Title: Lord, I'm Fine
Rating: T
Summary: "Most great bands and crews tear themselves apart real soon. But the real trick is to tear yourselves apart and then put it back together differently. Better." Post-Phase 3 one-shots.
a/n: Hey there! New to the fandom, long time fan. Since Phase 4 is starting to pop up, I needed somewhere to flesh out all of my post-Phase 3 headcanons before we get greeted with an official explanation of the band's antics. No real schedule for this, but I'll be adding to it frequently as I come up with ideas. Hope you enjoy it!
Title: from the song "El Mañana"
Summary: a quote from Russel from the band's "We are the Dury" interview
OOO
Chapter 1: Covers
OOO
Noodle had to give it to Murdoc. It wasn't a bad album.
She asked Murdoc one night when he was drunk and examining his empty rum bottle what the album meant, and he just muttered something about looking for all the plastic in the sand before he passed out with his cheek pressed against the table. It wasn't like she was going to get an answer while he was sober, and a drunk half-truth was better than nothing.
Though, she sort of got it without having to ask anyone. Looking for plastic in the sand. Looking for all the junk among the beauty. Looking for what was different, unnatural, what didn't belong, and finding meaning in all that. Noodle sometimes sat by the door to the basement, listening in on Murdoc's radio show, remembering that Murdoc had wrote every lyric of that album, and managed to forgive a small piece of him.
That's all she was really trying to do nowadays. Forgive small pieces of the past few years, a little bit at a time. Noodle hoped that listening to the album might help.
It did in a sad sort of way that made her wish for those days when she was still only 10 and she could curl up in Murdoc's arms for a nap without him bellyaching about it. Or when 2D spent all morning sprawled out on the floor coloring with her, listening to her chirping in Japanese like it was a sweet song he could hum along to. Or when Russel would take her out to buy her new shoes and clothes and helmets and hats because she grew like a weed and because he loved spoiling her.
Noodle propped her legs up on the kitchen table, turned the volume on her earbuds up, and yawned. It was too early to be thinking about that stuff anyway.
She picked up her acoustic and tried to remember the chords she had worked out yesterday. As an official member of the band, she figured it was her job to get up to speed with everyone else and properly familiarize herself with the albums she missed, starting with Plastic Beach. Besides, Noodle always gravitated towards her guitar when she was bored, and this gave her something to do to fill up the house with some noise.
Noodle was still half asleep, so she cycled through her iPod for one of the sleepy sounding songs on the album that she could strum along too without much trouble. "On Melancholy Hill" started playing and Noodle couldn't help but laugh. Sometimes, it surprised her that Murdoc could write something so gentle.
She rested her chin on her guitar and let the song play a couple of times before she pulled her earbuds out and fell into strumming an easy little acoustic cover of the song that she had come up with last night. Noodle smiled and closed her eyes to the sound of it. She hadn't touched her acoustic in a few weeks, what with the excitement over the move, figuring out what to do with Russel, the whole thing. But so far, it was the most at home she had felt in this house with its rickety floorboards and peeling paint and piles of clutter. She rarely got a chance to record any songs with it. Murdoc always said she could shred better on an electric.
Noodle idly wondered if she should write any of this down or grab her phone and record it. It was the kind of thing she wanted to listen to later and add to. Her mind was immediately thinking of different instruments to layer on top of it — a mellow bass line and a keyboard to refine the melody a little would really make it pop.
In reality, she wasn't sure what the band would use it for. Touring, interviewing, and press events seemed so removed from her, like something she outgrew and was too old for. That the band was too old for. But her head heard music and her mind immediately started whirring, so she decided to just go with it rather than try to question it.
Eventually, she was tapping the side of her foot against the table and humming out the lyrics to the song when she heard someone clopping down the stairs. Probably 2D. Murdoc didn't rise until at least noon, and Russel was still on the roof, lightly snoring.
The singer stumbled into the kitchen, blearily blinking the sleep out of his eyes and feeling around the kitchen for the toaster. Noodle laughed. His jeans were unzipped, his trainers were untied, and his shirt was on inside out and backwards. She wondered if he remembered that he didn't have work today.
2D rustled around the kitchen counter for a few seconds before yawning and turning to Noodle. "Love, you know where Muds hid the bread?"
Noodle looked up from her playing and jutted her chin above 2D's head. "I think he stuffed them in the cabinet."
"Ah," he nodded, pulling the slightly squished loaf of bread out from behind the cans of soup that Noodle bought yesterday. "Thanks, Noods."
She nodded and smiled at him. "You do know that it's Saturday, right?"
2D turned to her and frowned. "No...wasn't yesterday Thursday?"
"No, yesterday was Friday," Noodle chuckled. "You get your cheque on Fridays, remember?"
2D looked out towards the front door and furrowed his eyebrows. He suddenly shook his head and rubbed at his temple. "Oh that's right." He looked down at his shirt and grumbled. "Then I went and got up and dressed for nothing!"
Noodle stopped playing for a moment and dropped her feet down from the table. She slouched in her chair, and reached her foot out underneath the table to push out the chair across from her. "Well, you already started breakfast. Come sit with me."
2D smiled and grabbed his toast the moment it popped out of the toaster. It was burnt nearly black in the middle and Noodle wondered if he kept burning his toast in the mornings on purpose because he liked it that way. He bit into his breakfast and collapsed into the chair, his long legs falling open and bobbing back and forth. He looked down at her guitar. "What were you playing?" he asked through a mouthful of food.
Noodle looked down and gently ran her fingers over the strings, a soft, muted chord filling the kitchen. "Oh just...some stuff off the old album," Noodle muttered. "I couldn't sleep and I was bored."
"Sounded pretty," 2D hummed in approval. "Haven't heard you play in years." It sounded like an exaggeration, but Noodle realized that it really wasn't.
"Murdoc will probably make me learn it all anyway," Noodle teased. She started messing with the tuning pegs on the head of the guitar and plucked along the strings to make sure they sounded right. "At least this way, I can get a head start."
"Oh come on," 2D grinned, leaning over the table and tipping her chin up. "I know you, Noods. Can't keep your hands off of anything with strings and you know it."
Noodle rolled her eyes with a smile and didn't bother to deny it. She strummed the strings a couple of times to make sure she was in the right key. She poked her tongue out, and fiddled with the D string one more time.
2D looked at her hands with interest. "You trying to play something else?"
Noodle nodded and strummed the strings again. "Sort of. I haven't practiced it yet…"
2D spread his hands out in front of him and leaned back in his seat like he was preparing for a grand show. "Well go on. Let's hear it."
"Alright, alright, give me a second." She tried to remember the song she fell asleep to last night, towards the end of the album. Noodle adjusted her grip on the neck and strummed out a chord progression that she was pretty sure matched what she heard. She wasn't so good with the songs at the end of the album, but 2D seemed to recognize it because he smiled and nodded along to it. Noodle kept on through it, but realized that it was just her repeating the same four chords and looked at 2D apologetically. "Nah. I don't know that one well yet."
2D turned around and looked back up the stairs to his room. "'To Binge', right?"
Noodle nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, that's the one. Haven't figured out how to play the melody and the harmony together yet."
The singer held up a finger and stood up from his chair. "Hold that thought. Be right back."
Noodle heard him and his loud footsteps barreling back up the stairs and flinging open a door on the way. He came down only a few seconds later with his Casio slung under his arm. 2D grinned at Noodle childishly, thrumming with more excitement than she had seen from him in a very long time. She started laughing when he threw himself on the floor to look for an outlet to plug the adapter into. Noodle peeked her head under the table to watch him flounder around. "What are you doing?"
"Gonna help you play the song," 2D replied. "Just gotta find the bloody outlet."
Noodle pointed to the counter top. "Put it in by the toaster so the cord will reach," she told him. "What do you mean, help me play it?"
2D crawled across the kitchen floor and leaned over the counter to plug in the adapter to his Casio. He flicked it on and Noodle watched his fingers run across the keys to play a few practice scales. "Well like you said, you haven't got the song down yet. So we'll finish it together! Go on, keep doing what you were doing."
Noodle stared at 2D strangely, but he was sitting up straight, his fingers ready over the keys and waiting for her to start playing. She shrugged and figured that 2D knew what he was talking about and knew what he was going to play. She adjusted her guitar on her lap and started playing through the same four chords again, watching 2D stare at her hands strumming along without him. He nodded to himself, bit at his bottom lip, and then started tapping out on the keys.
Noodle immediately recognized it as the intro to the song and laughed in delight when she heard the singer start to play. Sometimes, Noodle focused so much on 2D as their lead singer that she tended to forget how talented he was when you sat him in front of a piano and just let him play. He carried the airy tune well and it sounded almost lazy and whimsical against the acoustic. Noodle could count on one hand the amount of times she and 2D had ever really played together like this. Noodle and Murdoc did it all the time, but that was a given. Watching 2D play instead of sing was a sight to see.
He looked up at her and started smiling, the gap in his teeth wide and prominent and charming. "See? What'd I tell ya? Not bad, right?"
She shook her head. "No not bad at all," she affirmed.
2D was tapping his foot away under the table and Noodle already felt herself bobbing her head to the slow beat. She didn't know what made her decide to do it or where it had suddenly come from, but she cleared her throat and started singing the first lines of the song. "Waiting by the mailbox, by the train…"
Noodle never paid attention to how her voice sounded. It was hers. You never noticed things like you getting taller or your voice getting deeper or your hips getting wider. It wasn't something you noticed until someone else pointed it out. 2D didn't have to say anything in order for Noodle to realize that he was noticing a change, and now she noticed it too. His piano playing faltered for only half a second before he picked the tune back up. But his head was tilted to the side — the way he would tilt it when he was really into a movie he was watching — and he was smiling softly at her like he couldn't believe that he was just noticing something for the first time.
It had been awhile since 19-2000, and even since DARE. He probably wasn't used to the quality of her voice and how it had changed. Now that she was hearing it herself, neither was she.
Just when she was about to trail off at the end of the verse, 2D picked up the lyrics again, singing just like he sounded fresh off the track. Noodle was smiling so hard that her cheeks were hurting because they sounded good together, his voice layering on top of hers, and she missed these days when the four of them would sit together in the studio, pick up some instruments, screw around with random notes and chords, and eventually create something that was meaningful. Something that the four of them could be proud of and would unite them no matter how far apart they wound up and how long they'd been without each other.
2D finished off his verse and winked at her from across the table. Noodle winked back and couldn't help but throw her head back and bark in delighted laughter, because really, this was more fun than she was expecting to have early on a Saturday with only a few hours of sleep.
They were close to the end of the song, harmonizing the last few lyrics when Noodle finally looked behind 2D's head and saw a familiar shock of dark hair leaning against the doorway.
She didn't know how long Murdoc had been standing there, but she knew it had been long enough for Murdoc to start looking at her like 2D had been earlier — like she was this new, precious thing that had changed right before his eyes, quicker than he could keep up with, and how had he not noticed it before? Noodle's strumming didn't falter and 2D kept playing along as well, even after he noticed that she was distractedly staring behind him.
Murdoc would never admit this, and Noodle would never be able to prove it, but the bassist looked like he had wanted to tell her something — tell them both something. Or like he wanted to go up to them, or maybe sit down at the table and listen to them play, or pick up his bass and start plucking along with them. Of course, all of those were just vague feelings and guesses that she couldn't explain or articulate. But Murdoc rarely looked so downcast, and she wondered if he realized he was missing out on something more than just a jam session.
The bassist shut his eyes and looked away from the scene for a moment, and Noodle finally stopped playing, 2D following immediately after. The singer turned around and raised his brows. "Oh, uh...hey Muds. You're, um...you're up early."
Murdoc snarled and muttered something under his breath as he tended to do when he had nothing to say. He sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "Singin' woke me up, that's all," he mumbled.
Noodle rested both of her arms on the the body of the guitar and muttered through her arms. "Locking yourself up in the basement again?"
Murdoc scowled and went on the defensive. "What's it to you?" he grumbled back, rifling through the fridge and digging through all the half-filled take out boxes and expired cartons of milk for a bottle of whiskey he kept in the back.
Noodle wasn't fazed by his brash responses. Never was. She shrugged. "Just asking," she explained. "You could stay up here for a bit, you know. Won't kill you."
2D was looking at her like she was crazy, and he was waiting for Murdoc to snap or start yelling or — God forbid — start hitting him. But Noodle knew he wouldn't do anything. Murdoc had a temper that could make the floorboards shake, but he never raised his voice to Noodle Never could. She secretly thought that it was because Murdoc could never get the image of her as a little girl who couldn't speak a lick of English poking her head out of a pile of packaging peanuts from the inside of a FedEx box out of his head. And really, how could you ever get angry at something like that? It was unfair, but Noodle used it to her advantage whenever she could.
But the bassist clutched the top of the refrigerator door for a few seconds before he slammed it shut in front of him and screwed off the top of the whiskey bottle. He tipped his head back, took a long swig that only his throat could stand, and turned around towards the basement door. "I'll pass."
Noodle heard the door open, and slam shut with a small rattle, and wrinkled her nose. Murdoc seemed to like that tacky basement and his radio show more than anything else these days. Surely he thought he had more to hold onto than that.
2D looked back at Noodle. He frowned, looking puzzled. "What do you think that was?"
Noodle sighed out through her nose and shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing new," she said simply, and left it at that.
Noodle looked back down at her guitar, let her eyes flicker to 2D's keyboard, and got another idea. She picked her guitar up again. "Do you know how to play Empire Ants?" she smiled hopefully.
The singer frowned at her for only a second before his grin came back and he laid his fingers out on the keys again. "'Course I do."
OOO
a/n: -Chris Mortlock on YouTube did a gorgeous cover of "On Melancholy Hill." That's exactly what Noodle was playing.
-Murdoc "looking for all the plastic in the sand" is actually a quote from Damon