through despite mostly being alone.